Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mrs. Rawbone and I'm going to be your RE teacher today.

I'd like to welcome you to this lesson on the St.

Bernadette of Lourdes.

In today's lesson, you will be learning about what St.

Bernadette learned through her visions and explaining that knowledge and you'll also be reflecting on whether she had knowledge of God.

Some key words that we'll be using today are knowledge, Lourdes, St.

Bernadette, the Virgin Mary and Vision.

Now knowledge is understanding or information, believed to be true and supported by reasons.

Lourdes is a French town where St.

Bernadette's visions of Mary occurred, now a pilgrimage site.

St.

Bernadette is a girl who reported Visions of Mary in 1858, inspiring the Lourdes' pilgrimage.

The Virgin Mary is a title for the mother of Jesus, particularly honoured in Catholicism as pure and a helper in prayer.

And a vision is a religious experience where a person sees or feels a divine or spiritual presence.

Look out for these words in bold as we use them throughout the lesson.

The lesson today will take two parts.

Firstly, we'll be looking at Bernadette's visions and secondly, we'll be looking at questions about knowledge of God.

So, let's get started looking at Bernadette's visions.

Philosophers are academics and thinkers who study ultimate questions about existence, knowledge, ethics and reality, using logic to explore these topics.

Whether you have a religious or a non-religious worldview, you can use philosophy as a tool to understand the arguments others use to support their views.

In this lesson, we will explore what Bernadette knew about God as a result of her visions and whether according to philosophical ideas, this can count as knowledge.

Here you can see a picture of Bernadette.

Bernadette Soubirous was the first born daughter of a poor Catholic family who lived in Lourdes, a small town in southern France.

Saint Bernadette had 18 visions of the Virgin Mary in 1858, which led to the discovery of a healing spring at Lourdes, making the site the second most popular site of Christian pilgrimage.

The word vision comes from Latin.

It has one root word, videre, meaning to see.

As well as its everyday meaning, the ability to see, the term evolved in the Middle Ages to also describe a type of religious experience where a person sees or feels a spiritual or divine presence that others do not.

Visions usually involve meeting a spiritual or divine being.

For example, Mother Teresa experience visions of Christ.

They also tend to have an emotional effect.

The Sufi mystic Rabia Al-Adawiya was deeply moved by visions of God's love.

They tend to involve the recipient, receiving some kind of guidance.

For example, Guru Nanak's vision revealed the message of one God.

They're also often important for a community.

The visions of the Native American Red Elk, guided and healed his people.

So, let's check your understanding.

What is a vision? Is it A, a religious experience where a person sees or feels a divine or spiritual presence? Is it B, a dream with a symbolic meaning? Is it C, a meditation practise that allows a person to connect with their inner thoughts? Or is it D, a message received from a religious text that offers guidance? Take a moment to decide your answer.

Jot down, which letter you think is correct.

Pause if you need to and then come back to me.

Well done if you put A that a vision is a religious experience where a person sees or feels a divine or spiritual presence.

St.

Bernadette's literacy skills were basic and so accounts of her visions were recorded by priests and others who interviewed her.

Here we can see a statue of St.

Bernadette, which can be found in Lourdes.

Now the story goes that on a cold February morning in 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette set out to gather firewood with her sister and a friend near the Gave River in Lourdes, France.

Bernadette, who was frail and often ill lagged behind.

As she approached a natural cave near the river, she noticed a soft wind and a dazzling light emerging from a hollow in the rock.

There she saw a figure, a beautiful lady dressed in white with a blue sash, a veil and yellow roses at her feet.

At first, the lady said nothing, Bernadette feeling both awe and peace knelt and began to pray the rosary.

The lady joined her silently, moving the rosary beads through her hands.

When Bernadette first shared her experience, her family and the townspeople questioned, whether what she had seen was real or imagined.

She didn't understand what had happened to her.

But despite that and everyone's doubt, she felt a strong, unshakeable urge to return to the cave.

