February 11
Our Lady of Lourdes
Feast shown for the year 2027; movable feasts can vary from year to year.
The celebration known as Our Lady of Lourdes commemorates the Marian apparitions that occurred in 1858 in Lourdes, a small town in the French Pyrenees. According to tradition, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a young girl, St Bernadette Soubirous, in a series of visions. Mary identified herself as the Immaculate Conception, a powerful affirmation of a teaching recently defined by the Church. At Lourdes, a spring of water was revealed, believed by many faithful to have miraculous healing properties. Each year, millions of pilgrims visit Lourdes, seeking both physical healing and spiritual consolation.
Our Lady of Lourdes is especially associated with prayer for the sick. Pope Pius IX approved devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes, and the feast became a significant day of prayer, with the World Day of the Sick instituted on this date as well. Lourdes remains a symbol of Mary’s maternal care, her closeness to the humble, and the Church’s faith in God’s compassion in suffering. The liturgical colour for this day is often violet due to its occurrence during Lent.
While the specifics of Bernadette’s visions are widely known, the miraculous cures attributed to Lourdes have always been subject to careful scrutiny, with only a small fraction formally recognized by the Church. The feast invites Catholics to consider Mary’s role in salvation history, and to seek her intercession, particularly for those who are suffering.
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Liturgical texts of February 11, 2027
The liturgical day
Mass readings
ReadingDt 30, 15-20
Moses said to the people:
"See! Today I set before you
either life and prosperity,
or death and adversity.
What I command you today
is to love the Lord your God,
to walk in his ways,
to keep his commandments, statutes, and ordinances.
Then you will live and increase in number;
the Lord your God will bless you
in the land that you are about to take possession of.
But if you turn your heart away,
if you do not obey,
if you are led astray
to bow down to other gods
and serve them,
I declare to you today:
you will surely perish,
you will not have long days
in the land that you are going in to possess
after you have crossed the Jordan.
Today I call heaven and earth
to witness against you:
I have set before you life or death,
blessing or curse.
So choose life,
that you and your descendants may live,
by loving the Lord your God,
listening to his voice, and holding fast to him;
for that is your life, a long life
upon the land that the Lord swore to give
to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
– The word of the Lord.
Psalm1, 1-2, 3, 4.6
Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
who does not follow the path of sinners,
does not sit with those who mock,
but delights in the law of the Lord
and meditates on his law day and night!
He is like a tree
planted beside a stream,
that bears fruit in its time,
whose leaves never wither;
everything he does prospers.
Not so the wicked.
They are like chaff
driven away by the wind.
The Lord knows the way of the just,
but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.
GospelLc 9, 22-25
At that time,
Jesus said to his disciples:
"The Son of Man must suffer greatly,
be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
be killed,
and on the third day be raised."
He said to all:
"Anyone who wishes to come after me,
must deny himself,
take up his cross every day
and follow me.
For whoever wants to save his life
will lose it;
but whoever loses his life for my sake
will save it.
What advantage is there for someone
to gain the whole world,
if he himself is lost or ruined?"
– Let us acclaim the Word of God
Liturgical texts: © AELF — aelf.org