Saint Bernadette's Heroic Journey

A Way to Christ “The rainy forenoon darkened “the dungeon” of the old prison, the last refuge of the Soubirous, who had been turned away from everywhere else” (Laurentin, 17). Fourteen year old Bernadette Soubirous was living in a disused jail with her parents and her five siblings. The family was destitute, living off of the wood that they gathered and using it to buy their daily bread. Bernadette’s father, Francois Soubirous, was out of work, out of time, and out of profit. The Soubirous lived like many French peasants did at that time, so there was nothing out of the ordinary. They would remain an ordinary family struggling to make ends meet until Bernadette was given the grace of seeing an apparition at Massabielle on the outskirts of Lourdes. Saint Bernadette’s heroic journey fits the basic criteria of the monomyth. …show more content…
These two mentors help Bernadette through her struggle of becoming public. Whether people believed her or not, they began to follow her to the grotto to see if she was telling the truth. Her Aunt Basil reprimanded her, “There’s too much talk about you, my girl. You mustn’t go there anymore!” Bernadette regarded this with a quiet simplicity. “Never mind. Let people talk” (Laurentin, 35-37). This sudden publicity may have brought many others down into the sins of vanity and greed had they been in the position of the humble Bernadette Soubirous. As for Bernadette, she refused any gifts offered to her with a passion and never asked anyone for anything on the basis that she was held in a state of fame and saintliness. This publicity defines the crossing of the threshold because it marks the defining line Bernadette drew that told others that she really was receiving visions of the Blessed Mother. Had she been faking, she could have given up the act right then in order to save her family from the public ridicule that would follow as the apparitions