There Bernadette had a second vision on the 14th of February and a third on February the 18th.

It was then that the lady spoke to her for the first time and described herself as the Immaculate Conception, a title for the Virgin Mary.

Now, Bernadette didn't understand what this meant, but she continued to visit every day for the next 15 days as she was asked.

As news of the vision spread, crowds began to gather.

On February the 25th, the lady gave an unusual instruction.

She told Bernadette to dig into the muddy ground and drink from the spring.

To the onlookers it seemed ridiculous.

Bernadette smeared her face with mud and drank from what appeared to be nothing more than wet earth.

Yet by the following day, the spring had begun to flow with clear water and reports of miraculous healings soon followed.

Among the Virgin Mary's messages was a request that Bernadette and the people of Lourdes pray for the repentance of sinners.

She also asked for a chapel to be built at the site.

Bernadette relayed these requests to the local clergy who remains sceptical.

The final vision was on July the 16th, 1858 with the lady appearing for the 18th time.

So, what do you think is important about Bernadette's story? What strikes you as mattering when we are thinking about this question of knowledge of God? Take some time, have a conversation with someone nearby if you're able to.

Pause the video when you've had a chance to think and come back to the lesson.

So, let's check your understanding.

Is this statement true or false? Bernadette was very young, uneducated, and initially unsure about the meaning of her experiences.

Take a moment to decide whether it's true or false and have a think about why.

Pause if you need to and then come back to check your answer.

Well done if you put true.

But why is this statement true? It is true because Bernadette was only 14 years old with little formal education, which meant she did not fully understand the religious significance of her visions at first.

For example, when Mary referred to herself as the Immaculate Conception, Bernadette didn't know what this meant, because she had not been taught about it.

So, let's think about how Bernadette's visions compared with visions that people have in other religions and cultures.

There was a meeting with a spiritual or divine being.

In Bernadette's case, she saw Mary in a grotto near Lourdes.

They had an emotional effect on her.

The visions deeply moved Bernadette.

She received guidance.

Mary told Bernadette to drink from a muddy spring, which became clear and to build a chapel.

They were important for the community.

Lourdes became a site of Christian pilgrimage.

Lourdes attracts millions of pilgrims each year, they visit the grotto, cave and drink or bathe in the spring water there.

You can see here a photograph of the grotto at Lourdes.

It wasn't long after the visions began that pilgrims started to visit the spring water at Lourdes in hopes of finding physical and spiritual healing.

And it was not long after that that the first official miracle was reported, when a woman was believed to have been cured, after bathing in the spring water.

The Catholic Church began to investigate Bernadette's experiences.

Over the next few years they interviewed her, local witnesses and members of the community.

They examined her story, particularly her claim that the virgin Mary had referred to herself as the Immaculate Conception; an idea the uneducated Bernadette could not have known.

By 1862 after a thorough review, the church officially declared the visions were authentic.

The first chapel was built at the site in 1866, so that pilgrims could visit and pay their respects.

Since then, many other miraculous healings have been documented and recognised by the Catholic Church with over 70 miracles recognised up to this day.

Bernadette became a nun after the visions ended and she dedicated the rest of her life to prayer.

She lived humbly in a convent until her death from tuberculosis in 1879 at the age of 35.

When her body was later exhumed in 1909 as part of an investigation into her life, it was found to be remarkably well preserved and was declared incorrupt.

The Catholic Church made Bernadette a saint in 1933, because of her great faith, her love for God and the miracles connected with her life.

Over time Lourdes has grown from a quiet small town into one of the most significant pilgrimage sites in the world with its spring water celebrated for its miraculous healing properties.

Have a think.

Why might visiting a holy place help some believers to connect with God? They're not going there in hope of a vision themselves, thinking that that's what will happen, but they're going there because of something important that happened.

What might the benefits be for them of doing this? Turn and talk to somebody nearby if you're able.

Pause a video and come back when you're ready to rejoin the lesson.

