February 11  Our Lady of Lourdes

To Pray:Collect prayer: God of mercy, we celebrate the feast of Mary, the sinless mother of God. May her prayers help us to rise above our human weakness. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you andthe Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

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Make your Own Grotto!
Here is a downloadable picture--or make your own.

To do: 
Besides the usual Mary feast day activities (Mass, Rosary, etc.), this feast comes with many opportunities for a pilgrimage to a Lady of Lourdes Shrine. There so are many shrines right here in America which are replicas of the Shrine in Lourdes, France where Mary first appeared to St. Bernadette.Making a pilgrimage to one of these shrines is a great family activity.To make it seem more like a pilgrimage, we often say a decade or 2 of the rosary coming and going in the car and say a couple decades when we are there. I’ve listed as many shrines of Our Lady of Lourdes that I could find on the internet.See if there is one near you.I was surprised to see that I’ve been to over half a dozen of these over the course of family vacations and pilgrimages.

List of Our Lady of Lourdes Shrines

It is also a great time to watch the classic: Song of Bernadette with the family.
Or the new DVD out from Navis Pictures puts on this epic story told with a cast of over 150 children.It looks really good, although I’ve only seen the trailer.http://www.navispictures.com/category_s/20.htm

There are also 2 newer movies called, Bernadette and the cartoon version called,Bernadette, Princess of Lourdes.The fact that there are so many movies and books about this story and saint tells us that this is a great story to share with our family.