Bishop Martin’s Diocesan Lourdes Pilgrimage Message 2023
Bishop Martin’s Diocesan Lourdes Pilgrimage Message 2023:
I am looking forward to our Kilmore Pilgrimage to Lourdes from 2nd June until 7th June 2023. It is an opportunity to pray together and to intercede to Our Lady of Lourdes on our own behalf and to bring the intentions of family, friends, and parishioners from around the Diocese of Kilmore. I am conscious of all those at home who will make the pilgrimage of the heart with us.
As with last year, on our 50th Pilgrimage, we will no doubt form a bond arising from our gatherings in Lourdes. They include the liturgical celebrations of the Eucharist and Penance, prayer at the Grotto and meditation with the Way of the Cross, participation in the Processions and the available rituals with Lourdes water as well as the lighting of candles to confirm our intentions. Also, our gatherings for meals and ‘the cuppa’ lend to the camaraderie of our pilgrimage.
When Our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette in 1858, she asked her to dig in the ground and so a spring of water with healing properties, active to this day, emerged. The desire for healing and peace is central to our pilgrimage to Lourdes. This year we welcome our assisted pilgrims who will be accompanied by our generous volunteer helpers.
The Pastoral Theme of Lourdes for 2023 is the instruction of Our Lady to St. Bernadette ‘to build a chapel here’. It has been fulfilled with the actual building of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception centred on the Grotto and is also the calling to us as a diocese to go on pilgrimage and to thereby form a bond as Church, as a community of prayer.
During our 50th Pilgrimage to Lourdes last year, I was struck by how St. Bernadette was chosen to relay the messages of Our Lady. It is significant that St. Bernadette, born on January 7th 1844, was a sickly, uneducated girl from a poor family who was chosen by Our Lady to testify to the Immaculate Conception. The fact that St. Bernadette could not understand the Immaculate Conception was a testimony to the truth of her recollection of what Our Lady communicated to us through her. Later, St. Bernadette, having learned to read and write, stated that “the Blessed Virgin chose me, because I was most ignorant”. She joined the Sisters of Charity at Nevers away from the public eye to work as an infirmary assistant and sacristan. She died there on April 16th 1879 praying “Blessed Mary, Mother of God, pray for me. A poor sinner, a poor sinner.”
We entrust ourselves as the Church of the Diocese of Kilmore to the motherly care of the Blessed Virgin Mary grateful to all those who have been involved in organising and fundraising for our pilgrimage to Lourdes.
May our pilgrimage offer us the opportunity for prayer, petition, and renewal.
Our Lady of Lourdes pray for us.
+ Martin Hayes, Bishop of Kilmore.
29th May 2023, Memorial of The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church.