From Our Pastor
Dear Folks,
Notre Dame football, grottos, the rosary, and Our Lady of Lourdes.
Much to the chagrin of Fr. Koehr, I am not a Notre Dame football fan. But, I will circle back to that.
This week we celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Did you know that Our Lady prayed the rosary with Bernadette in each of the 18
apparitions? Indeed six of the apparitions were taken up solely by praying the rosary. So much of the heart of Lourdes is found precisely: Holy Mass, the rosary, and penance.
At the very first apparition, Bernadette reports that she was so shocked that she couldn’t even make the sign or the cross! “My hand was shaking. However, I didn’t let it disturb me. The Lady took the rosary she was holding in her hands and made the sign of the Cross. So I tried a second time. This time I succeeded. As soon as I had made the sign of the Cross the state of shock I had experienced left me.”
Saint Bernadette, even in religious life, struggled with formal meditation but relied on the rosary, as taught to her by Our Lady, to enrich he spiritual life. If the exhortation from Our Lady to pray the rosary was good for 19th century Europe, do we really think that the world is closer to God today?
To encourage this devotion, one thing Catholics have done is build grottos. Many parishes have built them, and so have the faithful in their yards! When I had an eagle scout build a small grotto in my last parish, Our Lady even supplied the statue to go into the grotto as a stranger dropped one off and drove away! I have wondered if they were really angels making a delivery! (You can read about this in the diocesan newspaper!
And it was visiting the grotto at Notre Dame that softened my heart to the school named for Our Lady. I went to ND for a football game mostly out of curiosity. The night before the game, I went down to the grotto on campus and was struck by the non-stop flow of people coming to pray and light a candle! Growing up my understanding of ND had been, when the news would interview their favorite dissenting priests to undermine church teaching. Yet here I saw the simple and reverent faith of regular Catholics!
So, I am still not a ND football fan; but Our Lady of Lourdes, grottos, and the rosary have reminded me that the primacy of being sons and daughters of Our Lady, who loves all of her children: ND fans, MD fans, and yes, even Eagles fans!
pax,
Father John Mosimann
