Eucharist (verse)
Blake, Gilbert
17 COMMONWEAL THE November 6, 1929 before the basilica. That is to say, what the pilgrims All other considerations are beside the point. The do, in what manner, and for what, they pray. Is...
...Christ within me I Christ remain I Lest again the Lamb be slain...
...Is essential matter of Lourdes lies in these few lines...
...It is concerned with that misery...
...Six of them, and only six, are prayers for a bodily cure...
...17 COMMONWEAL THE November 6, 1929 before the basilica...
...For the sins that broached the flesh, And within me, making fresh, Stilling the tumultuous flood, Are the drops of His own Blood...
...The well do not What the pilgrims do is quickly told...
...They num...
...The sick and come to pray for the sick...
...ber forty-six...
...The answer to the question is the explanation of Lourdes...
...His back is turned on hysterical, and it is this prayer that the Catholic com- ing, the first statue to meet their eyes after that of ing to Lourdes, his mind filled with memories of indis- Our Lady at the Grotto in Lourdes...
...In that sense the ten thousand great esplanade in front of the basilica...
...The traveler will reflect that Lourdes exists fied from the prayer of each individual and that prayer can be known...
...The prayer is enormously amplified...
...But the deadlier waters presumed to have miraculous curative virtue, and eternal misery of the soul is its great preoccupation and the blessing of all the pilgrims by Him whom always, and the prayers at Lourdes are first of all Catholics consider the Master of all existence...
...In my mind and in my heart...
...Living in these finger-tips...
...The supplications are not for the where, on February II, I858, Our Lady appeared sick alone...
...which are of vital importance--and which will be dis- There are only six direct appeals for the saving of cussed in a momentmand the Blessed Sacrament is the body...
...and wrote a treatise on hunting...
...It is divine and human pity that bring the carried in procession in benediction of the sick...
...Christ within me, healing whole, Mind and this unquiet soul...
...The suffering body to Lourdes...
...Is this effort expressed in hysterical repetition for humanity, sick or well...
...Lourdes mainly a concentrated effort to obtain a mir- What they show is luminous...
...element : how does the pilgrim pray and for what precisely does he pray...
...That prayer sary to each individual---for the soul of the sinner, for grims believe it: our concern is with them...
...They are then drawn up in a double and triple line of stretchers on two sides of the the health of the body...
...The sick actually and in reality to a young shepherdess named and the well are inseparable--one body with the same Bernadette...
...One body with the same prayer...
...GILBERT BLAKE...
...He represents with Ten thousand people expect a possible relief to a misery that is there before them within sight and touch...
...Behind them do ask for ten thousand miracles of divine pity...
...The do, in what manner, and for what, they pray...
...If these supplications were improvised under the stress of emotions, they might well indeed lead to anything...
...The fact is not to be discussed: the pil- needs...
...There are massed the pilgrims...
...In the words of which always has greatly been discussed, is the human Leon Bloy "the only misery is that we are not saints...
...And that the worse of the two is the void of the soul that does not know itself...
...In my eyes, my skin, my bones, Christ's white Body now atones Sacrament the pilgrims repeat after their priests a series of supplications...
...All six, spoken by the able-bodied pilgrim, apply to the cure of the soul...
...They come to pray because the well--but who is well?--pray before the grotto of their own misery...
...This statue is criminate reading, feels may be exceptional in its of a young man dressed in the classical fashion, a huntinsistence on bodily relief and positive, immediate, ing dog at his feet: his name was Gaston Phoebus: he miraculous intervention...
...In this mouth, and on these lips...
...Eucharist Christ within me, every part...
...It is the privation of God obvious that the only element open to discussion and that Lourdes prays to be spared...
...But it is ampli- Lourdes...
...The weight given to a prayer lived in the fourteenth century, encouraged the arts repeated aloud by ten thousand people is immense...
...not divided into the sick and well...
...And the Church asks six procession refinters the church, the rites concluded...
...After Lourdes, the traveler often visits Pau...
...Apart from this form and hymns, the only other prayer employed at Lourdes is the universal rite of the Catholic Church...
...In the lovely gardens that surround the renaissance castle It is this collective prayer that has been considered of Henry IV they will see, and notice, f o r it is charmsome degree of melancholy the beautiful carelessness of health, intelligence and poetry...
...It is that the prayer is acle...
...Sixteen of them are addressed to the Mother of God and implore her prayers...
...It is that the pilgrims are of prayers to that effect...
...This ceremony then consists in prayer, immersion in porary form of suffering, be averted...
...But the fact, to which enough importance cannot be given, is that they are a set form and that form the only one authorized for use at Lourdes...
...What is this form...
...The majority of them are acts of belief, love and confidence in God...
...The sick praises God, believes in God, loves God and asks, if are dipped in the waters of a spring revealed to Berna- it be His will, for relief...
...For whatever relief is necesdette by Our Lady...
...The supplications are in seven sections...
...All six are taken directly from the New Testament...
...Not even mainly for the sick...
...There are public prayers times that this, perhaps the most innocent and temare ten thousand desperate needs...
...to show the careless world of which this young man in Pau is the personification that material and spiritual Before and during the procession of the Blessed suffering exists...
Vol. 11 • November 1929 • No. 1