So, for task A on Bernadette's visions, I would like you to use this image to explain the story of Bernadette's.

So, we saw this image earlier, it's a statue of St.

Bernadette's as she might have looked at the age of 14, looking up at the vision of the Virgin Mary and it can be found in Lourdes.

In your explanation, I'd like you to include details of what happened during Bernadette's first vision at the cave, how she responded to the visions, despite the doubts from others and also from herself.

what the lady told Bernadette to do and how people reacted to that.

And the outcomes of the visions, including the spring and the impact on the town of Lourdes.

So, take some time.

Use the image as your starting point and please retell to me the story of Bernadette.

Make sure that you use the list of bullet points to help you.

Pause the video and when you're ready to check what you might have written, come back to me.

Well, done on completing that task.

Now, there are lots of things you could have written, but here's an example that covers some of the important points.

During Bernadette's first vision at the cave, she saw a lady dressed in white with a blue sash and yellow roses.

Even though her family and others in the town didn't believe her and thought she was imagining things, Bernadette kept going back to the cave.

The lady told her to dig in the mud and drink from the ground, which made people laugh at her.

But the next day, clear water started flowing from the spot and many people believed it had healing powers.

Lourdes became a special place for prayer and for pilgrimage.

Check your work.

You can tick the things that you have included yourself.

So, make sure you've mentioned the lady and the reaction from people at first was quite sceptical.

They doubted her, but that Bernadette continued to return for the visions, she even drank from the ground, which seemed a very strange thing to do.

But then the spring appeared and you need to also make sure you've used the word healing in there somewhere.

So, let's move on to the second part of our lesson.

And here we're going to be thinking about knowledge of God and whether Bernadette knew something about God as a result of these visions.

Now, revelation is a general word, but it has a very specific meaning in religion and it means knowledge of God.

With the idea that God might reveal, which is basically show himself to people.

So, aspects of who he is and he might do this in different ways.

So, we have two types of revelation.

One of them is called general revelation.

So, this is the idea that knowledge of God can be gained through nature or through reason.

Now, it's called general, because both of these things are available to anybody.

We can all go out and look at the nature around us and experience that.

And we can all use our reason, which is our ability to think clearly.

So, general revelation is the idea that for example, you could look at a beautiful sunset and conclude that there is a creator or that you might be able to kind of reflect inwardly and gain some guidance, such as that kind of guilty conscience feeling, kind of pushing you towards doing the right thing, rather than the wrong thing.

So, general revelation is something that is open to anybody.

The other type of revelation is called special revelation.

And in this case, knowledge of God is given directly to individual people.

So, it's very specific and there are usually two ways in which this can be done.

It could be a sacred text such as the Bible or the Koran.

Now, although this is given to a particular individual, such as Mohammed receiving the words of the Koran, it does then become available to other people later, but it's still known as special revelation.

And another example of special revelation is a religious experience.

So, something where somebody gained some knowledge of God and this would include Bernadette's examples of visions.

This was special revelation.

Remember, they happened uniquely to her.

So, Bernadette's visions are examples of special revelation.

Through them, she gained direct knowledge of God.

And let's have a look at what she learned about God.

First of all, that God values the humble.

Bernadette herself was poor and uneducated and she learned by being chosen by God that God valued her even though she was poor and even though she had very little education.

She also learned that God wants prayer and repentance.

This was because one of the things that the Virgin Mary asked Bernadette to do was to pray for sinners.

Sinners are people that have done wrong.

So, looking for encouraging people to turn to God away from sin.

She learned that God heals and renews.

Remember the spring that she discovered? It brought physical and also that kind of spiritual inner healing for people.

And she learned about trust, that faith requires trust.

If you remember, Bernadette faced doubt from other people around her.

And also there was some doubt that she herself had initially because she didn't know what was going on.

But despite that, she stayed faithful.

So, let's check your understanding of these key terms; general revelation and special revelation.

