Quote for the Day
The notion of the “ground” of the soul (an idea very important, too, in Eckhart and the Rhineland mystics) is developed by Julian especially in her teaching on prayer. For Julian it is in prayer that we realize the truth of her conviction that “all shall be well,” for in prayer we turn to God in trust and beseech his help and mercy. And we are sure that such prayer is effective, for such prayer rises to God himself from God himself. “I am the ground of thy beseeching,” says Christ to Julian. Prayer, the cry for mercy and help, rises from deep within ourselves. In fact it rises from even more deeply within ourselves than ourselves: prayer rises from the ground of the soul, where our being rests upon the very being of God. In prayer we are caught up in the love of God that is the life of the Trinity.
— Andrew Louth, The Wilderness of God
2/11/1858
Today is the 150th anniversary of the first apparition at Lourdes. The Blessed Mother appeared to a sickly child named Bernadette Soubirous eighteen times over the course of 1858, beginning on February 11. Today Lourdes is a place of pilgrimage for Catholics and all who have a devotion to the Lady. The water that flows from the site of the apparitions is believed to have curative powers. The story of Lourdes was eventually immortalized in a romanticized book (later made into a movie) called The Song of Bernadette. Today, Lourdes vies with Medjugorje, Fatima and Guadalupe as the most loved and revered of all the Marian apparition sites.
