When visiting Lourdes in 1983, St. John Paul II offered a lengthy prayer, asking for the Blessed Mother’s intercession.
In his prayer, he reflected on the spiritual themes expressed in the apparitions at Lourdes and asked for her help in accepting the invitation to penance, conversion and prayer.
Before you, O Mother of Christ, before your Immaculate Heart, today I wish to unite myself again with our Redeemer, who offered himself for men, in order to regenerate them with forgiveness and to nourish them with his life. You joined his offering for the salvation of the world more than anyone else. And you beg us, with Bernadette’s voice, to accept the invitation to penance, to conversion, to prayer. Do not allow us to walk our own path forgetting your appeal.
Mother of men and peoples, you who know their sufferings and their hopes, who maternally feel the consequences of their struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, listen to our prayer, and come to the aid of your children. In Lourdes I renew to you for the whole Church the prayer that I love to address to you in the great Sanctuaries that are dedicated to you in the world.
You yourself made Bernadette Soubirous feel the experience of your sweet presence, entrusting her with a message that is the echo of the word of God entrusted to the Church. The offering we make of ourselves before you, Our Lady, must be a personal act of each one, of each family, of each ecclesial community and it is good to renew it for each generation, in the form that best expresses this confident trust.
O Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes, obtain for [us] the gifts of the Holy Spirit, to give a new youth, the youth of faith, to [all] Christians and their communities, which I entrust to your Immaculate Heart and to your maternal love.
Amen!
And today we celebrate...