Most people think Lourdes water is special because of what is in it. The first chemists hired by the town already knew that this was not true. In 1858 the mayor hoped the new spring would turn Lourdes into a spa. The laboratory said the water was clean, almost tasteless, and chemically ordinary. The Sanctuary still says the same thing. There is no hidden medicine in the tap.
What is unusual at Lourdes is not the mineral list. It is the clinic that the Church built beside the grotto. Since 1883 a permanent Medical Bureau has asked every person who claims a healing to put their life under a microscope. The doctors do not declare miracles. They only say, after years of notes and votes, whether a change can be explained. A bishop may then use that sentence. Out of some seven or eight thousand claims, the Church has recognised seventy-two.
This little book tells that slower story. It tells of a Nobel surgeon who could not look away, of a Liverpool soldier whose file waited a hundred years, of baths that were once anything but clean, and of why a modern cancer recovery almost never reaches the official list. It is not a catalogue of wonders and it is not an argument against wonder. It is the story of an ordinary spring, and of a Church willing to keep a doctor at the door.
A Silent Homilies booklet. Written to be read in one or two sittings.