My Life is a Miracle

15 The Healin gave me on our 2008 pilgrimage to Lourdes. They’ve never left me since. For us Catholics, the rosary is both a tool of prayer and a prayer itself. I recite it often. My mother taught me the rosary. My rosary is my lifeline to God. God, you are present everywhere, in every- one, and particularly in this chapel. I come to give you thanks for that pilgrimage to Lourdes. To say thank you, from the bottom of my heart. It had been almost twenty-three years since I’d last been to Lourdes. The first time was when I was eleven. We didn’t have any money. My dad was often sick. My mom worked as a cleaner. We’d wait for her weekly wages to settle up at the corner shop and with the greengrocer. (We rarely ate meat). It was the parish priest who paid for my trip, with my dad, to make my profession of faith. We traveled all the way from our home in the north to the grotto near the Pyrénées. Back then, that was the end of the world to me. The second time I went to Lourdes was just before I entered religious life. The newspaper La Vie catholique ran a competition with a trip to Lourdes as the grand prize. I won by explaining in my letter why it was my dream to go there before entering the convent. That trip made a great impression on me. The thing I remember