Relics of Saint Bernadette bring healing and hope to Galway
Many thousands of people came to Galway Cathedral last week to venerate the relics of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes.
Welcoming the Relics of Saint Bernadette to the heart of Galway city was acknowledged as a profound privilege, both for the Diocese and for the Cathedral parish. The four day inter-diocesan, festival of faith, which saw the relics remain at Galway Cathedral for two days, “resonated with and deeply touched a multitude of people from near and far.”
Galway Cathedral was the first location on the island of Ireland to host the relics of the young saint who, in 1858, when she was fourteen years old, encountered the Blessed Virgin Mary on eighteen occasions in the then tiny and impoverished village of Lourdes, high in the Pyrenees, on the border between France and Spain. Bernadette subsequently lived a hidden life of quiet prayer as a contemplative nun in Nevers, France, dying young of tuberculosis when she was just thirty-five.
Since 1858, Lourdes has been a place of healing and hope for millions of pilgrims who come from across the world to pray together, to bathe in healing, holy waters, to repent of wrongdoing, to renew their devotion to God and His Blessed Mother, and to ask little Bernadette for her intercession. Many miracles of physical healing have been described, recorded, and verified in Lourdes, but miracles of emotional and spiritual healing beyond counting happen there every day.
The Relics of Bernadette will continue on a pilgrimage through Ireland in the coming weeks, giving an opportunity for those many people across the island who are unable to travel to Lourdes to be in close proximity with the saint.
Shortly after bidding farewell to the relics, it was observed that the “humility, devotion, and suffering of Bernadette reminds us that saints are real people who, in their time on earth, faced the vagaries, challenges, and difficulties of life, just like the rest of us. They encountered successes and struggles, experienced moments of joy and sorrow, knew love and knew loss. Holiness is open to every person. Having, even for a very short time, the Relics of Saint Bernadette in our city has been a reminder that each of us has been given the invitation and the ability to be saint-like in this world, and each of us has the potential to be Saints in the next world.”
