Miracles at Lourdes: Lecture by Father Lockington

New Zealand Tablet, 3 November 1921, Page 11

Miracles at Lourdes : Lecture by Father Lockington

Father W, J. Lockington, S.J., chief of the Jesuit Order in Australia, lectured to a large and interested audience in the Exhibition Building on Wednesday evening, October*l2, on ‘‘Lourdes and the Supernatural’ (says the Daily Herald, Adelaide). The Archbishop of Adelaide t; (Most Rev. Dr. Spence) and the Archbishop of Perth (Most Rev. Dr. Clune), were among those present. Father Lockington said he was there to show them a unique presentation of the supernatural. The Catholic Church wAs prepared to examine all presentations that • came in over nature, and if they were not satisfied they ' would not pronounce on it for centuries. The Church ; would safeguard her people. There were some peoplematerialistswho absolutely refused to admit the supernatural, because if they admitted the supernatural they admitted Almighty God, and that they would not do. They did not believe in miracles, but he would show them miracles that had occured at Lourdes, and he would take them on a trip with tho-pilgrims seeing all that was done. Once they admitted God they must admit that He could do as He liked. Pie said miracles were* not for the converted, but for the unbelievers, and for many years Lourdes 'had been a place where miracles had been wrought on both believers and unbelievers. He traced the history of the manifestations which began in 1858, when a young girl saw a vision of a beautiful lady in the mountains, and notwithstanding the disbelief of her parents and friends and the priest, she continued to visit and kneel before the vision of the “beautiful lady.” The outcome of it was that at the direction of the “beautiful lady” she scooped out a hollow in the sand at the foot of the mountain, and from that gradually grew a stream of water which very shortly flowed to a small river a few yards away at the rate of 30,000 gallons a day. Miracles had been done in that stream. After the girl had been communing with the vision for some time she asked the beautiful lady her name and received the reply that she was the Immaculate Conception. From that time began an unending stream of cures. The blind were made to see, 'the lame to walk, lepers paralytics, and many other diseases were cured. The Catholic priest and bishop would •have nothing to do with the stream and the people who went to bathe in it for cures until the excitement died down, then they appointed a committee of experts and scientists, and after investigating for four years the committee said they had touched the supernatural. The naira- , culous cures still went on. A medical bureau was established at the grotto, and all the patients who desired it . were examined before and after they went to the stream. From 1892 to the beginning of the war 7778 medical men from all parts of the world visited the grotto at Lourdes. Special pilgrimage trains were continually running, canyiug thousands of patients suffering from all kinds of diseases to Lourdes, and in the great majority of cases cures were effected; in some cases quick as a flash of lightning, and sometimes after the patient had been bathing for a few weeks. Materialists and rationalists had brought every conceivable hypothesis to bear on the happening, to try and explain them away, but in all cases their arguments had been shattered by the acts, and the only explanation of the manifestations j left w r as that they were brought about by Divine power, which overcame nature,. The lecturer showed a number ; of interesting photographs of patients who had been cured by the waters at Lourdes, and also took his audience for a photographic trip to the scene of the miracles.