December 8, 1946prev home next
The procession passed. I wanted to see.... I was left exhausted just from the effort I had made to keep myself upraised in order to observe.... I was moved, remembering so many things.... I hurled kisses and my soul at the feet of Mary.... I would have liked to be in Bernadette’s 264 place - and forever - but in Heaven, not here on earth.
But, O Holy Virgin, if I have given you all my homage as one of the faithful - and you know this - you also know that, more than your image, I have had to recall and observe your appearance with my spirit, for those who see you as I do find the most beautiful reproduction to be so cold, material, and base that they cannot look at it without suffering. Our punishment as seers. Spiritual reality is too different from material reality and gives us a sense of coldness, almost malaise. Oh, You, You! You the way we see You, the way You are! What artist can sculpt or depict You without mutilating You, in such fashion that we can look at You without getting afflicted, the affliction of those seeing a debasement of what is ineffable beauty...?
How You love us, O God! By this gift alone of seeing You as You are, every other painful thing receives a recompense.... But in the meantime I tell you that it was sweeter for me to see the people’s homage and, above all, hear your maternal greeting this morning when I painfully awakened than to see your image, so different from the way you are.
264 Bernadette Soubirous, the holy seer of Lourdes. The procession mentioned is that of Mary Immaculate.