Where your heart is, there your treasure lives also

Lourdes
Monday 8 May 2017

A bright, unaccountably beautiful sunlit morning. Breakfast on my own, overlooking the river. I am grateful for the clear blue sky, and the imposing, protective mountains that surround us.
What is Lourdes like? It is like a Disneyland pilgrimage destination.  The happiness of the sick, as they are brought to worship and bathe in the waters of the grotto.  I see the myriad of hotels,stuck side by side, souvenir stalls, a million rosaries for sales, the incrustation of the church.

I did not see a sense of acknowledgement of piety, poverty. Why do the shops sell gold plated scapulars, but at the 7am mass  in the crypt, the majority of the congregation were the Carmelites, and some of them so sour faced about it too?

In the end, it is not where you go to find God, whether you bring Him along with you, wherever you go.