The Story of Our Lady’s Grotto, Carfin, Scotland

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 5, 4 February 1925, Page 13

The Story of Our Lady’s Grotto, Carfin, Scotland

(By Rev. T. X. Tayi.ou, Rector of Carfin, in St. Veter's i'Set .)

The Carfin Grotto is a modest shrine erected in honor of the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God by the men of that mining village, with the hope ct adding in a small way to the fulfilment of her ancient prophecy: —'‘Behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” They budded better than they knew, little suspecting Ijjal in the space of a, year it would be necessary to treble rPTsDe. Devotion to Mary is ever ancient and ever new. She was scarcely more than a child when Gabriel sain led her as full of grace and bb-.ssed among all the daughters of Jive. Alone among those daughters she lias been kept free from the stain which live’s rebellion in Eden brought upon the human race. The Mother of Christ is, in Wordsworth’s immortal phrase: “Our tainted Nature’s solitary boast.” On December S, 1854, Rope Pins IX, the infallible successor o.f the Shepherd whom Christ had hidden to feed His sheep, proclaimed to the world the dogma of the Iminaclnate Conception, lie declared that the doctrine of Mary’s exemption from the stain of original sin was an integral part of the Catholic faith. The Church of God exulted with joy, and three years later the Virgin came to Lourdes to acknowledge the honor in person. In 1920 a group of the parishioners of the Catholic village of Carfin, by Motherwell, took part in the Scottish National Pilgrimage to Lourdes. On their return, a hearty response was made to the suggestion that a similar Grotto might be erected at the same time as their new Institute of Our Lady, of Lourdes. A site was chosen in the adjacent hillside, across the road from the little Church of St. Francis Xavier, and under the auspices of the Little Flower of Jesus, the good work was begun about the date of her Feast, September 30, 1920. An amphitheatre was dug out in the hill now known as Maryknowe. This was encircled with a hedge of golden elder, while on the eastern side, charmingly .framed in walls of irridesceut slag, was placed the marble statue of the Madonno. Beneath it runs the inscription: —“Behold thy Mother!” and under this again, a smaller slab of lona marble enshrines a tiny piece of rock from tlie niche at Lourdes, the gift of the late Dr. Cox, of the Medical Bureau there. On the ground below knelt Bernadette, sculptured, like the Madonna, in Italy, and to her right—conveyed by a pipe from the Institute close by —water bubbled up among the stones. It must be admitted that the well was an afterthought, due to the entreaties of former pil-

grims to Massabielle. Similar wells, natural or artificial, are commonly found in Lourdes Grottos. Oostacker, in Belgium., has a simple drinking .fountain supplied from the main, and it was at Oostacker that occurred the famous miracle of Pierre de Rudder, the classical Lourdes cure, when a broken leg which bad defied for years all medical skill, was suddenly and perfectly sot. On the feast of Notre Dame de Lourdes, February 11, 1921. the Institute was blessed and opened, its first event being a lecture on her great French sanctuary. When • * feast of the Blessed Therese came round in 1922, the new shrine at Carlin / was ready. The task had not been a simple one, so stubborn was the nature of the soil, that when success was despaired of, the Little Flower came to the rescue, and the work never looked back. Rosary Sunday, the day following her feast, was chosen for the unveiling of the image of the immaculate CJuccn. It had rained throughout September, and the thirtieth was the rainiest day of all, but the Rosary month broke in brilliant sunshine, and so continued to the end. Over a thousand visitors attended the ceremony of the opening. It was performed by the writer, who thirty years before had made his first pilgrimage to Lourdes. The Grotto and the artificial spring were solemnly blessed, water from Bernadette’s miraculous source being poured into the latter. People remarked how at the blessing of the statue-..-itself the sun, for a short space veiled by clouds, lit up with its rays the white Madonna —auspicious omen ! The Rev. Dean Brown and Father Petrauskas, of Mossend, Father Doyle and Father O’Brien, of Cleland, Father Conway of Hamilton, and Father Murphy of Carfin, assisted at the service, which concluded with the singing of the Carfin version of the Ave Maria■ hymn. Winter passed into Spring; pilgrims came and went, though not in crowds. Perhaps the largest contingent came from the Convent of Notre Dame, Glasgow. Gradually the water began to be carried off for healing purposes and it beta l . noised abroad that it possessed a virtue of its own. A woman of the parish, afflicted with an appalling varicose ulcer, found herself cured by a novena of Rosaries and the application of the water. This happened at the beginning of December, 1922, but the knowledge of the alleged cure —attested by her medical- attendant—was confined to the priests and the immediate neighbors. On April 29, the Venerable Carmelite of Lisienx became the -Blessed Therese and a month later the invasion of Carfin began. The direct cause b-c

