Immaculate Mary, thy praises we sing;
Who reignest in splendor with Jesus our King:
Ave, ave, ava Maria.
Ave, ave Maria.
In heaven the blessed thy glory proclaim;
On earth, we, thy children, invoke your sweet name.
Ave, ave, ave Maria.
Ave, ave Maria.
Thy name is our power, thy virtues our light,
Thy love is our comfort, thy pleading our might.
Ave, ave, ave Maria.
Ave, ave Maria.
We pray for our mother, the Church upon earth;
And bless, Holy Mary, the land of our birth.
Ave, ave, ave Maria.
Ave, ave Maria.
Who reignest in splendor with Jesus our King:
Ave, ave, ava Maria.
Ave, ave Maria.
In heaven the blessed thy glory proclaim;
On earth, we, thy children, invoke your sweet name.
Ave, ave, ave Maria.
Ave, ave Maria.
Thy name is our power, thy virtues our light,
Thy love is our comfort, thy pleading our might.
Ave, ave, ave Maria.
Ave, ave Maria.
We pray for our mother, the Church upon earth;
And bless, Holy Mary, the land of our birth.
Ave, ave, ave Maria.
Ave, ave Maria.
What was next? After three weeks, life had regained some normalcy. The faithful still gathered at the grotto, but Bernadette was not to be seen. She was busy studying her catechism and preparing for her first Holy Communion. In the early morning hours on March 25th, Bernadette awoke with the familiar inner call to return to the grotto. This was a call that she could not resist. The day was an important one in the church–the feast of the Annunciation, a day when young Mary of Nazareth also received a call in her own poor dwelling. An angel visited to announce that she would become the mother of the Saviour.
Thursday, March 25, 1858 Bernadette joyfully rejoined the lady in the grotto. It had been 3 weeks since she saw Aquero and had not known whether she would ever appear again. This time she was determined to obtain the lady's name, so that she could finally tell the priest. Bernadette was characteristically stubborn, and she repeated four times the question she had practiced so often, "Would you be so kind as to tell me who you are?" The answer finally came: "I am the Immaculate Conception."
"I went every day for a fortnight, and each day I asked her who she was–and this petition always made her smile. After the fortnight I asked her three times consecutively. She always smiled. At last I tried for the fourth time. She stopped smiling. With her arms down, she raised her eyes to heaven and then, folding her hands over her breast she said, 'I am the Immaculate Conception.' Then I went back to M. le Curé to tell him that she had said she was the Immaculate Conception, and he asked was I absolutely certain. I said yes, and so as not to forget the words, I had repeated them all the way home."
Bernadette planted a candle between two rocks as a gift, a sign of her prayer and the revelation, and then ran home. Running all the way, she repeated these strange words over and over so that she would not forget them. Of course the words were spoken in her native Bigourdan dialect and were completely unfamiliar, "que soy era Immaculada Councepciou."
Fr. Peyramale said that a woman cannot have a name like that. "You are mistaken. Do you know what that means?" The priest was shaken, and unable to talk to Bernadette. He quickly sent her away, and she left without the privilege of understanding the meaning of the title. She was only told later that afternoon that the Blessed Mother carried that title.
"She could never have invented this ... " wrote Fr. Peyramale to the bishop that evening.
The Church declared that Mary was the "Immaculate Conception" only four years earlier in 1854. The title would certainly have been unknown to Bernadette since it was not broadly discussed in the liturgy, and Bernadette still could not read or write. She was only then learning her catechism to prepare for first Holy Communion, a task undertaken typically by children six or seven years her junior. It was her poor health and her family's poverty that had hindered her education.