The Healing Journey

April 16, 2026

The Testament of St. Bernadette Soubirous is a prayer of gratitude, which she wrote later in her life after she entered the convent. In it, the woman to whom the Blessed Mother appeared 18 times at Lourdes, thanks God for the poverty, suffering, illness, and humiliations she endured.

For the poverty in which my mother and father lived, for our failure, for the mill’s failure, for having to watch over the children, tend the sheep, for my constant fatigue… I thank You, Jesus. For the days when You came, Mary, and for those when You didn’t—I will never be able to repay You except in paradise. But also for the slaps in the face, for the mockery, for the insults, for those who thought I was crazy, for those who accused me of fraud, for those who accused me of running a business… I thank You, Mother.

For the spelling I never mastered, for the memory I never had, for my ignorance and my stupidity, I thank You. Thank you, because if there had been a child on Earth more ignorant and more stupid, you would have chosen her…

For my mother dying far away, for the pain I felt when my father, instead of hugging his little Bernadette, called me “Sister Maria Bernarda”… thank you, Jesus. Thank you for this heart you gave me, so delicate and sensitive, yet filled with bitterness…

For Mother Josefa declaring me worthless, thank you… for the sarcasms of a mother teacher, her harsh voice, her injustices, her irony, and for the bread of humiliation… thank you. Thank you for being the privileged one to point out my flaws, so that the other sisters said, “It’s good that I’m not Bernadette.”

Thank you for being the Bernadette who was threatened with prison because I saw you, Mother… that Bernadette so wretched and miserable that, upon seeing her, they said to themselves, “Is this the Bernadette that people looked at like a rare animal?”

For this pitiful, rotting body you gave me… for this sickness, burning like fire and smoke, for my rotten bones, for the sweating and fever, for the dull, sharp pains… I thank you, my God. And for this soul you gave me, for the desert of interior dryness, for your nights and your lightning, for your silence and your thunder, for everything. For you – both when you were present and when you were absent… I thank you, Jesus.

St. Bernadette, pray for us.

***