This servant of God, canonized in 1933, was born on January 7, 1844, at Lourdes, France. While tending flocks outside the town, this simple, pious shepherdess used to pray before a grotto. One day, in 1858, she beheld there a beautiful lady clothed in white and blue with roses at her feet and a rosary hanging from her arm. On relating the incident to her mother, the latter thought she was demented and forbade her to go there again. The next Sunday, however, her mother relented and allowed her and her sisters to visit the place, but they armed themselves with holy water and recited the Rosary on the way. The vision appeared again, and Bernadette sprinkled holy water toward the rocks. The lady smiled and drew nearer, and after a while disappeared. On eighteen different occasions the vision appeared to her, at one time bidding her "Drink of the fountain." The child looked around, and could see no fountain, but presently one sprang up and flowed over the rocks. At another time Bernadette begged her: "O Lady, tell me who you are," repeating the request four times. Each time the vision grew brighter and at length replied: "I am the Immaculate Conception." The child then knew that she was the Mother of God. The fame of these visions spread far and wide, drawing numbers of pilgrims to seek cures in the miraculous waters of the fountain at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes. Bernadette spent her subsequent life as a humble nun until her death in 1879.

Reflection — He who orders all his acts according to the will of God, may often be spoken of by the world as simple and stupid, but in the end, he wins the esteem and confidence of the world itself and the approval and peace of God.

     St. Benedict Joseph Labre was born in the village of Amettes, near Boulogne-sur-Mer in France, on the 26th of March, 1748. His early education was placed in the hands of one of his uncles, who was the cure of Erin. From Benedict Joseph's earliest years he showed every sign of piety, the fullness of which began to develop and soon crowned every year of his life on earth.

After making several unsuccessful requests to enter certain monasteries, where he might serve God according to his heart's desire, he was finally received by the Cistercians in November, 1769. His happiness, however, proved to be short-lived. He was taken ill and his superiors decided that he was not called to be one of their number. Upon his recovery, he discovered God's holy will in regard to his life, "that remaining in the midst of the world, he would devoutly visit as a pilgrim the famous places of Christian devotion."

With this "holy and wholesome thought" ever before his mind, he made solitary pilgrimages to many of the great shrines of Europe. He visited the shrine of Our Lady of Loreto in Italy no less than ten different times during his life. One writer tells us that he seemed to have been destined by God to recall to men's mind the poverty of Christ. He ate nothing but the fragments he received from charity, and esteemed himself happy in suffering hunger, thirst, and the inconveniences of travel, for he had ever before his mind the mortified life of the Master and His Blessed Mother.

He loved the Church of Our Lady of the Mountains in Rome. He spent much time in this, his favorite place of devotion, and on Wednesday of Holy Week, in the year 1783, when he went to pray, he was taken suddenly ill and expired as those who attended him in his last moments said the invocation of the litany of the dying: "Holy Mary, pray for him." His feast is celebrated on April 16.

Reflection — Let us learn from the life of St. Benedict Joseph Labre to remember that we are always in the presence of God, and particularly so when we are in church; for Jesus is really, truly, and substantially present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.

Taken from Father Alban Butler's "Lives of the Saints for Every Day in the Year — With Reflections" Copyright 1955.