St. Bernadette Pillow

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Production Time: 3-5 days
Ship Time: 3-7 days

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ST. BERNADETTE

1844 — 1879
Feast Days February 18 (New) April 16 (Traditional)
Patron Saint of bodily illness, Lourdes, France, shepherds, against poverty and people ridiculed for their Faith.

Bernadette Soubirous was the first-born child of an extremely poor miller in the town of Lourdes in Southern France. The family was living in the basement of a dilapidated building when on February 11, 1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette in a cave above the banks of the Gave River near Lourdes.

Bernadette, 14 years old, was known as a virtuous girl though a dull student who had not even made her first Holy Communion. In poor health, she had suffered from asthma from an early age.

There were 18 appearances in all, the final one occurring on July 16, the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Although Bernadette’s initial reports provoked skepticism, her daily visions of “the Lady” brought great crowds of the curious.

The Lady, Bernadette explained, had instructed her to have a chapel built on the spot of the visions. There, the people were to come to wash in and drink of the water of the spring that had welled up from the very spot where Bernadette had been instructed to dig.

According to Bernadette, the Lady of her visions appeared to be about 16 or 17 years old and she wore a white dress with a blue sash. Yellow roses covered her feet, and a large rosary was on her right arm. In the vision on March 25 she told Bernadette, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” It was then, when the words were explained to her, that Bernadette came to realize who the Lady really was.

Few visions have ever undergone the scrutiny that these appearances of the Immaculate Virgin were subject to. Lourdes became one of the most popular Marian shrines in the world, attracting millions of visitors. Miracles were reported at the shrine and in the waters of the spring. After thorough investigation, Church authorities confirmed the authenticity of the apparitions in 1862.

During her life, Bernadette suffered much. She was hounded by the public as well as by civic officials until at last she was protected in a convent of nuns. Five years later, she petitioned to enter the Sisters of Notre Dame.

After a period of illness she was able to make the journey from Lourdes and enter the novitiate. But within four months of her arrival she was given the last rites of the Church and allowed to profess her vows. She recovered enough to become infirmarian and then sacristan, but chronic health problems persisted. She died on April 16, 1879, at the age of 35 and was canonized in 1933.