Daily Gospel Reflection
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February 11, 2024
A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said,
“If you wish, you can make me clean.”
Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,
touched him, and said to him,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.
Then, warning him sternly, he dismissed him at once.
He said to him, “See that you tell no one anything,
but go, show yourself to the priest
and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed;
that will be proof for them.”
The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.
He spread the report abroad
so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.
He remained outside in deserted places,
and people kept coming to him from everywhere.
Jesus never promised that we wouldn’t suffer. Today’s gospel confronts us with this reality. Suffering will come in different forms: the loss of a loved one, the loss of a dream, or the loss of a simpler life once known before the onset of illness. The latter is the experience of suffering in which Jesus enters with the leper. Jesus does so with healing, but also with teaching. Today, on this feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, I wish to reflect on the divine teaching of Jesus but applied to a model pupil—Mary, his mother.
Mary lived a life of humanity and, as such, endured suffering. In Jerusalem, after the feast of Passover, she experienced the sorrow of her lost child. On the third day, she found him after frantic searching only to learn he was doing his Father’s work.
It is again in Jerusalem, after the feast of Passover, when she experienced the sorrow of her son, lost, hanging naked from a cross. Again, it is on the third day when he is found, this time, in a garden. Here, the Scriptures fall silent; there is no mention of Mary frantically searching.
Perhaps she carried within her heart the memory of her son doing the work of his Father. Hope is found in Mary’s suffering for she had a teacher who built and strengthened her understanding with the scaffolds of human experience touched by grace.
As pupils of the divine teaching of Jesus, both the leper and Mary come to meet suffering with hope—a hope in God’s power of redemption. May we carry with us the same message of hope that Mary pondered in her heart: there will come about a third day.
Prayer
Protect us, Lord, from thinking that our healing depends on the strength and frequency of our prayers. Help us remember and proclaim to the world by our lives that through your Son you will it now and always that we be made and remain clean of heart and spirit. We make this prayer in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Saint of the Day

On February 11, 1858, a poor 14-year-old shepherd girl named Bernadette Soubirous was collecting firewood near Lourdes, France. She saw a bright light, and Mary appeared before her in a natural hollow of rock in a cave on the shore of a river.
Mary appeared with a youthful face, and she wore a white garment with a blue belt and carried a rosary. Over the course of 18 appearances, she identified herself as the Immaculate Conception. Mary told Bernadette to drink from a spring within the cave and to tell Church authorities to build a shrine on the site. Since those appearances, more than 200 million pilgrims have visited Lourdes, many reporting cures from the miraculous spring.
Father Sorin visited Lourdes, France, on one of his many trips back to France in the late 1800s to confer with the Holy Cross community. He was moved by the display of faith he saw there and began conversations at Notre Dame to construct a replica shrine on campus.

Notre Dame’s Grotto was constructed in 1896 (after Sorin’s death) and replicates the shrine at Lourdes on a one-seventh scale. A stone from Lourdes is implanted in the Grotto wall. The other boulders were unearthed from nearby farm fields, some weighing two or three tons. Workers, in digging the foundation, opened a spring of water in the same relative position as the miraculous spring that emerged at Lourdes—that spring now flows through the fountain on the left side of the Grotto.

In addition to the Grotto, Our Lady of Lourdes is depicted in a large mural in the Basilica, shown in today's featured image.
Our Lady of Lourdes, who brings healing and hope to your children in France and throughout the world—pray for us!