As you see the Wounds are represented with glorious crowns and depicted as well-springs of graces, namely—the Well of Mercy, the Well of Grace, the Well of Comfort, the Well of Pity, the Well of Life. Meditating on the Five Wounds of Cross we can find strength and courage for facing life as we think of them in these terms.

PARISH LENTEN MISSION for A.D. 2022 CONFERENCE III: “NOS CHERES MALADES”

(Given at the VIA CRUCIS, March 18th, 2022)

In 1873 the Assumptionist religious order in France promoted a National Pilgrimage to Lourdes in order to mobilize French Catholics to be (as we might say today) “prayer warriors” for the renewal of France as a truly Christian commonwealth. Looking back upon this 150 years later, it all looks to us like a very political agenda, a “kingdom of this world” twist to a professedly “kingdom-not-of-this-world” religion. But the Assumptionists would not have seen it this way: they would have seen themselves as promoting a “kingdom come” agenda, as in the prayer petition of the Our Father–“Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” The whole world needed to be renewed according to the Mind of Christ and their “political” points were but the necessary spearhead for Christ’s Kingdom on earth to come. It was out of this idealism that the prominent place of the poor-sick at Lourdes developed.

Père d’Alzon, the Founding Father of the Assumptionists, had a close collaboration with Mère Marie-Eugenie Milleret, the Foundress of another order, the Sisters of the Assumption. Out of this collaboration came a new lay organization of women who dedicated themselves to works of charity and prayer. Their organization was called Notre-Dame de Salut (Our Lady of Salvation). Their membership was drawn from the higher echelons of society. In short, it was for rich Catholic Frenchwomen.
In 1865, one of Père d’Alzon’s Assumptionist priests co-founded with Antoinette Fage, who took the religious name, Mère Marie de Jésus yet another order for women. It was called les Petites-Soeurs de l’Assomption, the “Little Sisters of the Assumption”. Their mission was not to proselytize but to convert by good example. To this end they went out into the poorest parts of Paris to tend the sick at home without charge, even in the neighborhoods of their enemies, where revolutionary, antireligious ideology and sentiments held sway.
These two organizations of women–the wealthy lay women of Notre-Dame de Salut and the Petites-Soeurs de l’Assomption with their evangelical counsel religious poverty–were the instruments for transforming the Lourdes National Pilgrimage of the Assumptionists into a movement where the sick people who were also poverty-stricken had the place-of-honor.
After 1873, the Assumptionists continued their endeavor by making the National Pilgrimage to Lourdes in the summer an annual event. At first in very small numbers, but then in ever increasing numbers throughout the 1870s, they organized the transportation of the poor-sick to Lourdes in order that they might bathe in the spring-fountain which Our Lady had opened to Bernadette from the rock of the Massabielle. Together with the Assumptionist Fathers’ bold political agenda was an even bolder agenda for the working of miraculous signs after the manner of Christ’s healings in the Gospels. They believed that God would work many miracles of healing through Mary’s prayers at Lourdes and that these public signs would be an encouragement to the faithful and a rebuke to the scoffers. In order for this to happen, however, you needed to have lots of horribly, incurably ill people at hand.
And so the rich Ladies of Notre-Dame de Salut and the poor nuns of the Petites-Soeurs joined forces. The wealthy Catholic ladies raised the funds necessary for the undertaking and those who were able and willing among the Dames also accompanied the sick pilgrims on the specially chartered train carriages to Lourdes.
The Petites-Soeurs, who had the experience of caring for the sick, were the ones who bore the brunt of the work as the gardes-malades, that is, as the care-ers, the nurses of the sick.
Think of the social world depicted in Victor Hugo’s famous novel Les Miserables.  Now imagine an alternative plot-line. Think of that poverty-stricken and humanly degraded world of Paris on the “white train cars”, cared for by the wealthiest women of society, now performing the most menial, stomach churning chores on their behalf. Think of the nuns of the Petites-Soeurs who watched over them and tried to ease their added suffering from the difficult journey in the August heat. Think of the effect these trains had on the public as they moved slowly through France–the deference, the silent, emotionally moved expressions of the onlookers. Think of the young French gentlemen who–seeing what these women were doing for the sick–begged to be allowed to help in some way, and so there was formed an organization of men to help with the extremely exhausting physical work of attending the sick to Lourdes, Think of this and imagine it if you can. Only, this is what really happened. But the end of the decade of the 1870s the National Pilgrimage gave pride of place to the poor-sick pilgrims, indeed they were honored by the expression “nos chéres malades”–our dear, our cherished sick.
And were there miracles, after all? Yes, there were. Many? Yes, many. And so the pilgrimage of the sick went on.