Come and See

For over 150 years, people have been drawn to the grotto in the small town of Lourdes at the foot of the Pyrenees in the south of France. Five million pilgrims travel there annually to visit the place where the Virgin Mary appeared to a poor local girl, Bernadette Soubirous. The first Irish pilgrimage to Lourdes was organised by the Bishops of Ireland in 1913, and Irish people have been travelling in their thousands ever since. To mark one hundred years since the first Irish pilgrimage, Canon Michéal Liston has written this book which invites the reader to come and see the wonder of Lourdes. From his experience of leading walking tours, Canon Liston engagingly retells the story of Lourdes, the awe-inspiring nature of what occurred there in the mid-nineteenth century and what continues to occur there up to the present day. Canon Liston also provides cues to reflective meditation on the reality of Lourdes post pilgrimage and ways to explore faith issues in the context of the pilgrimage experience.