Our Lady of Lourdes

Our Lady of Lourdes - Paris 1886

Chapter 1 - Part 4
Good Book Long Train

With the exception of some rare Christians, no one treats the poor man as his brother or his equal.  With the exception of the Saints alas!  few and far between in our day―who would ever think of showing him the respect they deem due to a superior?  In the world, properly so called, in the great world the poor man is absolutely forsaken.  Overwhelmed with the weight of labor, worn out with want, despised and abandoned, would it not appear as though he were cursed by the Creator of the earth?  Ah! it is just the contrary;  he is the beloved one of the universal Father.  While the World has been cursed for ever by the infallible word of Christ, it is the poor, the suffering, the humble, the insignificant who are the “good society” in the eyes of God, the chosen company in which his heart delights.  “Ye are my friends,” he tells them in his Gospel.  He does more.  He identifies himself with them and only opens the kingdom of heaven to the rich on condition of their having been the benefactors of the poor.  “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these little ones, ye have done it unto me.”

     So, when the Son of God came upon earth, it was His will to be born, to live and to die in the midst of the poor―to be Himself poor.  It was from among them He chose his Apostles, his principal disciples, the first-born of his Church.  In the long history of that Church, it was upon the poor that He generally poured forth his choicest spiritual graces.  In all ages with some slight exceptions―Apparations, Visions, especial Revelations, have been the privilege of the poor and little ones whom the world despises.

     When God, in His wisdom, deems fit to manifest himself sensibly to men by these mysterious phenomena, He descends, as do the kings of the earth when traveling, into the houses of His ministers or of His particular friends.  And this is the reason of His habitual choice of the dwellings of the poor and the humble.

     For nearly two thousand years past has the word of the Apostle been verified, “God hath chosen what is weak according to the world to confound that which is powerful.”

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NOTRE DAME DE LOURDES 

Henri Lasserre, Paris - 1886