A meditation preached by Fr. Eric Nicolai at Kintore College in Toronto, on February 11, 2026, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

The Lord speaks today about the kind of openness to God’s love we must have in the events of our life. He promises real resilience for us if we see his hand in our life.

Mark 7:14-23: At that time: Jesus called the people to him again and said to them, ‘Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.’

What truly wounds us spiritually is not what happens to us, but what we consent to interiorly. We might easily blame external circumstances: our environment, other people, temptations, past wounds. Our growth is not about managing behaviour, but educating the heart: learning to recognize interior movements and choosing which ones to welcome, which ones to reject. It was present in the heart of Bernadette Soubirous, born in January 9, 1844, in the foothills of the Pyrenees in southern France, in Lourdes. Here is the story.