This is the feast of the first of the eighteen apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to a little fourteen-year-old French girl in southern France, in 1858. The name of the little girl was Marie Bernadette Soubirous. The first of Our Lady’s apparitions to her was on February 11. The last was on July 16, the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The greatest was on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation. The Mother of God, on March 25, said to Saint Bernadette, in keeping with the doctrine defined four years before by Pope Pius IX, affirming that she had been immaculately conceived, not “I was immaculately conceived,” but “I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION,” thereby letting us know that she was God’s very notion of this grace from all eternity.
The Lourdes Grotto
