By Father Jeremy Miller, OP

Our Lady of Springbank Retreat House lies in the hot, humid flatlands of South Carolina and these thoughts first began taking shape there on Pentecost weekend. I call on her inspiration, as does that House. The drive back to Atlanta is long, along uneventful I-20. My thoughts raced along with the mileposts, about Mary, about a precious visit with my parents to Lourdes in 1973, and about two young people who at that moment were dying from cancer. Word just came tonight, as I type this that the Lord (and Mary, I would want to say) called one from suffering to Himself. The other, my cousin's wife Nancy, still suffers as her vitality drains away.

All of these thoughts were running together, as those mileposts seem to do during a six-hour drive, punctuated from time to time with short prayers to Mary for a Mother's consolation and presence in suffering. Why is this woman so much a part of Catholic spirituality, so much a need, at least in my prayers, and especially on this Pentecost Sunday along I-20? Mary is a very important part of many Christian lives, of Catholics, of Eastern Orthodox, of Anglicans. My Protestant students and colleagues at Emory don't share that dimension of my Christianity. They frequently bring up in class their perplexity about the role of Mary, thinking or rather suspecting that she somehow stands in between the believer and Christ, or that she is the gracious way to a distant unfeeling Lord, in the minds of Catholics. Those are surely important issues to clarify, and I would rather leave them for now to those "ecumenical contexts" in which they arise. Let me return to I-20.

I suppose that Mary plays for me so important a position when I am faced with suffering, either in my own life or in the lives of others, because in one sense she has always been there. I was nurtured and sustained in Marian devotion (first of all) by the household in which I grew up, and this was furthered by the parish life. Our household knew problems and knew suffering, as all homes do, and I recall as a youngster the spontaneous and felt presence of Mary in the faith of parents and grandparents. Then in the parish, during May, certain Marian devotions took shape and engaged great numbers. Bishop Fulton Sheen often came down from New York to the parish sometime during May and captivated the congregation during a May devotional evening. All of these things were formative influences. Over the years the shape and tone and style of the Marian prayer have changed for me but, always something important and necessary, have remained. In a word, she has remained.

Let me change the scene from Pentecost, 1978, to April, 1973. My parents came to visit me when I was living in Europe. They had never been on the Continent before. I had a car, three weeks of break from the University, and a desire to share some important places of Europe with Philadelphia visitors. My Mother had only one desired place to see -- Lourdes. Our trip wended it sway through the great Cathedral cities: Cologne, Munich, St. Mark's of Venice on Palm Sunday, the Duomo of Florence, Avignon on Holy Thursday, Barcelona Cathedral on Easter, and then over the Pyrenées to Lourdes!

Of all those places, impressive in grandeur in their own right, Lourdes stands out to this day. I was unprepared for how special that place is. It can be a chilly place, with winds sweeping down from the snow-capped Pyrenées, and it was that April. But it was warm, in another and more important way. In speaking about Lourdes, you must always distinguish the grotto grounds from the town. The town caters to the tourist: hotels abound, shops crammed with souvenirs, busses, cars, commercialism … everything you would want to escape from in visiting the south of France. The grotto is another story. The black gates surrounding it block out, as if by edict, all that the town caters to. There is no buying or selling on the grotto grounds. Candles are there for the taking, and you may slip a donation in to an unguarded box if you wish. A large basilica of 1876 dominates the point of entry. The grotto area is to the right, in the hillside on the banks of the Pau, the mountain stream which supplies the waters for the baths. Pilgrims move about, quietly and reverentially.

Religious literature speaks of "sacred places." Comparisons are not important for the moment, but this place is somehow "charged." It elicits profound and moving faith, that is all I can say. I was unprepared for its impact, and I did not arrive expecting this as I suspect my parents did. The power of faithfulness in the place was but one deep impression which took root that April day. The other was the "orthodoxy" of the faith, if I may so put it.

In all of the Marian devotion there, it was clear that Christ was the center. It was as if the Marian devotion simply illuminated the biblical truth of Christ as the way to the Father. I was unprepared for this too -- I suppose I had "protestant misgivings" before I arrived. The candle-lit procession at night captured this feeling. There were perhaps 50,000 pilgrims singing the Lourdes "Ave" in different languages, but the procession ended up in the basilica square, and we sang in Latin the Creed to the Father, Son and Spirit. The centering on Mary quickly became a centering on the Godhead.

It is a place of healing for everyone who goes there. Some few are healed physically, but all are healed spiritually. Whatever credence one may give to the account of St. Bernadette -- and Catholic doctrine does not demand this -- it is my experience that Lourdes is a place of healing faith somehow connected with the intimacy of Mary in Christ-centered prayer.

All of this somehow strikes at a Catholic instinct, one form of which seemed to keep coming back to me along I-20. It was the instinct, and in fact the need, at least the need for me, to ask for the presence and intercession of Mary in my prayer for those two persons dying of cancer. If I am forced to give an explanation, the best accounting I can give is our instinct to want to pray with others in time of need, to have them in prayerful company. I remember when I discussed my vocation years ago with an insightful and holy man, at a time when its future was ginger and uncertain, I not only wanted his thoughts to me, but his prayers with me. We want others to pray with us, to intercede for us, counting on the holiness and integrity of their lives. That simply makes so much sense.

It is no less, and in fact much more, to claim that prayerful fellowship with the holy members of the Kingdom, and to claim her who above all subsequent "generations called blessed." Some speak of this as Mary bringing a Mother's tenderness and concern. Others, like the early Church Fathers, speak of her as the exemplar of what the Church is about. Whatever the sensitivity, it is simply the instinct to call on the powerful company of her prayer for those who are suffering and in need. We are all like the pilgrims who go to Lourdes, who bring something to be healed, some hurt to be tended to, some weakness to be firmed up.

It was my experience at Lourdes, and the experience of so many others, to associate her in our recourse to the Father. Those two cases of cancer preyed on my heart, and to them my heart simply prayed some "Aves" to bring relief to the sufferers and consolation to their loved ones. The Lourdes medal expresses it so aptly: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee."