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The apparitions of

GARABANDAL

BY
F. SANCHEZ-VENTURA Y PASCUAL

Chapter One

REASONED ARGUMENTS TO FAN THE FLAMES OF OUR FAITH

Page 19

   The Blessed Virgin taught the young girl how to make the Sign of the Cross. Many accounts mention the ample, graceful motions with which Bernadette imitated Our Lady, making the Sign of the Cross with the Crucifix on her rosary from the time of the first vision onwards. This act, impressively dignified in so humble and ignorant a child, brought tears to the eyes of all who witnessed it.

   Then came the miracles, increasing in numbers from the 5th to the 25th of March. And they have never ceased from that day to this. The most spectacular cures at the time were those of Eugene Oroy of Bareges, Henri Busquet, Denis Bouchet, Croisine Ducoups, etc. But, most important of all were the spiritual cures that packed the churches and confessionals to overflowing. It was in those early days that the first pair of crutches was hung in the grotto, an offering by a paralytic who recovered the use of his leg when it came into contact with the Lourdes water. Since then, the spring has continued to flow, and with it has come an incessant stream of pilgrims.

   The medical bureau at Lourdes subjects the most inexplicable of the cures to meticulous study and analysis.

   I cannot resist the temptation to include here the personal testimony of the Most Rev. Fr. Arrupe, S.J., who was elected General of the Society of Jesus in May 1965.

   In his recollections of life as a missionary in Japan, Fr. Arrupe gives an account of the beginnings of his vocation. While a medical student at the San Carios Faculty in Madrid, he took the opportunity of spending a month in Lourdes. "I was full of curiosity when I arrived in Lourdes." His was the curiosity of a practising Catholic, but also of an undergraduate in search of the truth, and rather inclined to be skeptical. It did not take him long to reach the conviction that "life in Lourdes is a miracle". Critical in attitude and inclined to be scientifically argumentative, the student was lucky enough to witness the verification of three cases of miracles at the Bureau de Constatation or Medical Records Office. "I had so often heard some of my professors at San Carlos ranting against the mumbo-jumbo at Lourdes . . ."*

   Fr. Arrupe was able to check these miracles himself. Today, he is recognized as an international authority on psychiatric medicine. As he himself writes: "I must admit that those three miracles, of which I myself was a witness, deeply impressed me. After studying my profession in an irreligious university atmosphere where the professors did nothing but launch diatribes against the supernatural on behalf, so they said, of science, I found God three times through three miracles."

*   Most Rev. Fr. Arrupe, S.J. "Este Japón Increible", PP. 16 to 20.

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