“The Almighty has His own purposes.”
Abraham Lincoln
Lourdes was small town hidden in the shadow of the Pyrenees, its houses grouped around an isolated rock where legend had it that Charlemagne had once fought.
It was February 11, 1858, the feast of St. Genevieve. In a house in the rue Petits-Fosses lived François Soubirous, his wife Louise and their four children, two boys and two girls, the eldest child being Bernadette. The father had been the owner of a mill, but now he had to take casual laboring jobs to provide for his family.
Bernadette’s mother had persuaded a peasant neighbor to be Bernadette’s wet nurse, and she remained there after weaning. Then, when she was old enough to be useful, the peasants, who were fond of her, kept her, and she helped by looking after their sheep on the hillsides.
In February 1858 she was fourteen, though she looked like a child of eleven. She suffered from severe asthma. A fortnight before February 11 she had returned to her parents to prepare for her first communion. Her mother was unusually anxious for her. She was fragile and her chest hurt alarmingly at times.
“It was a Thursday,” Bernadette recalled later:
. . . and a cold dark day. After we had finished dinner, mother told us that there was no more firewood. My sister Toinette and I offered to go and gather some. My mother said that the weather was too bad, but then Jeanne Abadie, who lived next door, came in, and said she would like to go with us. We begged my mother and now that there were three of us she gave us permission.
We reached the end of the meadows, almost opposite the grotto at Massabielle. We stopped when we came to the canal. There was not much water in it, but I was afraid of wading across because it was so cold. Jeanne Abadie and my sister took their clogs in their hands and went over. I was sure that if I stepped into the water my asthma would come on again. I asked Jeanne, who was bigger and stronger than I was, to come back and carry me over. “No,” she said, “if you can’t come over by yourself, then stay where you are.”
With this they gathered a few sticks below the grotto and then disappeared along the banks of the canal.
After they had gone, I threw some stones into the water to see if I could use them to step on, but it was no use. So I decided to take off my clogs and stockings and wade across. I had just taken off one of my stockings when I suddenly heard a great noise like a storm coming. I looked to the right and the left, at the trees beside the river, but not a thing moved. I thought I must have been mistaken and went on pulling off my stockings when I heard another noise just like the first. I was frightened and stood up. I tried to shout, but found I couldn’t make a noise. I did not know what to think. Then I looked across the water at the grotto and saw that a wild briar bush in one of the openings was waving about as if in a strong wind.
Almost at the same time a golden cloud came out of the grotto, and soon after it came a young, beautiful lady, more beautiful than anyone I had ever seen. She came out and stood in the opening above the bush. She looked straight at me and smiled, and beckoned to me to come over to her as if she were my mother. I wasn’t frightened any longer. I rubbed my eyes, I shut them and opened them again, but the Lady was still there . . .
This is how Bernadette would later describe her appearance:
The Lady looks like a girl of about sixteen or seventeen. She wears a white dress. Round her waist is a blue ribbon which falls the length of the dress almost to the ground. Her hair can hardly be seen, because of a white veil which falls behind, over her shoulders and below the waist. On her naked feet, which are almost hidden by the folds of the dress, are golden-colored rosettes. In her right hand she holds a rosary with white beads, and a golden chain which glitters like the rosettes on her feet.
On that first appearance she “was smiling and trying to make me understand that I was not dreaming. Without really knowing what I was doing, I took my rosary out of my pocket and knelt down. I wanted to put my hand up to my forehead to make the sign of the cross, but my arm seemed paralyzed and I could not do it until the Lady had crossed herself.”1
When the rosary had been said, the Lady withdrew into the back of the grotto and the golden cloud disappeared with her.
As soon as she had gone, Jeanne and my sister came back to the grotto and found me kneeling there. They laughed and asked if I was coming home with them or not. I waded through the brook without any trouble now, as the water seemed to me to be lukewarm, like water for washing dishes.
We carried three bundles of branches and driftwood back with us. On the way I asked Jeanne and Toinette, my sister, if they had noticed anything at the grotto.
“No—why do you ask?”
“Oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
But later I couldn’t help telling my sister about the strange thing that had happened. I asked her not to tell anyone. But all that day I thought of the Lady, and in the evening, when we were all saying our prayers, I began to cry. Mother asked what the matter was, and Toinette’s hints meant I had to explain.
