Photo by Nick Castelli on Unsplash
On this day in 1858, Our Lady appeared to a poor, illiterate French girl named Bernadette. She could not write, her asthma was crippling, and she had not yet been permitted to receive First Communion. But that winter day, while her younger sister and friends gathered firewood, she saw a “small young lady in white,” in a niche of a rock grotto, smiling and inviting her to come closer.
Over the next five months, the lady in…