Day Four of Art Novena of Lourdes 2018

The Shining Lady of Lourdes
VII Vessels in Mysteries of Mary tarot deck

Gifts from the Sleeping Woman

'First Bernadette feels a brief quivering pang of terror,
next a steady fear.  But this is no familiar, no fear that
propels one to jump up and run away.  Later this fear melts into 
still another feeling of which this child Bernadette has no idea
and can find no name.  One might call it comforting
or consolation.  But until this instant Bernadette
never knew that she was in need of being comforted.
For she is really not at all aware of the hardness of her life ....
This is naked reality accepted as a matter of course.
But moment by moment now she is more deeply
swathed in this consolation which has no name,
which is a hot flood of compassion.....
But the self of this child is now so cleft asunder,
so open to the universe and so at one therewith,
that the utter sweetness of this compassion
penetrates her shivering body to the very points
of her young breasts.'
extract from The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel

Bernadette saw the shimmering young lady appear
in the grotto near Cachot 18 times.  These visions
paralysed her and put her into a deep trance state
which changed her irrevocably.

The sleeping princess and the sleeping saint are both

themes in archetypal stories seen in fairy tales and religion.

We see these for instance, in the stories of Snow White

and Sleeping Beauty and the story of St Terese and St Bernadette

The spinning wheel of Sleeping Beauty
Mysteries of Mary Tarot Deck

The young girl enters the Underworld in order to

return with the greatest gift to the world :

the gift of compassion for self, for all living creatures

and for life itself.

Novena for Day Four 

I enter the Underworld as you pull me into your embrace, 

in every waking moment of living.

Contemplating on your Presence in the world,

opens me up to the poignant beauty and suffering

of all life in order and my  heart breaks open

over and over, over flowing with compassion.  

As my rigid mind dissolves in your

presence, all boundaries between myself and all living creatures

and the earth disappears and we are all one.

blessed be
Hettienne