St. Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes, France, was born in 1844 as the oldest of nine children whose family lived in humble conditions in the dungeon of an old jail in the French Pyrenees region. Sickly as a child, she received little schooling because of her cholera and asthma illnesses. She had 18 separate visions of the Blessed Mother over a five-month period in 1858 at the Massabielle Grotto in Lourdes. Canonized in 1933 after a number of miracles were attributed to her, today hundreds of thousands of pilgrims travel to that grotto made holy some 165 years ago.
On January 18, Bishop Timothy Senior made a pastoral visit to St. Bernadette Mission Church on the north side of the small town of Duncannon, ensconced on the western steep banks of the Susquehanna River 20 miles north of Harrisburg. The mission was founded in the 1950s and is a mission of Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Marysville, which was also founded in the early 1950s. St. Bernadette’s has been the beloved spiritual home for Perry County faithful for nearly 75 years.
The current pastor, Father Walter Guzman, appointed in 2024, welcomed Bishop Senior after concelebrating the Saturday Vigil Mass. “We are not only blessed by your kind and gentle spirit and pastoral presence here tonight, but we are so very delighted to have you here with us,” Father Guzman said.
In his homily, Bishop Senior spoke to the familiar but timeless message of the Wedding Feast of Cana. “The Wedding Feast at Cana is a sublime miracle, Jesus’ first, and we get a glimpse of who Jesus really is,” Bishop Senior said. “Wine becomes a symbol for us of God’s love and His delight in all of us. He delights in us, not always in what we do, but it is important to remember that He always finds delight in us…. God always wants us to give Him our very best.”
In closing, the bishop told the faithful that when we surrender our will to Him, that too brings divine delight. “Wine is the power of Jesus’ love and through it is the Precious Blood of our Savior.”
(Photos by Chris Heisey, The Catholic Witness.)
By Chris Heisey, The Catholic Witness
