“I cannot promise you happiness in this life …

 … only in the next.”

Our Lady to Saint Bernadette at Lourdes, 1858.

“In the fourth year from the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, at the bank of the river Gave near the town of Lourdes of the diocese of Tarbes in France, the Virgin herself in a bend of the rock above the grotto of Massabiele, often shewed herself to a certain girl, called in the vernacular tongue Bernadette, indeed most poor but noble and pious, to be seen. The Immaculate Virgin appeared with a young and kind appearance, clothed with a white garment and white veil, and girt with a blue girdle; she adorned her bare feet with a golden rose. On the first day of the apparition, which was the eleventh of February in the one thousand eight hundred fifty-eighth year, she taught the girl the sign of the cross to be duly and piously made, and she incited her, by her example, to the recitation of the sacred rosary, turning over with her hand the chaplet, which before was hanging down from her arm: which she supplied also in the other apparitions. And on the second day of the apparition, the girl in the simplicity of her heart, fearing diabolic fraud, flung holy water on the Virgin; but the blessed Virgin, smiling gently, shewed her face more kindly to her. And when she appeared a third time, she invited the girl to the grotto for fifteen days. Thence she often addressed her; then commanded, that it might be declared to the priests, a chapel to be built there, and to be approached there for supplications in a manner of solemnity. Moreover she commanded that from the spring, which thus far was hidden under the sand but now was about to erupt, she might drink the water, and by it cleanse herself. Finally on the feast day of the Annunciation, to the girl earnestly inquiring her name, the Virgin, for whose appearance she was so often deemed worthy, the Virgin, her hands having been moved to her breast and her eyes raised to heaven, answered: I am the Immaculate Conception.”

℣. O Lord, hear my prayer.
℟. And let my cry come unto thee.
Let us pray.
O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin didst prepare a worthy dwelling place for thy Son, we humbly beseech thee; that we, who celebrate the appearance of the same Virgin, may obtain health of soul and body.
Through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son, Our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.
℟. Amen.

- Breviarium Romanum