of the first rush was the effect of a visit to the Grotto upon an old woman, aged 76, who belonged to Coatbridge. Airs. Holmes had for ten years, according to medical testimony, been a martyr to that painful malady, rheumatoid arthritis of the hip-joint. She returned home unchanged, hut during the night the pain disappeared and the joint, became flexible, while the sufferer regained an agility altogether unwonted in one so advanced in years. To-day, after the space of twelve months, her activity, despite the shortened limb, is quite extraordinary. The news of what had happened spread Jike wildfire. Pilgrims and sightseers flocked in their thousands, then in their tens of thousands, and it was computed that in August over 200,000 visited the Grotto. Of the various cures ascribed to the shrine and its wellcures which have still to undergo ecclesiastical investigation— may be mentioned here. One was the extremely rapid disappearance of septic eczema in the head of a child, the other an immediate cure of hernia splendidly attested. It would not be possible, nor would it be desirable, to set down here all the alleged cures, or the much more numerous partial ones of 1923. Those of 1924 will require to stand the test of time. Such cures, however, even if proved miraculous by a canonical enquiry, are merely incidental to the work of the Grotto, since man must bear the cross and must pass through the gates of death. Its primary work is the payment of homage to God and the honoring of her whom the King of Kings delighteth to honor. Its secondary purpose is the rescue and enrichment of souls. As for the healing of bodies, this is a bait thrown out by Alary Immaculate to catch what is immortal. The number of hearts drawn closer to God and the number of souls brought back to Him are the joyous secrets of the Madonna and her Child. The bait was indeed successful. Again and again it took the pilgrims between four and -sve hours to make their way from the Institute to the Well close by. The secular press took the Grotto into their favor in

quite an extraordinary fashion, and the numbers multiplied. From the first the spell cast by the Grotto on those outside of the Fold was a remarkable proof of the influence at work. Not only from Scotland, but from Ireland as well, the pilgrims came. The first torchlight procession was held on Our Lady’s birthday, September 8, 1923. The daily services were withdrawn only in the month of November. 11 is Grace Archbishop Mackintosh has already paid a brief visit to the shrine, and he returned on the Epiphany, 1924, when he approved of the extension of the Grotto and the purchase of some of the adjacent territory. Later he approved of a larger hall for the accommodation of the pilgrims, of new reception rooms in the presbytery, and chiefly of the plan of a proposed Church, a beautiful and noble design. If realised, the building would contain over six thousand pilgrims, while in the magnificent outer and cloistered court there would be room for some twenty-five thousand more. It may be that Chapelknowe is the key to Oiir Lady’s puzzling choice of Oarfin. For under the turf which thinly covers that rocky eminence on the borderland between St. Mary’s, Cleland, and its daughter parish of Carlin, there lie buried flic ruins of a chapel built by loving bands some seven hundred years ago. The God’s Acre close by has left no vestige, but the well is there, and its authentic name of Ladywell would seem to give the clue to the dedication of the House of God on the Knowe. All around, the land is studded with old churches and holy wells. Motherwell, only two miles distant, had its Ladywell, an ancient shrine no doubt, inasmuch as the Homans built their camp at the Clyde not many furlongs away. Alas, for the desecration of the spot to-day ! It had also three other wells dedicated respectively to St. Patrick, St. Margaret, and St. Catherine. The first two are in the private demesne of Lord Hamilton of Dalziel, and have in consequence been magnificently preserved. St. Patrick’s chapel and cemetery have also been treated with becoming respect. The very place names in the vicinity of Oarfin,

such as Chapelknowe, Chapelhall, Temple Plantation, Monkland, and others, are re1_ 1 X mAWAvInr. r* r-\ 1L.,4 UUieilb vi niviiiuiiOo, so til at- jviury, the Virgin Mother, for centuries • had public homage paid to her in these parts., Alust she not welcome the open loyalty shown her in these degenerate days by her loving children. Her ancient wells of Chapelknowe and Motherwell are empty drained by the underground workings of the coal mines. The sacred symbolism of their water has gone. What more lilting than that the Immaculate should make use of her devoted miners to renew the old symbol? May she not use as her instrument the toiler of the mine, as she made use of the .shepherdess of the Pyrenees? The Lord, who by I! is favors set the seal of His approval on the sevenfold bath of Naaman in the Jordan, on the use of the source of Massahielle. on the use of the artificial fountain of Oo,stacker; who to please His Alother wrought His first miracle upon the water pots in Cana of Galilee, who through water makes us enter the Kingdom of Heaven, who did not condemn the pool of Beth,saida, —which of us shall gainsay His power, or His Alother’s influence, or the magnetism of His holy ones in a spot saturated with the rosary prayers? Besides, this northern land took the Blessed Therese to its heart before England, or Ireland, or even her own beloved Frame. May not the graces at her prospective shrine he in part her gracious thanks? And after the crusade of the love of Jesus, what dearer to this Flower of Carmel than devotion to Alary and the salvation of souls. —the twofold purpose of the Grotto? These lines art' penned between two events that are historical days in the infant life of the Grotto:—the banning of the public Corpus Christ! procession on Sunday, Juno 22, and the visit, July 20, of Cardinal Bourne to Oarfin. The first result of the ban was to compel the Divine Alaster to take possession of Alaryknowe and its Grotto before the appointed time. Over 30,000 pilgrims were reckoned to have been present that day of glorious sunshine when Benediction was given both on the knoll and from above the niche. The second result may be the extinction of the last remnants of the obsolete penal laws. By the visit of a Prince of Holy Church, after the double pilgrimage of the Archbishop of Glasgow, the seal of scarlet has been added to the seal of purple. For a while the little chapel must do duty for the majestic church which the Immaculate seems to desire, and meantime she will continue her olden • mission of drawing souls to her beloved and Divine Son. It is the mysterious law of pardon, grace,' and life eternal —per Mariam ad Jesum : through Mary to Jesus. *