Fulton Sheen and 3 amazing stories of Our Lady of Lourdes

Fulton Sheen visited Lourdes more than 30 times. He had a tender and deep love for Our Lady and a particular devotion to her at Lourdes.

The Vatican has just approved Venerable Sheen's beatification. And the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes is February 11.

His first visit happened when he was a priest-student at the University in Belgium. Fr. Sheen had just enough money for the 24-hour train but no more.

Here's the story:

“If I have faith enough to visit Lourdes to celebrate the 5th anniversary of my ordination,” he recounted, “It’s up to the Blessed Mother to help me out.”

He arrived broke -- but figured the Blessed Mother could pay a big hotel bill as easily as a little one. 

“When you ask for miracles, you must never be a piker,” the then-bishop quipped with his listeners as he recounted the story. (A piker is one who does things in a small way.) So, he went to the best hotel and decided to make his stay a novena of days. 

“The ninth morning, nothing happened,” he tells. “The ninth noon, nothing happened; the ninth evening, nothing happened … then it was serious.” 

Giving Mary one more chance the young priest went to the grotto to pray, about 10:30 at night. There, a man tapped his shoulder and asked if he was an American priest, if he spoke French and knew Paris. Responding yes to each question, the man asked if he could be his family’s tour guide the next day. 

They walked back to the hotel and then asked the young priest what was “the most interesting question” he had heard in his entire life: “Have you paid your hotel bill yet?” 

Our Lady took care of it.

Bishop Sheen told of another incident involving Our Lady of Lourdes, when he made a “very dangerous prayer” just a few minutes before he was to board the train leaving the shrine. 

“Send me some suffering or trial to save a soul,” he prayed. 

Here's the story.

He was running back to his hotel in order to catch the train — up three flights of stairs, down the corridor and unlocking the door — but all the while he sensed someone was following him.

When he confronted the pursuer -- a young woman -- she admitted she was following him, but didn't know why. Simply, that she’d seen him in procession earlier that day and felt drawn to speak with him.

He asked if she was Catholic to which she responded that, no, she was an atheist. She had travelled from Holland with 60 other atheists. That day they had all gone to tour the mountains, but she decided to stay back. (She and Fr. Sheen would later discover that the bus had fallen off a bridge, killing everyone aboard). 

The priest told her then that he thought she was his "trouble." He decided to stay until she “was returned to the Good Lord,” which took three or four days. Once she received the sacraments, and he was ready again to make his way home, his new troubles started. 

Trying to get back to Paris, every train ticket he bought was turned down. It took him an entire week as tickets he had just purchased were inexplicably no good and he’d be let off at the next station without food or water. "That was the price I had to pay for her soul," he explained.

“So, the Blessed Mother … pays hotel bills. She converts atheists."

He followed up by telling his audience the legend of how Jesus approached Peter at the Gates of Heaven, questioning him about certain souls gaining entry to Heaven seemingly very easily. What was going on with the keeper of the keys?

Peter assured the Lord it wasn’t his fault; “every time I close a door your mother opens a window.”

Bishop Sheen also told of an ordinary Catholic girl in Paris. Her name was Elisabeth and in the summer of 1889, she married an atheist doctor, Felix. As Felix tried breaking down the faith of his wife, she responded by studying it.

Here's the story.

From 1905 to 1914 she was ill and bedridden. “When she was dying,” Bishop Sheen shared, “she said to her husband, 'Felix, when I am dead, you will become a Catholic and a Dominican priest.'" He reiterated his sentiments of hatred toward God; she repeated her prophesy and died in his arms. 

After her death, the husband found, among her diary and papers, that, in 1905, she had asked God to send her “sufficient suffering to purchase [Felix's] soul.”

She wrote that the price would be paid on the day of her death and that, “Greater love than this no woman has than she who lay down her life for her husband.”

Dismissing her words as “the fancies of a pious woman,” the widowed doctor decided to write a book against Lourdes. (Bishop Sheen doesn’t share this fact, but another source states that the couple traveled to Lourdes in 1912 as her health had not improved. It is said that at the grotto, her prayer was for the conversion of her husband. They returned and her health took another turn for the worse). 

However, once he arrived at Lourdes, and “looked up into the face of the statue of Mary, he received the great gift of faith … so complete, so total … he saw all that he had believed in its utter error and stupidity.” 

It was the era of World War I and the reigning pope was Benedict XV. He sent for the man after hearing of his conversion. Accompanied by Fr. Jon Vinnea, the convert-doctor told the Holy Father his story and asked to become a Dominica priest.

Forbidding him, the Pope said he needed to repair the harm he had previously done against the faith, but after a personal conversation with Fr. Vinnea he recanted and told Felix to do whatever the priest told him.

In 1919 Dr. Felix Leseur entered the Dominicans in Paris. He was ordained a priest in July 1923. 

Bishop Sheen finishes the story: “Lent 1924, during Lent, I, Fulton J. Sheen, made my retreat in the Dominican monastery in Belgium. Four times each day, and 45 minutes each time, I made my retreat under the spiritual guidance of Father Felix Leseur of the Order of Preachers, Catholic Dominican priest, who told me this story.”