Is Grace describing general revelation or special revelation? She says, "When I look at the beautiful sunset, "I know that God is powerful." Take a moment to write down the missing word.

Grace is describing, revelation.

Pause if you need to and then come back to check your answer.

Well done if you put general revelation.

What Grace is describing is something that's accessible to all of us.

It might be that if you don't believe in God, you just look at the beautiful sunset and stop there.

But in Grace's case for her as a religious person, it reveals something about God's power.

So, we're asking the question whether Bernadette gained knowledge of God.

Let's have a think about what knowledge actually is.

Now, this is an ultimate question that's been debated for centuries.

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato, actually gave three conditions for knowledge.

So, these were three requirements and they were belief, truth and justification.

Now, an example of something that we could describe as knowledge using Plato's formula as a justified true belief is water boils at a hundred degrees Celsius at sea level.

Now, Plato himself wouldn't have said this, because that's a fact that he didn't know at that period, because we are talking over 2000 years ago.

But it is an example that he would accept today were he here.

There's a belief involved, I feel certain that water boils at a hundred degrees C.

There's truth involved.

In fact, I have evidence for this.

And finally I have justification.

I know that this can be shown through repeated experiments.

So, let's check your understanding of what knowledge might be according to Plato's definition.

Is A, B, C or D an example of knowledge that is a justified true belief? This is the definition given by Plato and it's a very traditional definition that lots of people use for a long time.

A, I believe today that it will rain tomorrow and then it does rain tomorrow.

B, I believe that London is the capital of the United Kingdom and this is factually correct.

C, I believe that I can win the lottery, but I have no evidence to support it.

And D, I believe that all swans are white, but then I see a black swan.

So, remember you're looking for something that is a belief and it's a true belief and it has a justification which means evidence or a reason to back it up.

Take a moment to decide which one you think, would count as knowledge, according to Plato's traditional definition.

Jot down your answer, pause if you need to and then come back when you're ready to check.

Well done if you put B, all of the in statements involved a belief.

But in this case it's a true belief.

It's factually correct and it's a belief we could justify because we could go away and we could look at a map or we could do some looking online to check that that knowledge is true.

So, the other ones might be beliefs, but they're not necessarily true beliefs.

For example, D is not true because there are black swans.

And although A is true, the justification isn't there.

How does the person know for sure that it will rain tomorrow? So, some philosophers would apply Plato's conditions for knowledge to revelation.

That is to knowledge of God.

They could test the proposition, "St.

Bernadette knew that God wanted people to pray "and repent," to see if it met Plato's conditions.

First of all, they could test the belief.

Did St.

Bernadette believe she had knowledge of God? They could test the truth.

Is it true that St.

Bernadette had knowledge of God? And they could check for justification.

Is there evidence to support the fact that she had knowledge of God? Now, you would certainly want to say, she believed she had knowledge of God.

Whether or not you decided that this was true is more difficult to decide.

And as for justification, perhaps there is some in that Bernadette had some witnesses to these visions or although they couldn't see Mary, they could see the impact on Bernadette.

And of course the spring did appear.

So, let's think about the belief and truth and justification elements in a little bit more detail.

So, we could say, if we look at the left hand side of this table, that St.

Bernadette knew God wanted people to repent and pray, because she believed the Virgin Mary, told her God wanted people to repent and pray.

It was true, these events happened as other people witnessed her reactions to them and she could justify her knowledge was from God, because of the healing spring.

But on the other hand, philosophers could take the same conditions, truth, belief and justification and suggest that Bernadette did not have knowledge.

For example, St.

Bernadette only believed her knowledge was from God, because she already had faith.

The truth can be questions.

There is no way of checking where these visions came from and the healing spring isn't justification, because it could have a natural explanation.

Grace and Jacob are discussing, whether they think St.

Bernadette have knowledge of God.

Grace is a Roman Catholic Christian.

She says, "St.

Bernadette's visions were personal "and spiritual, making them hard to prove.

"But I think faith gave her knowledge of God.

