Lourdes #4

Sunday, 28 September

And in my hour of darkness,
She is standing right
in front of me ...

Good morning,  Lourdes!

We are heading to ...

... the underground

Basilica St Pius X ...

... to attend the ...

International Mass ...

... starting at 9.15am.

Let's hurry.

Before mass was celebrated, that Home Priest from yesterday's mass at the chapel gave greetings and welcome ... and mentioned about the gluten-FREE communion again. Lol.

See the shape of the basilica. It's like an overturned Noah's arc.

Capacity of this basilica ...

... is 25,000. 

Front to back, left to right
of the basilica ...

... is filled with pilgrims.

Blue ribbon entrance ...

... by the nuns.

Priests and Bishops ...

... make their entrance.

Communion

Everything was just so orderly and so perfect. It was wonderful to observe and participate and let yourself be in awe of everything that's happening.

The Priest on the mic would go

Shhhhhhhhhh ....

to get an immediate and absolute silence from the crowd.

The crowd was already quiet to begin with. How do you get quieter than that? Yet ... the shhhhhhhhh brought the silence to the next level. 

Stillness.

We enjoyed listening to the different languages delivered through a crisp and clear mic. Songs throughout the mass were hauntingly beautiful.

The experience was indeed mesmerising. 

Mass ended about 11am. 

We are walking over
to the baths.

Lourdes welcomes 6 million pilgrims from around the world every year.

What a beautiful sight.

We are here at the baths.

Today is the perfect time.

Queue was not 2 hours long.

We were done in half an hour.

We came out after the bath,

... feeling refreshed ...

... and rejuvenated ...

... in spirit.

Two hospitaliers attended to us in our cubicle. Yup, we could do the bath together. 

One was from Germany.

The other, from Spain. 

They were friendly and
we felt at ease. 

We are so glad we did it.

What a feeling!

To think we were about to
skip the bath.

It took a complete stranger
with angel code number 21
to give me the message.

It was 11.45am then. 

Time for our fix.

We will go back in a bit ...

to have our second cup
of free coffee ...

after our grotto water.

So a funny thing happened.

I was about to fill my bottle,
when suddenly out of nowhere,
a bee came buzzing to my tap.

Yikes!

Shoo, bee!

Shoo!

I jumped to the tap
on my right (photo above)
obviously, to avoid the bee.

"Quick, take a photo of the bee!"
I urged Bryan.

"Son in his bumble bee outfit ..."

I said with a laugh.

Hahaha.

Bryan smiled.

Of course he remembers
Daniel's bumble bee overalls.

He would have been
about 6 months old. 

That bee made me recall
an earlier bee incident at
Justine and Kayden's wedding.

After their church service then,
we were at the courtyard.

A bee was literally checking
me out, to the amusement
of some friends who witnessed me frantically flapping my hands wildly in the air,  trying to shoo the bee away.

It was my flower dress.

Lol.

Woah. Look at that.

This bee drinks grotto water. 

Must be a bee that is close
to Mother Mary. 

Strange that no one else had a bee experience. 

Only me. 

We chilled at this open space,
opposite the grotto.

It was 1.30pm.

We were gonna watch
the documentary on
Bernadette at 4pm.

At the Information Center.

At 4pm, we were in a mini auditorium that could fit about 100 people.

I was eager to learn about Bernadette's story.

It was a 40-45 minutes
documentary.

It showed how Lourdes started.

Imagine, the Inspector
handling Bernadette's case,
actually called her,

"a stupid idiot."

In his written report.

Eucharistic Procession

at 5.30pm.

Today, we were in the

underground basilica twice.

First, the International Mass 

in the morning ...

and then,

the Eucharistc Procession

and Celebration

in the evening.

We were walking home 
about 6.30pm. 

We noticed this car
parked by the side
along the way.

444

Oh wow.

I was thinking about 
Bernadette's documentary.

Her date of birth : 1844

Her apparitions : 1858

44 - 58

44 - 13

44 - 4

Seriously,
I almost yelped out loud
when I saw the car with
the number plate :

444

Woah.

Awesome.

Totally.