Today In Pop Culture: The French Girl And The Virgin Mary

By Jeffery X Martin

As anyone will tell you, it’s hard to find a virgin these days. It’s not that I’m actively looking for a virgin or anything. These are the kinds of conversations we have around the house over dinner. Who wants some tea? Please pass the potatoes. When’s the last time you acknowledged the presence of a hymen?

Good grief. One paragraph in and this article is already off the rails. That happens when you’re talking about something that may be mythological, like virgins. This is especially important on a day like today. It’s all about the purity, baby.

On this date, in 1858, the Virgin Mary Herself appeared to a 14-year-old French girl named Marie-Bernarde Soubirous for the first time. The Holy Mother would eventually show up 18 times that year, telling the young girl holy mysteries and revealing Earthly secrets.

Marie-Bernarde was a young peasant girl (and a young peasant girl was she). She was in the forest gathering with her sisters when she felt a gust of wind coming from a nearby grotto. When she went to investigate, she discovered a woman wearing a white dress, a blue girdle, and a yellow rose on each foot. The lady asked Marie-Bernarde to pray the rosary with her, which she did.

She didn’t want to tell anyone about this experience, but her sister, Toinette, ratted her out. No one believed her. Her parents spanked her. Church officials mocked her. It was a bad day.

However, the girl went back three days later with some holy water. Her intention was to heave it at the lady in white. If the lady writhed about on the ground and yelled, “It burns us!” then Marie-Bernarde would know that the lady was evil. The lady withstood the holy water test, and Marie-Bernarde was ecstatic. Religiously ecstatic.

And I had to look up what that means because when I’m religiously ecstatic, that means there’s a pay per view on. That’s a completely different kind of ecstasy, all together.

According to New Advent:

Supernatural ecstasy may be defined as a state which, while it lasts, includes two elements:

1.) the one, interior and invisible, when the mind rivets its attention on a religious subject;

2.) the other, corporeal and visible, when the activity of the senses is suspended, so that not only are external sensations incapable of influencing the soul, but considerable difficulty is experienced in awakening such sensation, and this whether the ecstatic himself desires to do so, or others attempt to quicken the organs into action.

Actually, I’m not sure that’s helpful at all, so TL;DR–she squeed.

Marie-Bernarde kept going back to that spot, despite the protestations of her parents. During one visit, the Lady told the girl to drink from the spring that was running underground in that spot. Marie-Bernarde dug with her hands until she found the water. At first, it was muddy and gross, but ran clearer over time. This spring was eventually said to have curative properties.

The lady in white also made the request for a chuch to be built on that spot. So not only did the ethereal visitor reveal a new water source, but she had the beginnings of a whole new city plan. You think I’m kidding; the town with the most hotels in France, besides Paris, is Lourdes. Religious tourism. It is a thing.

By this time, the French government was taking notice. They erected a fence around the grotto and levied fines for anyone caught going near the place. When it was reopened, the Catholic Chruch exercised its free will by completely avoiding the topic of Lourdes.

On the 25th of March, the lady in white told Marie-Bernarde, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Which is weird, because most believers seem to think that Jesus was the Immaculate Conception. Mary was just the Conceptor. Nonetheless, it was established that it was indeed the Blessed Virgin Mary who was telling children where they could get a nice drink of water.

The last time the girl went to the grotto, she proclaimed, “I have never seen her so beautiful before.”

The Church stepped in at this point like a stereotypical British cop with that “Right, what’s all this then?” attitude. They opened an investigation into Marie-Bernarde’s claims. A year and a half later, the Church decided the claims were true. They believed Marie-Bernarde had seen the Virgin Mary.

Marie-Bernarde once said that the Blessed Mother had told her she would always be happy, not in this world, but the next. One hopes that was true; the poor girl passed away at the age of 35 of natural causes. She was constantly being hassled by people who either didn’t believe her experience was valid and by people who thought they would be healed if only they could touch the hem of her garment. Being a religious icon is a difficult life. They finally allowed her into a convent, where she spent her final years praying that other people would leave her the hell alone.

Marie-Bernarde was canonized in 1933 as St. Bernadette, which is much easier to type repeatedly than Marie-Bernarde. Lourdes is now thought of worldwide as the place where the Virgin Mary appeared to a little girl and blessed the ground itself. Millions of the faithful travel to Lourdes every year to visit the grotto and get their hands on some of that water, praying it will heal all their ills.

Is it true? Was that visitation just the imagination of a girl who channeled her pubescent lusts into a religious fervor? Can the water of Lourdes heal the sick? Is this the only grotto people have heard of besides the one at the Playboy Mansion? Why don’t we use that word more often?

“Grotto.”
Hell, yeah.
That’s a great word.

This story is good to think about as we begin the season of Lent, where we are asked to give up something. This self-imposed lack of the thing reminds us to look toward our higher power for strength, and to be grateful for all the days when we can have the thing we gave up without feeling any guilt or, at least, not as much guilt as we would feel during Lent.

I’m giving up reverence for Lent.
How about you?