30 years of meaningful hard work in Lourdes
The first thing to say in the middle of Holy Week, having had Palm Sunday last Sunday and looking forward to Good Friday and Easter Sunday, is to wish everyone a Holy Easter and a happy holiday.
In the last two weeks the school has been engaged in our annual Lourdes Fundraising Fortnight. In my first three years as Headmistress I went with the school on pilgrimage to the small French town of Lourdes in the foothills of the Pyrenees, and spent a week in one of the now iconic blue uniforms worn by the ‘handmaids’ in Lourdes. My memories of those weeks of service, and the power of Lourdes that I experienced, continue to inspire my personal on-going support of the fundraising activities that we undertake each March at school. But for those who haven’t had the opportunity to experience first-hand, or hear about, the weeks spent in Lourdes, I thought it would be appropriate to focus this Easter’s pastoral blog on our school’s 30+ year tradition of fundraising for the Lourdes pilgrimage and returning there to undertake meaningful hard work.
There is no one better placed to explain our school’s long history of visiting Lourdes each summer than Pastoral Deputy Head, Miss Aodain Fleming – who even credits Lourdes as being the reason she first discovered St Mary’s School, Cambridge and ended up teaching here.
Miss Fleming reflects on a special relationship with Lourdes
“It can be quite difficult for those of us who have been in the school community for many years to remember that the word ‘Lourdes’ isn’t necessarily a known quantity to everyone else. In brief, Lourdes is a place of pilgrimage for six million people each year; is the second most important centre of tourism in France; and the third most important site of international Catholic pilgrimage. This is because Catholics believe Jesus’ mother Mary gave instructions to a poor and sickly girl, Bernadette, to dig in a particular spot, discover a small spring of water, and to drink from it. Today, pilgrims come to bathe in the spring waters and pray, with many believing that Lourdes is a place of miraculous healing.
Our Senior School students are introduced to Lourdes as soon as they join the school, as the activities of our annual Lourdes Fundraising Fortnight are a real highlight of the school year for many, as well as being a great opportunity for everyone to get involved creatively in raising funds. From the dog show to ‘sponge the teacher’, and from staff netball matches to the sales of more baked and sweet treats than you can imagine being consumed during one fortnight, everyone in the Senior School is invited to get involved with fundraising in any way they can think of!
The funds that we raise are always donated to support the work of the Glanfield Children’s Group (GCG), which is a charity that supports sick and disabled children both financially and logistically who want to visit Lourdes. The GCG takes children on what can only be described as a holiday-pilgrimage to the town: for some it is really the best part of their year, every year, and so really is thought of as a holiday just as much as it might be thought of as a pilgrimage. Where children’s families need or want to come they are also supported in doing so by the Glanfield group or, where a family might benefit from some much-needed respite, the GCG will alternatively care for the child for the duration of the holiday – so there is a huge need for people to offer to support the pilgrimage by going with the group too. It is in this capacity within both the children’s group and the main pilgrimage that our Sixth Form students, alumnae, current and former staff members and their family members travel to Lourdes each August.
From the moment they arrive at the airport to depart the UK, to the moment they return to the airport a week later, our troupe has one goal: to ensure the children and adults they are supporting are able to access as much as they want to throughout the week.
Handmaids (female workers) and brancardiers (male workers) start work at about 6.00am each day to help wash, dress and feed the pilgrims before the day’s activities begin and, after assisting with transport to Mass or a procession or a sacred site, and supporting with both lunch and evening meals, they help to transport them back to their accommodation – usually in time to clock off at about 10.00pm. Other duties include helping people to access Lourdes via 'rolling' or wheeling them in chairs known as voitures, bathe in the spring water in the baths or playing in the music group – which is how I now spend my time, doing my best to enhance the liturgies for the pilgrims.
The opportunity to join the St Mary’s School, Cambridge group is open to all Sixth Form students who have had their 17th birthday, no matter their personal faith or beliefs, as long as they are open to working hard and understand that, for many people, visiting Lourdes is a very special and important time. Lourdes is a remarkable place, where sick and disabled people are at the heart of everything that goes on and are the entire focus of the town. This is in itself quite a special and counter-cultural experience. One of the regular members of the Glanfield group, who has become a firm friend of ours and whose story represents what Lourdes is about, is Errol, who has Down Syndrome and speaks basic Makaton.
Each Christmas Errol’s parents wrap up his passport so that, when he opens it, he is overjoyed because he knows that this means he will be able to visit Lourdes once again, and see so many of the people that he has come to know so well.
As you will have read from Charlotte Avery’s introduction, I have been visiting Lourdes myself since 1986 when, travelling under the same Catholic Association banner that the school travels with, I first met people from St Mary’s School, Cambridge. I initially went not for particularly spiritual reasons, but because my older sister had been previously and made it sound like a fantastic way to meet similarly-minded young people while on a bit of a jolly! Once I was actually in Lourdes it didn’t take me long to recognise why people who have been before tend to return, again and again. To some extent, it’s as if Lourdes only makes sense when you are working really hard.
In my first week I was caring for an elderly man who had had a stroke and was finding it difficult to walk but, instead of accepting offers to be transported in a wheel chair, insisted on continuing trying to walk. Refusing to sit, he would walk a couple of steps and rest, and walk a few more steps and rest. After about 20 minutes, when we had finally reached our destination at a snail’s pace, he gave me a kiss of thanks on the cheek.
It was then that I realised the value of understanding, and enabling, and that is what I think Lourdes is all about.
While it is a place of physical healing – officials at Lourdes won’t even humour stories of healing without medical professionals first confirming that there is no medical explanation for healing to have taken place – I learnt the valuable lesson that healing is in fact many more things as well as physical reparation. Sometimes healing might just be gaining enough sustenance to continue on.
So why do our students choose to join us? Well, for many of them they will have spent so much time from Year 7 to Sixth Form hearing about and fundraising for Lourdes that they simply want to come and see if it’s everything it’s made out to be! The resounding feedback is that it definitely is; so many alumnae continue to join us in Lourdes after they have left school, and many of them return year after year, many years after leaving the school. Other students might join us because, thinking of what they can do to tick off a required residential volunteer experience, the pilgrimage for Lourdes fits perfectly: perhaps for a scheme such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award or as part of an application to read Medicine at university – I can only assume the trip provides the girls with all of the intended experience, and much more besides! Other students will simply be moved to take up an opportunity to spend some time caring for others. But with students funding their own trips and working up to 16 hours each day while there, I know they aren’t simply signing up for a jolly holiday – even if that worked out excellently for me!”
