Marie de Nazareth
À Jésus Par Marie
Research shows that the dates of the apparitions of Lourdes seem carefully planned around the 40 days of Lent.
Of the 18 apparitions, no less than 14 took place during this liturgical time, which in fact constitutes the backbone of the whole series.
This centrality is reinforced by the overall timeframe: the first two other apparitions occurred before Lent, and the last two after.
Another sign of the central importance of Lent is the fact that Mary spoke for the first time to Bernadette during the apparition that followed Ash Wednesday, the day on which Lent begins. She then asked Bernadette: "Will you do me the favor of coming here for a fortnight?"
Then 13 more apparitions followed, interrupted by two breaks of one day, thus dividing the apparitions into three series.
Finally came a 3-week break before the 14th - and last - Lenten apparition, when Mary gave the culminating message of her visits to Lourdes: "I am the Immaculate Conception.” These words were given on the feast of the Annunciation.
During these 13 Lenten apparitions, Mary called to pray for sinners, asked for their conversion, and insisted on penance. A total penance since it concerned both body and mind.
During the 7th apparition, exactly in the middle of that series of 13, Bernadette humbled herself by obeying the Mother of God’s instructions. She performed some apparently absurd and repulsive gestures, such as kissing the dirt, walking on her knees, putting mud on her face, washing at the spring, and eating the grass that grew in the cave, all the while trying to drink the muddy water that emerged from the ground and which, after Bernadette dug up the earth around it, changed into the famous miraculous spring.
The people present were dismayed, and many considered the little shepherdess to be mad. This humbling is even more striking since it took place in a context of social disrepute for the Soubirous family.
The eating of grass is reminiscent of the behavior of certain animals that purge their stomach with this practice. This gesture, like the presence of water, evokes traditional rituals of purification. Both take their full meaning in this Lenten period, which is a time of fasting and sanctification before Easter, whose austerity nourishes the conscience of sin. It also mirrored the extreme deprivation Bernadette faced in that year of 1858, added to a life marked by piety, simplicity and forced fasting [1]. In fact, her whole life was a kind of Lent.
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[1] She was in an almost constant state of fasting, after hardships and cholera ended up ruining her stomach.