Personal Notes by Bernadette SOUBIROUS

Booklet: With the exception of the autobiographic narratives of the Apparitions, the small note book containing Bernadette's Personal Notes, is certainly the most precious treasure of Saint Bernadette kept in the archives of Saint Gildard's Convent in Nevers, France.

In this very modest note book, Saint Bernadette has written down:

1) Extracts from books that she had read, pious thoughts or prayers copied from holy pictures, snatches of hymns, etc; among which, sometimes, short, simple prayers to God, to Our Lady and to the Saints escaped from Bernadette's heart;

2) Notes taken down during a retreat given by a Jesuit, Father Secail, from 21 October to 30 October 1873. During that retreat, Bernadette made her confession to the chaplain of St Gildard's Convent, Father Douce, a Marist Priest, whose advice and lines of direction she asked for. She also jotted down her own answers to which she added her resolutions and personal prayers. All these form real confidences, revealing the secrets of her interior life;

3) A few outlines of meditations;

4) A very beautiful prayer to the Virgin Mary, in the form of a dialogue between the soul and Mary, which she copied from a picture;

5) Then follow notes taken down during the retreat given by a Jesuit, Father Candeloup, from 5 September to 14 September 1874, with the advice received from Father Douce, together with her own resolutions. These pages are especially enlightening;

6) Again, a selection of thoughts, some of which were copied from holy pictures;

7) Finally, on the last page, scribbled in pencil in a shaky handwriting, probably written on her sick bed, we read a very moving sentence on holiness and the Rule. To the note book dated 1873 and 1874 we add some notes written on note books or loose-leaf pages of the same size as Personal Notes. They will enable the reader to follow Bernadette further in the admirable progress of her soul, constantly moved during these years, to a purer love of Jesus Christ.

We have found the source of most of the copied notes. However, this takes nothing away from the originality and intimacy of these pages. Saint Bernadette chose these texts because they were what she preferred and she preferred them because, in fact, they corresponded to the depths of her own interior life.

To copy, for Bernadette, was to express her feelings and to bring to light her deepest and sometimes her most hidden desire. It was also a means of expressing beneath a borrowed veil, what she was too timid to write in her own simple words.

- André RAVIER, S J

Personal Notes (1873-75) was purchased at the Librairie Catholique Internationale in Lourdes, France, for a sum of €4.50.