Father Marie’s trip to Lourdes upon returning from Cauterets, where he had to have a health cure for his problems with the larynx.
“A few miles from here, in a small village by the name of Lourdes, a grotto has become well-known throughout the surrounding countryside. A poor little girl from the village, 15 years old, was found several times in a state of total ecstasy following apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. Since then, a miraculous spring has gushed forth in the Lourdes grotto, and the population goes there in great numbers. Every day, prodigious instant cures can be seen there. The Prefect thought he had to block the entrance, as the multitude of visitors is becoming more and more numerous.”
The Bishop of Tarbes has begun an inquiry.
I will go and pray for you at the grotto. Pray for me, and tell Sr. Laurence (her sister) to pray for me: “Lord, let Fr. Marie see the will of the heavenly Father.”
July 20, 1858 Letter to Sr. Ernestine Samson
On February 21, 1878 Father Marie wrote from Lourdes to Sister Marie Paul Hibon, the secretary general:
“I am feeling something of what I felt recently at Sant’ Andrea” (delle Fratte, the church in Rome where Our Lady appeared to him in 1842).