“It’s all just something you have imagined,” mother said. “Put those fantasies out of your head. And don’t go to Massabielle anymore!”
Then we went to bed, but I did not sleep. No matter what my mother had said, I could not believe that I had been mistaken.
The next day Bernadette’s mother saw her little girl had changed. She looked sad. She was evidently longing to go to see the Lady again.
Friday and Saturday passed, but on Sunday afternoon her mother gave permission for another visit in the company of the two girls who were already in on the secret.
“Go along, then,” she said. “But don’t worry me about it again! And be back in time for Vespers, or you know what’s in store for you!”
The girls took a bottle of holy water to protect them from the Evil One. Bernadette knelt and prayed, with eyes fixed on the niche where the first vision had appeared. The others stood nearby, watching expectantly.
Suddenly Bernadette exclaimed: “There she is, there she is!”
The bottle of holy water was handed to her and she flung some toward the vision.
After a moment’s pause she said, “The Lady is not at all angry. She is nodding and smiling at us.”
Then she went into an ecstasy and remained immovable and very pale, entirely unconscious of her surroundings, with a radiant, transfigured face.
By now the other girls were on their knees too. One of them cried out, “Oh, what if Bernadette dies!” They went closer to her, talking to her, but she didn’t seem to hear them. Her eyes remained fixed on the niche behind the bush and she seemed lost in the contemplation of a heavenly spectacle visible to her alone.
At that moment, the mother and sister of a local miller arrived. They spoke to her gently and insistently, but still she didn’t seem to hear. The miller’s mother ran off to find her son. After a while the adults led Bernadette away and took her back to the mill.
Meanwhile the news had spread and Mme. Soubirous suddenly appeared at the mill, very angry. Birch in hand, she went straight up to her daughter, saying, “You little hussy, do you want to make us a laughingstock! I’ll give you what for with your tall tales about ladies.”
She was on the point of striking her daughter when the miller’s wife interposed. “What are you doing? What has your daughter done that you should punish her?”
Lourdes filled with rumors and on Wednesday evening two devout women, anxious to know more, visited the Soubirous home. A trip to the grotto was arranged for them for early the following morning.
A candle was lit at dawn and the three knelt before the grotto and prayed. Soon Bernadette cried out with joy, “She is coming! There she is!”
The ladies had brought pen and paper and they asked Bernadette to beg the Lady to write down her message. This was refused, and instead the following message was given to Bernadette: “What I have to tell you, I do not need to write. Come here every day for two weeks. I do not promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next.”
And so began fourteen days—February 18 to March 4—when Bernadette went to the grotto every morning.
By the fifth day, hundreds were accompanying her. Some among the townspeople asked her to ask the Lady her name, but Bernadette did not receive a reply.
The whole town was talking about the strange events. Some said they were miraculous. Others, especially the better educated, smiled knowingly, some saying it was merely a nervous phenomenon well-known to science.
On the morning of February 21, the mayor of the town, the procurator and the superintendent of police met at the town hall and cooked up a plan to try to prevent any further manifestations. Order must be preserved, superstition must be repressed, fanatics must be corralled and morbid fancies checked. The best means to do this seemed to them to persuade Bernadette not to return to the cave. They were sure the young girl would be unable to resist their authority.
The procurator had Bernadette brought to his office.
“Will you promise me not to return to Massabielle?”
“No, sir, I will not promise you.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“Well, then, go—we will see about this.”
In the evening the police superintendent tried to see what he could do. He ordered Bernadette to come to his office, and he too asked Bernadette not to return to the cave.
“Sir,” she replied very simply, “I promised the Lady to go back.”
“If you will not immediately promise not to return to Massabielle, I will send for the police and put you in prison.”
But Bernadette remained firm, even when the superintendent threatened her father with prison too.
The next day she was again at the heavenly meeting-place. Two policemen followed her, as did a considerable and curious crowd. She went to her usual spot, but her face showed no sign of ecstasy and when she rose she said that the Lady had not appeared.
The skeptics were triumphant. “The Lady fears the police,” said someone, and many in the crowd laughed.
