Today is the feast day of  Our Lady of Lourdes.  Lourdes, the shrine of healing, will be forever linked to the weak and the humble.  The miracles that happen are often those of the soul.  It should be noted the Bernadette Soubirous to whom Our Lady appeared, had a tuberculous tumor on her knee and was never herself healed.  In life, she knew great suffering.  The miracle that did happen to her body,, though, is ongoing.  After her death,  her body proved to be in corrupt.

Old school Catholics are very familiar with the injunction, “Offer it up!”  St. Paul, you will recall, made an outrageous claim.  He said, ” Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” Col. 1:24

Rev.  Jeffrey Whorton, now, a Catholic priest, coming to us from Episcopal fields,  offers this in his inimitable fashion.  He found the Catholic concept of “Offer it up!” astonishing.  That our warts and wrinkles,  our far from perfect acts and sufferings, could ever be more than the sad effects of the Fall, seemed far too good to be imagined.  He did find something to which he, and, perhaps, we, could relate.  He said for us to think of our 401Ks and an employer who offers to match any funds that we contributed to our account.  Now,  God the Father, in his magnanimity,  goes far beyond matching funds.  He turns our humble dross into pure and eternal gold by clothing it in the sufferings of  His Son.  The thing, Fr. Jeff says we must  remember is:  “No funds, no matching fund!”   So “Offer it up!”  The corruptible can become incorruptible.

The Anchoress has more and more and more on St. Bernadette