Miracles at the National Shrine and Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Euclid, Ohio (II)

Sister Phyllis Ann shared how a non-local “family came here and made a novena” to have another child. When the wife went to the doctor, Sister Phyllis Ann recounted, “He told her, ‘I'm sorry, but your son is not going to make it.’ His heart was on the right side of his body, not on the left, and none of the arteries were connected properly.” Sister Phyllis Ann did not know what options they gave the woman, but she insisted, “No, I’m going to bring this child to full term.” When the child was born, the heart was on the left side, and all the arteries and veins were correctly attached.”

People give countless testimonies of healings attributed to the Lourdes water here. Over the years she has been at the shrine, Sister Phyllis Ann has noticed a slight shift in these favors. In the late 1970s, “in those days, most of these graces were physical,” she explained. “Now, most people in the 21st century come here, and they’ll leave little pieces they get from AA,” for example, attesting to their being sober and overcoming alcoholism, or from Narcotics Anonymous, if they have been off drugs for a year. They leave these little tokens embedded in the rocks. “Along with the tangible cure, most of the time it’s a spiritual healing.”

There is a small building “where we keep the things that people leave behind in thanksgiving for the graces and blessings they received,” she said. She shared how one person from Honduras left a little t-shirt “because their child had been sick with leukemia, was going to the Cleveland Clinic, and when they went back home, the child had no trace of the disease whatsoever.”

Accommodating pilgrims from the world over, Masses are held outdoors at the grotto through October, where a statue of Bernadette kneels and gazes toward Our Lady. Since 1926, the white Italian Carrara marble statue of Mary bearing the proclamation “I am the Immaculate Conception” has stood here. Reflecting on how they need more sisters to do the work here, she underscored just how many souls are blessed here.

“This is a jewel. It is a place of peacefulness and tranquility,” said Sister Phyllis Ann. “And people come here for that tranquility, that peacefulness, to get away from all the noise and distractions and addictions of the world today. Some people who just drive on the property will go, ‘I don’t know why I’m here. But this is a beautiful place. And this is where I feel at home’” — a regular blessing at Mary’s Lourdes shrine, with its countless blessings from the Lord.

Sister Phyllis Ann also recalled how she, her mother and grandmother would come every Sunday to the shrine as she was growing up. They would take public transit from Cleveland, walk up the hill and, at 4 o’clock, join the Rosary and stay for Benediction, which continues at the shrine today. “I honestly feel that this is where my vocation was made known to me or the Lord allowed me to listen to what he was saying,” Sister Phyllis Ann said. “I just kept coming back, and I never left.”

Joseph Pronechen, October 22, 2023

Adapted from www.ncregister.com