The apparitions took place in 1858 and the very young Bernadette Soubirous was the seer. The most unusual thing is the time chosen by the mother of Our Lord to appear and talk to Bernadette: actually at the time people generally are at lunch: 12 o’ clock and esactly on Carnival Thursday, during feasting and banquets all over the village. But for bernadette , a poor and delicate fourteen-year-old girl,feeble and illiterate who helps her caring wet-nurse and stays at her almost until the days of the apparitions, carnival Thursday is an ordinary day just good for going and getting tegether firewood for her poor and numerous family.

At abaut one Kilometre far from the village lies a cave known as Massabielle on the other side of the River Gave. And here, in this very place, Bernadette, left alone by her sisters who have quickly forded the river is drawn by a strange sign: for two times a sound like thundering and higt above, the branches of a rose-bush waving as driven by the wind. Soon afterwards-this is what Bernadette writes in all her descriptions- there follows the seeing of golden cloud turning into a beautiful young Lady with her feet held up by the bush.

Bernadette says to Jean Baptiste Estrade:”The Lady looked at me and smiled at me then she beckoned me ower, as if she were my mother. Fear was over but I seemed not realise where I was. I rubbed my eyes, I closed and then opened them; but the Lady was always there smiling at me and making me understand I wasn’t mistaken…”The Lady” Bernadette went on “looks like a young woman of sisteen or seventeen . She is dressed in white, whit an azure sash falling down the dress.

On her head she’s barefoot but her feet are covered by the bottom folds of her dress escept are both toes where shines golden rose. On her arm she’s wearing a rosary with white beans tied by a gleaming little gold chain as bright as the two roses on her feet. Bernadette falls on her knees just to begin praying but she cannot cross herself to start until the Lady herself does , the Lady who goes on with Bernadette’s prayers for the whole time beet only to say”Gloria Parti et Filio et Spiritui Sancto at the end of every ten of the rosary. On concluding the prayer the Lady disappears in a moment. On the 14th february Bernadette who has meanwhile ready told her sister and girl friend and parents happened, under an inner compulsion goes back to the cave of Massabielle carryng a small bottle of holy water, because, she has been told no one has to take riskes on these matters and it may even be the devil just ready to play dirty tricks… The Vergin smiles at Bernadette’s behaviour and even more deeply secures her in to extasy.

So Bernadette seems indifferent to the recalls of the onlookers and shows complete unawareness of wath is going around her but of the vision. On February 18th the third apparition of the Vergin begins to speak in her own words: “Will you be so kind to came here for fifteen days?”- “I don’t promise I will make you happy in this world, but you’ll be happy in the other”! Then the Lady from heaven before taking leave from Bernadette after almost an hour of extasy- every single apparition will always last one hour- confides “THREE SECRETS” to Bernadette, secrets never to be told anyone, secrets the young girl should keep in her inner heart. During the minutes of extasy the Virgin tries in any way to entrance the fait of her favourite Bernadette and gain her enthralment through penance by firmly urging the young girl to dig up a miraculous water spring:” Go and drink and purify at the source” and then further on “Go and tell the priest they must build a chapel here “ “ I want the people to come here in procession” The apparition were by then a well known event and a real devotion that was spreading more and more with spontaneous offer raisings for the chapel requested by the Madonna.

During the 16th apparition that took place- not by mere chance- on the 25th of the March - the Feast of the Annunciation to Mary by the A Archangel Gabriel- Bernadette perceived the Lady already wating for her and wholly surrounded with light ( let us make a digression here: when Bernadette was asked if the Vergin Mary was radiant she simply ansewered such way: she is not shining but she is the dight herself) and she was turning her motherly and deeply loving eyes to the people invoking her…” The Lady was on the rose bush and was just standing as like as she is depicted on the miraculous medal…she then joined her hands and moved them to the upper breast … looked up to the sky…; next on slowly disjoinig her hands and bending towards me, she told me in a trembling voice:” I am the Immaculate Conception” two more apparition were formally reported on April 7th and july 16th

Besides realy visible miracles began to happen: the ones the committee (of inquiry) has officially acknoweldged are more than seventy.
But many have been the miracles in the miracle that is, many have been the spiritual recoveries brought along by the apparition to Bernadette.

Now Bernadette is in heven and her body rest in the urn, of the Church in Nevers where in silence and prayer with the offer of her suffering she patiently waited for the day she would everlastingly join the fair Lady and her Son Jesus.

The above reported matter has been extracted from what Bernadette wrote in three different periods of time Father Renè Laurentin’s bock, Jean Baptiste bEstrade and Paola Giovetti.

“The Apparitions of Vergin Mary”- Ed. St. Paolo, 1996.