Sacred Journey: France 2026

June 11 – 17, 2026 • Pau & Lourdes, France

Join Caroline Myss with special guest Robert Holden on this once in a lifetime Sacred Journey to beautiful Pau and Lourdes, France.

Before I share the story of Bernadette Soubirous, the visionary of Lourdes, I feel the need for a bit of transparency, as they say these days. My college, Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods, in Terre Haute, Indiana, was founded by sisters from France who were devoted to Our Lady of Lourdes, and the sisters passed on that devotion to those of us who attended the Woods.  During the expanding of buildings for the Motherhouse (the Woods is the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Providence), a duplicate of the Lourdes grotto was built on the campus property between the college and convent grounds.  I attended many candle lit evenings of prayer in this grotto.  Stories were shared of miraculous healings because of Our Lady of Lourdes and the healing waters she left behind, as proof of her presence at Lourdes.  It never occurred to any of us as students (granted, we were all Catholic), to question or doubt the stories of healings and divine interventions that we absorbed as students.  It made us feel watched over by the constant presence of the Holy Mother. To tell you that I am thrilled to finally make the journey to Lourdes after a lifetime of devotion is a masterpiece of understatement.  In this workshop, I am focusing on prayer, healing, faith and miracles during our time together because that was and remains the message of Our Lady of Lourdes.
 
Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes
 
On February 11, 1858, the Holy Mother appeared to a fourteen-year old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous, in Lourdes, France. That year, Bernadette had seventeen more visions of the Holy Mother.  Bernadette told her mother that a “lady” spoke to her in the cave at Massabielle. She described the Lady as dressed in white, wearing a blue girdle or sash and yellow roses at her feet. And she held a rosary.  Like all child visionaries, Bernadette’s story was met with doubt and fear by her family, of course, as a child from a humble, poor family could not possibly have been chosen for a heavenly visitation. Her parents forbid her to return to the grotto, but a few days later on February 18^th, Bernadette was permitted to return and once again, she saw the Lady.  On this second visit, the Lady asked Bernadette to come back to the grotto every day for two weeks. During those visitations, the Holy Mother instructed Bernadette to pray for the conversion of sinners Finally, the Lady revealed who she was, telling Bernadette, “I am in Immaculate Conception.”  In her own words, Bernadette said, “With her two arms hanging down, she raised her eyes and looked up at the sky and it was then that she told me joining her hands together now at the height of her breast, that she was the Immaculate Conception. Those were the last words she ever said to me.”
 
(A point of interest: The Marian dogma of the Immaculate Conception had been a matter of speculation for the Vatican just a few years earlier. That dogma, which is deeply mystical in meaning and content, presents the idea that that from the moment of her birth, the Holy Mother was protected from sin and blessed by God. Her apparitions coming at the same time as theologians were privately exploring the mystical status of the woman who would give birth to Jesus was obviously deliberate sacred timing. Note that discussion and articulation of any church dogma is never released to the public until fully complete. The release of official dogma is not common, as it is considered “ex cathedra”, or coming directly from the “seat of Peter”. Rarely does the Vatican or the Pope deliver new dogma to the Catholic public precisely because it carries such power. Dogma is concerned with established, core beliefs from which church leaders derive their authority. Declaring a teaching as “dogma” means that it can no longer be challenged.  Doctrine on the other hand, refers to teachings and guidelines which can be open to discussion as the church evolves. That Bernadette would even speak the words, Immaculate Conception, shocked church authorities sufficiently that they took her apparitions seriously, including her message that the Holy Mother requested the building of church in the grotto area.  It only took four years for the local bishop to declare that Bernadette’s visions were authentically from the Holy Mother.  If you knew how slowly decisions move within the Church, you would appreciate that such a declaration in only four years is light-speed for the Vatican.)

As the story of her holy visitations spread, crowds began to gather at the grotto where the visions occurred.  Authorities, as always, tried to step in and stop the public, but that was ultimately useless.

The Healing Waters of Lourdes

During one vision, the Holy Mother instructed Bernadette to dig a hole in the ground, put mud on her face, and eat the grass.  The people watching her behavior, obviously unable to see the Holy Mother or hear the instructions given to Bernadette, wondered if she had gone mad.  But her digging into the earth opened up a stream of water.  A young mother who knew and believed in the visions of Bernadette had a crippled infant.   A few days after that spring of water had been opened by Bernadette and the Holy Mother, this young mother took her terminal baby and placed him into the cold water coming from the spring. He was healed in an instant. That is the first of thousands of healing miracles that continue to this day. This past April, the sudden and complete cure of a woman suffering from ALS, was declared “the 72nd official miracle” by the Vatican. Though numerous other people have reported healings through the decades since the healing waters of Lourdes began to flow, the Vatican usually investigates healings that have extensive medical reports in which patients were diagnosed as terminal or untreatable.
 
Millions of people continue to visit Lourdes in hopes of healing or as a matter of faith. Many people immerse themselves completely in the healing baths that are available at Lourdes. The Lourdes experience shines a light on the nature and power of faith. How do healings happen?  What exactly is the power of faith and why is that the most essential ingredient for healing?  How does a person develop faith and what exactly is a person supposed to have faith in?   I intend to explore the subject of faith at length, as I have learned through my work that the power of faith – beginning with the significance of having faith in yourself – is not just essential for any form of Divine intervention in your life. Faith is the primal ingredient that our health requires.  We tumble into very dark inner spaces when we lack the capacity to have faith and trust in ourselves, much less the Divine. The absence of faith in ourselves, in our own integrity or inner strength, will always generate anxiety and depression because it causes us to live in the consciousness of doubt.  You can only tumble into despair when you live in a constant state of doubt, fear and anxiety. This is a topic we will discuss at length, should such depression and anxiety actually be recognized as a faith or spiritual crisis rather than clinical depression?  And if so, how then should a person be guided through their spiritual crisis?  And, who can make clear life or relationship decisions when they are filled with doubt and fear and further, lack any faith in their own judgments? 
 
Our Workshop Focus
 
Healings are real. Divine intervention occurs all the time. We are designed to receive assistance from the holy realm. One of the reasons I am so enchanted by Lourdes is that the Holy Mother left humanity the gift of healing waters as proof that she did indeed appear eighteen times to Bernadette. In this workshop, we will delve into how heaven communicates with us, the role of guardian angels, identifying spiritual crises and how to embrace the guidance coming to you in the depths of despair, and so much more.  As the history of Divine apparitions and interventions shows us, never is heaven closer than when earthly life erupts in chaos and change.
 
I am very pleased and delighted to tell you that my dear friend and colleague, Robert Holden, will be a guest teacher on this workshop. I know all of you are familiar with Robert’s wonderful work. But I also know that he is a man of profound faith, having traveled to Lourdes with his own students a number of times. His input and presence will only enhance this magnificent trip.
 
Everyone is in need of healing in some way, and our focus will include personal healings in this wondrous place that was designated by the Divine for exactly that reason.  I hope you will join me.