Before dawn on the following day, nearly 200 people had already arrived when Bernadette knelt down, and while she began to tell her rosary beads she looked at the rock longingly and enquiringly. Suddenly, as if struck by lightning, she gave a start. Her eyes brightened and glittered. Heavenly smiles hovered round her lips and, as an eyewitness put it, “An indefinable grace filled her whole person. Bernadette was no longer Bernadette.”
Spontaneously, all the men present uncovered their heads and bowed.
Now and again Bernadette nodded approval or seemed to be mouthing questions.
The following day there were dramatic developments. When Bernadette approached the cave, she moved aside the branches of the briar bush and stooped to kiss the earth just beyond it. Then she fell once more into an ecstasy. At the end of two or three decades of her rosary, she rose again—and seemed to become embarrassed. She hesitated, took two or three steps, then stopped, looked behind her like one who is called and seemed to listen to words which seemed to come from the direction of the rock. She made a sign in the affirmative, then moved to the left-hand corner of the cave. Three-quarters of the way up the slope she halted, stooped down and began to scratch the ground with her hands. The little hole she managed to scoop out filled with water. She waited a moment, drank some of it, then washed her face with it, after which she took a blade of grass which was growing at her feet and put it in her mouth.
When she rose again, her face was dirty with muddy water. Was the poor child going mad?
She didn’t seem to notice the exclamations on all sides. After her face had been wiped, she returned to her celestial vision, apparently happier than ever.
Later she would explain what had happened:
While I was praying, the Lady said to me: “Go and drink and wash yourself in the cave.” I went to obey, but I couldn’t see any water. Not knowing what to do, I raked up the earth and some water came. I let it settle a little, and then I drank some and washed myself.
As for eating the grass, “I felt inwardly that the Lady wanted me to do it.”
At first the water was hardly enough to make a muddy puddle. But a local doctor called Dozous decided he would not leave the cave without having carefully explored all the different parts of the ground. He later said: “I found that it was dry everywhere except where Bernadette had hollowed a little hole with her hands. That was where the spring had immediately flowed.”
The water went on increasing in volume for the rest of the day, continuing after most people had left.
The next day, when the people returned to the spot, the jet of water was as big as a finger.
The Lady had asked Bernadette to go to the cave for fourteen days. On the last day there was a feeling of expectation that some miracle would take place. The crowd was immense—15,000 people at least.
The Lady came, the ecstasy lasted more than an hour, but no miraculous sign was given to the crowd. As they went away disappointed, Bernadette was asked if she would return to the cave.
“Oh yes,” she replied, “I shall come back, but I do not know whether the Lady will reappear. Only that she smiled at me when she went away, and that she did not bid me goodbye.”
In the days that followed she often went back, but the mysterious being did not show herself.
Then, after twenty days, on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, the Lady arrived once more. Later Bernadette would remember:
After I had knelt down before the Lady, I told her how glad I was to be allowed to see her again, and after I had unburdened myself to her, I took up my rosary. While I was praying, the thought came to me that I should now ask her what her name was, and after a little time I could think of nothing else. I was afraid that she might be angry if I again asked a question which she had always refused to answer, and yet there was something that seemed to force me to speak. At last I could not keep the words back any longer, and I asked the Lady to be so kind as to tell me who she was.
As she had always done before, the Lady bent her head and smiled, but did not answer. I don’t know how it was, but I was brave and asked her again if she would not trust me with her name. Again she smiled and bent her head. Still she said nothing. Then I folded my hands, and while I admitted to her that I was unworthy of so great a favor, I repeated my request the third time.
The Lady was standing above the rosebush. When I made my request the third time, she looked grave and then she lifted up her hands, laid them against each other on her breast and looked up to heaven. After that she slowly moved her hands apart again and as she bent forward toward me she said in a voice that trembled, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
Afterward Bernadette turned to a bystander and asked: “But, mademoiselle, what do those words mean? “Que soy er Immaculada Counception?”” (Her dialect was closer to Spanish than French.)
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception had been given to the faithful by the Vatican only three years earlier. When the spectators learned of the Lady’s name, they were transported by religious enthusiasm. Some workmen constructed a wooden conduit in order to carry water from the spring to a little basin, and soon the sick and infirm began to drink the water.
