On February 11th the Church celebrates the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.
This feast day “marks the first apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1858 to fourteen-year-old Marie Bernade (St. Bernadette) Soubirous. Between February 11 and July 16, 1858, the Blessed Virgin appeared eighteen times, and showed herself to St. Bernadette in the hollow of the rock at Lourdes. On March 25 she said to the little shepherdess who was only fourteen years of age: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Since then Lourdes has become a place of pilgrimage and many cures and conversions have taken place. The message of Lourdes is a call to personal conversion, prayer, and charity.” ~ Catholic Culture
Last year I posted our plans for celebrating this feast, followed by a few pictures. I thought I would update my links and add a few more great ideas I remembered seeing on a few of my favorite blogs.
We will be using just a few of these ideas in our home. Now if I could just decide which ones!
Storytime
Our Lady of Lourdes
Bernadette: Our Lady’s Little Servant (Vision Books)
Our Lady of Lourdes
More Saints: Lives & Illuminations
Family Movie Night
There are a some WONDERFUL videos worth watching on this feast day! One of our all time favorites is The Song of Bernadette
A couple other great movies about this apparition are Bernadette
Crafts
- Illuminated Ink sells a beautiful Marian Grotto Kit for Our Lady of Lourdes. “This striking kit will allow your child to create his or her own miniature grotto for the Blessed Mother from wooden sticks, beautiful illustrations and polished semi-precious gemstones.” If you are like me, and planned to order this kit last year, and never got around to it, it still can be done! Charlotte picked up a few supplies for her family, and they did an amazing job.
- Charlotte also has a beautiful coloring page of the Immaculate Conception that could be used since Our Lady said to St. Bernadette, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
- Mary at Our Domestic Church shared a couple great crafts for this feast last year on her blog, including directions for making lovely little holy water fonts! Over at Cottage Blessings you can find the directions for a couple different holy water fonts, and yet another one over at St. Athanasius Academy. How fun!!
- If you are blessed with lots of snow at your home, which we are not, what about building a snow grotto?
- I hope to paint an Our Lady of Lourdes to go with St. Bernadette.
- Or how about making Spoon Saints for St. Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes.
- Make a homemade grotto and place a holy card or small statue of Our Lady of Lourdes inside. Dawn shared a simple suggestion for one using a disposable loaf pan!
- Last year we made the simple Grotto Craft suggested in Seton’s Art 1 for Young Catholics
. All you need is an image of Our Lady of Lourdes (one is provided in the book, but I am sure there are many available online — in fact, Charlotte’s coloring page would be perfect!), brown and yellow construction paper, tissue paper for the flowers and leaves, and a bit of gold glitter and glue for Our Lady’s halo. My children really enjoyed making these!
Food
- You could make the Crepes for the Feast of St. Bernadette or Candlemas Crepes. (Crepes are a favorite in our home, though I always just use my Grandmother’s simple recipe which calls for 12 eggs, 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of milk, and 1 cup of water.)
- Blueberry Muffins, or Blueberry Pancakes, would be another great option for breakfast. I posted the recipe for our favorite Blueberry Muffins over at Catholic Cuisine.
- You could serve an all white menu symbolizing the purity of Mary’s immaculate soul.
- Last year we also made a blue jello mold which represented the Spring. This year I might use the foil cupcake liners and make mini “springs” for our snack.
- In this 4Real Thread a grotto made with Fruity Pebbles Rice Krispie Treats was suggested. My kids would LOVE that!! UPDATED: Here is a link to the recipe/directions.
- A Blueberry Cheesecake Pie would also be fitting. The all white cheesecake (white and angel food cakes are other excellent options) symbolizes Mary’s purity, and the blueberry topping is is symbolic of her blue mantle.
- Another fun option would be to make a cupcake rosary since, when Our Lady first appeared to St. Bernadette, she smiled and told her to pray the rosary. Oooohh!! How about making the rosary with mini blueberry muffins!?! Although, the pink could symbolize the roses at Our Lady’s feet… Hummm…
Prayer
Say the Rosary together as a family.
Pray the Litany of Our Lady of Lourdes.
Sing the Lourdes Hymn, Immaculate Mary.
Using holy water from Lourdes, give your children a parental blessing.
The following is the beautiful novena prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes:
O ever Immaculate Virgin, Mother of Mercy, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comfort to the Afflicted,
you know my wants, my troubles, my sufferings. Deign to cast upon me a look of mercy. By appearing in the Grotto of Lourdes, you were pleased to make it a privileged sanctuary, whence you dispense your favors; and already many sufferers have obtained the cure of their infirmities, both spiritual and corporal.
I come, therefore, with the most unbounded confidence to implore your maternal intercession. Obtain, O loving Mother, the granting of my requests.
Through gratitude for favors, I will endeavor to imitate your virtues that I may one day share your glory.
Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us. Amen.
(Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be.)
This is an absolutely beautiful post! Your entire blog is beautiful! I love your ideas, and they remind me that this feast day is coming up and I need to make a plan! Thank you for putting all of these great ideas into one place. Grace and peace to you!
Thank you Jessica! I was just thinking about you yesterday wondering what fun ideas you would have for celebrating this next week, because there is nothing in my Catholic Traditions book. Thanks for the links to the holy water fonts! Love them!
~Angela
those blueberry muffins do look good…you were right, i dont think the are healthy.
r
jessica, netflix has the song of bernadette on their instant movies right now. i had it in my queque and my daughter told me last night that we could just watch it instead.
thanks so much for ALL of the great ideas!
Awesome!! Thank you so much jessica for all the great ideas!
This, per usual, is lovely!
Would you come over to my blog? I’d love to see you promote the Red Envelope craft to Obama for teh Unborn!
Fabulous ideas, so much richness…
Regan, thanks so much for mentioning that NetFlix instant downlaod, too cool!
Thanks everyone!! I really enjoyed putting this post together! Don’t you just love the internet… SO MANY great ideas out there!
Regina ~ I really need to STOP baking if I want to make ANY progress with Weight on Wed!
Regan ~ Thank you!! I didn’t even check since we have all of the movies that I linked to. I am glad it will be so easily available to everyone that has Netflix! Yay!!
Allison ~ I have heard of that (A friend emailed me a day or two ago) and I’ll try to post as soon as I get through this weekend! I am busily baking a birthday cake tonight for tomorrows party, followed by a mini-family reunion tomorrow night. In the meantime I will add your post to my shared items.
Thank you so much for an amazing resource, I talked about it here. http://moderncatholicmoms.blogspot.com/2009/02/feast-of-our-lady-at-lourdes.html I really appreciate the time it took you to put this together for the benefit of others.
Ellen
Hi Jessica,
Your thoughts and ideas were really inspiring. As I viewed your profile I also love sound of music ever.
I wish you and your family will shower more blessings and graces.
I was in the office right now because I remember that, this day is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. I was so blessed that I found this link of you. Godspeed.
Emily
Thank you for posting such thorough plans for Our Lady's Day. I actually write in my planner to check your blog for feast days a week early so I can be prepared with supplies and ingredients.
I know this is an old post, but just to be clear, Lourdes water IS NOT holy water. It is a totally different thing. That being said, I love your suggestions for celebrating this wonderful feast day with our kids. Thank you!
Sorry for the confusion and thank you for making that clarification! The Lourdes water we had at the time had been blessed by a priest.