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Marie Bernarde Soubirous, a humble peasant girl, was known to all as Bernadette. Her life story has transformed Lourdes from a small market town in the Hautes-Pyrénées department into one of the most important sites of pilgrimage in the world. Young Bernadette was a compassionate sister and daughter, but because of the family’s situation and her own health, she did not have the opportunity to get an education. When she was 12 years old, she was sent to live with another family, working as a shepherdess. Saint Bernadette’s devotion to God was a life-long passion she truly treasured. In a small shelter where she and her flock took refuge in storms, Bernadette took her humble two-penny rosary, a gift from her mother, and prayed. She also arranged stones to form a rustic altar at the foot of an old chestnut tree. She placed on top a picture of the Blessed Virgin and, kneeling before it, she would recite a decade of the Rosary. Her soft voice permeated through the silence of the little valley in which she spent the day, accompanied by the whispering of the trees, the songs of bees and birds, and the thin bleating of her lambs. …“I thought I was wrong. I rubbed my eyes… I looked again and I still saw the same Lady.” The Lady slipped rosary beads through Her fingers, but She was not moving Her lips. She was surrounded by light. “I saw a Lady dressed in white: She was wearing a white, long dress, also with a white veil, a blue belt, and a yellow rose on each foot.” When the girls returned, they saw Bernadette through the bushes “still on her knees, looking towards the niche.” Supreme Master Ching Hai recounted the story: “Bernadette was poor, but her love was great. She was not very smart: she could not read a word, she could not even recite the scriptures in the Bible, and people laughed at her. Even the children could recite them; she still could not after she’d grown up. But one day, she went to collect wood in a cave and she suddenly heard beautiful music, she suddenly heard the sound of the wind even though there was no wind. How could she hear it? She thought it was her imagination, but then she heard music again, beautiful music. Then she saw Mary, Saint Mary. She did not know that it was Saint Mary because She had passed away a long time ago; who would know what She looked like? But She looked like the pictures from the olden times; Bernadette found that out later. After seeing Mary, She changed completely. Her sickness was cured.”