Later in 1858 a stone-cutter from Lourdes called Louis Bourriette, who had been blinded in one eye by a stone splint twenty years earlier and was now in danger of losing the sight in the other eye, sent his daughter for some water from the mysterious spring, and although it was muddy he applied it to his eye. His sight improved with each application and the following day he went to see his doctor, Dr. Duzous. His cure proved to be permanent and in a record of this on November 17, 1858, at the request of the Bishop of Tarbes, Dr. Duzous wrote:
I have examined both of Bourriette’s eyes and found them quite equal both in shape and in the organization of the individual parts. Both pupils reacted normally when subjected to rays of light. In the right eye a scar was still visible. Otherwise there was no trace of the injury that had once damaged it.
Bernadette would live for another twenty years, but the visions never returned.
After a while the nuns who ran the local school took her in to live with them as an invalid. It was here that, between the ages of eighteen and nineteen, she finished learning how to read and write. Eventually she decided to make the life of a religious community her own, and at twenty-two she left the school for a convent in Nevers. She never returned to Lourdes.
Over time her asthma developed into tuberculosis and on April 16, 1879, she died with the crucifix in her hands saying, “I saw her. Yes, I saw her.”2
* * *
Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin and raised in the wild frontier country of Kentucky and Indiana. He had no formal schooling. He rose from working as a shopkeeper and postmaster to becoming a surveyor, then a lawyer, and all the while he was developing a sense of justice that led him to assert that the nation could not be “half slave, half free.”
Lincoln was as committed to religious freedom as much as to political freedom. His wife was Episcopalian and attended a Presbyterian church, and Abraham would accompany her now and then. He would explain that he had never joined any church or attended regularly, because he found it hard to commit himself to dogma. But, as his friend Isaac Britton explained, there was another reason and “very few knew why.”
Britton was a prominent devotee of the great eighteenth-century Swedish scientist and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, as were several of Abraham Lincoln’s friends. “Swedenborg enables us to understand why we were created, why we are alive, and what happens to us after our bodies die. Swedenborg enables us to have the best possible understanding of God’s message as it exists in those Bible books which constitute God’s Word.” So said Martin Luther King.
Abraham Lincoln also sometimes echoed Swedenborg’s teachings, holding that religious conviction was a matter of individual conscience, and quoting “Conscience is God’s presence with man.”3
* * *
It was 1860. Abraham Lincoln received the news of his election victory via the telegraph and celebrated with his friends. He returned home and collapsed exhausted on the sofa. In the morning he awoke and found himself looking at his reflection in a mirror on a bureau:
Looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected nearly full length, but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time—plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler, say five shades, than the other. I got up and the thing melted away, and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour, forgot all about it—nearly but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang, as though something uncomfortable had happened.
Lincoln tried to replicate the vision, as if it were just an optical illusion, but he couldn’t, and the weirdness of the experience stayed with him.
His wife, Mary, was very worried by it all. “She thought it was a sign that I was to be elected a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.”
An article on the vision appeared in Harper’s Monthly magazine in July 1865. How would its readers have reacted to their President talking about this spooky experience? Didn’t they think it odd?
It is perhaps helpful to see these events in the context of the rise of Spiritualism.
Lincoln’s wife may have been interested in Spiritualism as early as the late 1840s and by the time the Lincolns arrived in Washington in 1860 séances had become fashionable among the ruling elite. Mary attended them frequently and Abraham accompanied her at least once. In 1862 she even invited mediums to hold séances in the Red Room in the White House.
On April 11, 1865 Abraham Lincoln told his wife and a small gathering of friends about a dream he had had about ten days earlier. One of the friends, Ward Hill Lamon, later recorded in a biography what he had said:
I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. “Who is dead in the White House?” I demanded of one of the soldiers. “The President,” was his answer; “he was killed by an assassin.” Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.
Earlier that month Robert E. Lee, the commanding general of the Confederate Army, had surrendered to General Ulysses Grant. An actor called Robert Wilkes Booth, who was a Confederate sympathizer, hoped to rally Confederate troops and inspire them to carry on the fight. On April 14, 1865, while Lincoln was with his wife watching a play called Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, Booth shot him in the back of the head.