"This is a different kind of knowledge "and you cannot apply the truth "and justification conditions to it." So, Grace is saying that applying the same rules as we usually do to things that we know doesn't work when it comes to knowledge of God.

Jacob says, "I think that justified true belief model should apply "to St.

Bernadette's knowledge of God, "because she claimed something was true.

"She couldn't justify her belief "and it can't be proved true as her visions were personal." So, some people would still want to take it in the same way as they do other types of knowledge.

And maybe like Jacob, they disagree that she'd learned something or perhaps they would argue she could justify her belief.

So, have a think.

Do you agree with Grace and think that knowledge based on faith counts as real knowledge? Do you think knowledge must pass the kind of tests that other types of knowledge do, even if it is about faith and religion? Turn and talk to somebody nearby if you're able to.

Pause the video and come back when you are ready.

So, let's have a look at practising our understanding on Bernadette's knowledge of God.

For task B1, I'd like you to decide if each of the following statements is true or false.

And once you've done that, correct the false statements and for the true statements, explain how she learned this.

So, we have, Bernadette learned that God values the wealthy and educated.

Bernadette learned that trust is not important to God.

Bernadette learned that God wants prayer and repentance.

And Bernadette learned that God heals and renews.

Take your time.

Think first of all about whether they're true or false and then give the correction or the explanation for why they're true.

Pause the video and come back when you are ready to check through your work.

So, let's have a look at what you could have said.

So, the first statement is false.

The correction is that Bernadette learned that God values the humble and the uneducated.

You might have written poor and uneducated.

That's also correct.

The second statement was also false.

In fact, Bernadette learned that it is important to trust God if you have faith in him.

Now, the third statement is true and this is because the Virgin Mary told Bernadette to pray for the repentance of sinners.

And the final statement is also true and this is because the spring turned out to have healing powers.

Well done if you got those correct and if you got some of the reasons or corrections as well.

So, for task B2, Grace and Sofia are discussing our unit question.

Do religious experiences prove God exists? Grace thinks that St.

Bernadette's visions provide support for God's existence and Sofia disagrees.

I'd like you to use these sentence starters to develop what Grace might say, how Sofia might respond to her and how Grace might reply.

Grace says, "I think Bernadette's experience "is evidence of God, because." Sofia responds, "I don't think we can count this as knowledge because." And Grace replies, "I don't think we should judge knowledge gained, "through religious experiences "in the same way as other knowledge because." Take your time, have a think about what you've learned about judging knowledge and have a go at completing those sentence starters.

Pause and come back when you are ready.

So, let's check what you might have written.

Firstly, Grace says, "I think Bernadette's experiences evidence of God, "because she had a vision of Mary, "which gave her a message to pray, "repent and build a chapel.

"This shows a direct connection to God's will and presence." Sofia responds, "I don't think we can count this as knowledge, "because it isn't a true justified belief.

"Bernadette's experience is personal and based on faith, "not evidence that can be checked or proven.

"There is no way to check if her vision actually happened." And Grace replies, "I don't think we should judge knowledge, "gained through religious experiences "in the same way as other knowledge, "because faith-based experiences are different.

"They rely on personal and connection." Well done if you manage to mention some of the evidence that Grace might have for Bernadette's visions being genuine and Sofia's comments about judging it in the same way as other knowledge.

Thank you for working with me in today's lesson.

We have learned a lot.

We've learned that Bernadette experienced 18 visions of the Virgin Mary in 1858.

The Virgin Mary told her to drink from a muddy spring, which became clear and was later reported to have healing powers.

That many believe, Bernadette gained knowledge of God through her visions.

Some philosophers would argue this does not count as knowledge because it is based on faith and cannot be justified.

But others might argue that religious knowledge does not have to be justified.

We also learned that the Catholic Church declared, Bernadette's body was incorrupt and she was named a saint in 1933.

And finally, that Lourdes is a major Christian pilgrimage site and the spring water is still celebrated for its healing properties.