February 11th, Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes

In the fourth year after the definition of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary the Holy Mother of God , the Blessed Virgin herself deigned to appear on several occasions to a certain very poor but pious and innocent girl named Bernadette, in a rocky cavern overlooking the grotto of Massabielle, on the banks of the river Gave, near the town of Lourdes in the diocese of Tarbes in France.
The Immaculate Virgin showed herself as a young and gracious figure, robed in white, with a white veil and blue girdle, and golden roses on her bare feet. At the first apparition on February 11, 1858, she taught the child to make the Sign of the Cross correctly and devoutly, and, taking a chaplet from her own arm, encouraged her by example to say the Holy Rosary; this was also repeated in the subsequent apparitions.

On the second day the girl, who feared some deceit of the devil, in all simplicity cast holy water at the Virgin, who smiled more graciously than before. At the third apparition, the girl was invited to repeat her visits to the grotto for fifteen days. During this time the Virgin conversed with her, exhorted her to pray for sinners, to kiss the ground and do penance; and finally commanded her to tell the priests, that a chapel was to be built in that place, and that pilgrims should come to it solemnly in prayer. She was also told to drink and wash in the water from a spring, until the invisible, but which soon gushed out of the ground. On the feast of the Annunciation the girl earnestly begged the Virgin, who had so often visited her, to reveal her name, and joining her hands and raising her eyes to heaven, she said: I am the Immaculate Conception.




O God, Who by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin didst prepare a worthy dwelling for Thy Son: we humbly beseech Thee, that we who celebrate the Apparition of the same Virgin may win health of mind and body. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

(Roman Breviary)