When people think of Our Lady of Lourdes and her shrine in France, they immediately recall the miraculous waters that have been a channel of healing for 187 years. Fatima, on the other hand, is most often associated with the Rosary. Yet in the early days of both apparitions, water — and even ordinary dirt — played a significant role in the unfolding of these miraculous events.

Naturally, the similarities must begin with the Rosary. During the first apparition of Our Lady to Bernadette at Lourdes, she held a rosary. Bernadette knelt and took out her rosary. After the Blessed Mother made the Sign of the Cross, she remained silent and followed each bead on her rosary as Bernadette prayed the Rosary aloud. In each apparition at Fatima, Our Lady told the children (and us) to pray the Rosary each day.

In the eighth apparition in Lourdes, Our Lady told Bernadette, “Penance! Penance! Penance! Pray to God for sinners.” That echoes Mary’s calls for penance at Fatima, the conversion of sinners, and the angel with the flaming sword calling, “Penance, Penance! Penance.”

During the second apparition at Lourdes on Feb. 14, Bernadette was still unsure of who the Lady was and whether she was good, so she sprinkled holy water at her. Our Lady smiled and Bernadette knew she was from heaven.

During the ninth apparition, the Lady told Bernadette to dig in the dirt by the grotto and to wash and drink the water that would start to flow. Once the spring began to flow, the crowd watched as Bernadette put the muddy water over her face and drank some of it, just as she was instructed to do.

Then on March 1 the first miracle happened. A woman’s arm was healed after she put it into the newly flowing spring. Without any ordinary explanation, many healings continued. It began the countless healings that have continued for decades now.

This use of ordinary earth and water goes right back to the New Testament. Think of that man blind from birth whom Jesus told to wash in the Pool of Siloam. Before he told him to go wash, we read that Jesus first “spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes” (John 9:6-7).

So faith and ordinary substances made for plentiful healings, both physical and spiritual, and these healings multiplied after the apparitions ended. In both Lourdes and Fatima, people were astounded and even scoffers and atheists turned into believers when they saw these simple means become the instruments to bring about healing.

Father John de Marchi, who lived several years in Fatima researching and writing and who knew Sister Lúcia, recounted some of them in his book, The True Story of Fatima. He spent many days speaking with the most important eyewitnesses about what they saw and experienced during and after the supernatural events of 1917, and had Sister Lúcia check the text for accuracy. 

As they all said, dirt was the medium for one of the miraculous healings Father de Marchi describes. In one case, a poor woman traveled about 24 miles from her home to Fatima to get earth from the apparition site. She was among others who came to dig up earth near the holm oak tree and use it in the hope of curing sick people.

In another town 45 miles away there lived a girl who had been paralyzed for seven months. Her parents could not have her treated as they were very poor. Our Lady of Fatima appeared to her and told her that she would cure her if her mother would go to the Cova and take some earth from under the oak tree and eat some of it during a novena. It all happened as Our Lady had said, and the girl was perfectly cured.

Another time, a man from 23 miles away was near one of the oak trees, crying. When the custodian of the chapel asked what was troubling him, he told her about the open wound he had had on his leg for 24 years which prevented him from working or even moving. The man explained:

My wife came to Fatima and took away some earth to make an infusion to wash my wound with. I did not want her to do this because the wound needed cleanliness, and the mud would certainly make it worse. But my wife, who had great faith, said that many people had been cured with the earth, and although I had no faith at all in God nor any religion, she insisted so much that at last, I let her have her way. Every day for nine days she washed the wound with that mud, and each day it healed a little more, until at the end of the novena it was perfectly cured. I burst into tears, took off the bandages, and came here on foot although I couldn’t move before!

After the chapel was built, thousands came to Fatima, The people took away spoonfuls of earth in handkerchiefs or paper, and later they began making use of another vehicle for healing — the water found in the Cova.

There had been no water at the Cova from the time of the apparitions; there was not one drop of water in the place for pilgrims to drink and refresh themselves. In fact, the lack of water remained until after Jacinta and Francisco died. Then, on the first visit the Bishop of Leiria made to the Cova, he saw how dry the whole place was and told the husband of the woman who cared for the chapel to dig a well because pilgrims would need water. They would need it to refresh themselves.

Before the first day of digging was over, workers hit rock. But when they blasted the rock, water flowed out generously. So what did the people do? Daily, they filled bottles and pitchers with the water and took it home to those who were ill so that they could drink it or wash their wounds with it. Father de Marchi repeated this testimony given by resident Jose Alves:

Everyone had the greatest faith in Our Lady’s water, and she used it to cure their wounds and their pains. Never did Our Lady perform so many miracles as at that time. I saw people with terrible legs that were running with pus, but when they washed themselves with the water, they were able to leave their bandages behind because Our Lady had cured them. Other people knelt down and drank that earthy water and were cured of serious internal diseases.

Miracles abounded. Because he lived in Fatima, Father de Marchi personally witnessed numerous physical cures that occurred there.

One more Fatima event involving water happened in a vision to Sister Lúcia. On June 13, 1929, when she was a Dorothean sister in the convent in Tuy, Spain, she had a revelation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and of the Blessed Trinity. There was a reference in the vision to the Holy Eucharist too. It took place in the chapel.

Lúcia was praying the prayers the angel had taught the seers years before.

“Suddenly a supernatural light illumined the whole chapel and, on the altar, appeared a cross of light which reached to the ceiling,” Lúcia said. “In a brighter part could be seen, on the upper part of the cross, the face of a man and His body to the waist; on His breast was an equally luminous dove, and nailed to the cross, the body of another man.”

“A little below the waist, suspended in mid-air, was to be seen a chalice and a large Host onto which fell some drops of Blood from the face of the Crucified and from a wound in his breast. These drops ran down over the Host and fell into the chalice.”

Now comes the spiritual water reference: “Under the right arm of the cross was Our Lady with her Immaculate Heart in her hand. … (It was Our Lady of Fatima with her Immaculate Heart … in her left hand … without a sword or roses, but with a crown of thorns and flames. …) Under the left arm (of the cross), some big letters, as it were of crystal-clear water running down over the altar, formed these words: ‘Grace and Mercy.’”

At both Lourdes and Fatima, God used the simplest elements —water and earth — as instruments of healing, much like in biblical times. Today, this remains most evident at Lourdes, where the miraculous waters continue to bring physical and spiritual restoration to countless pilgrims.