Tucked in a secluded hillside down an incline and through the trees from the Golden Dome lies a shrine to Mary, Mother of God. It's the Notre Dame Grotto, and it was built 100 years ago this summer.
The idyllic lakeside setting of the Grotto was chosen in spring 1896 when Provincial of the Congregation of Holy Cross William Corby, a former president of Notre Dame, commissioned the monumental task of building a replica of the Grotto of Massabielle near Lourdes, France.
There, a peasant girl, Bernadette Soubrious, had reported witnessing an apparition of Mary 18 times between February 11 and August 16 of 1858. The 14-year-old Bernadette was unschooled in Catholic catechism, yet she said the woman told her, "I am the Immaculate Conception."
Notre Dame's founder, Father Edward Sorin, CSC, was greatly moved by the miracle at Lourdes and made several pilgrimages to the site. Two-and-a-half years after Sorin's death in 1893, Corby found a donor to finance a replica of the Lourdes Grotto at Notre Dame. Corby had also visited Lourdes and brought back exact dimensions of the Grotto, along with a metal model presented to him by the Superior of Lourdes.
The Notre Dame Grotto -- designed at one-seventh the scale of the Lourdes Grotto -- was built in three months at a cost of $2,500. Huge boulders, some weighing two to three tons, had to be hauled from neighboring farms on horse-drawn wagons. Laborers and stone masons hoisted and mortared them together on wooden supports. Twice the structure collapsed when the supports were removed.
During construction, workers struck a spring near the same comparative spot that a spring exists at the Lourdes shrine. Immersions in the Lourdes spring reportedly brought miraculous cures, and this was also believed true of the Notre Dame spring. An August 1896 article in the Kalamazoo Augustinian mentioned "favors" received by pilgrims who washed with the Grotto water. The visitors carried away gallons of it.
Countless devotees believe they have had Grotto prayers answered. One, Manuel Sequeira '54, made a special intention at the Grotto during a trip to campus with his wife in the fall of 1991. His son and daughter, childless after 10 years of marriage, had decided to begin the adoption process, but had been told they would have to wait five years or more for a baby.
One week -- to the hour -- after lighting the candle, the Sequeira were home in New York when their phone rang. It was their son calling with the news that they had been offered a baby to adopt -- in Indiana, no less.
Surprisingly, the beautiful haven to which so many have been drawn served as a trash site for debris from the original Main Building after it was destroyed by fire in 1879. Coincidentally, the site of the Lourdes Grotto once had been a refuse dump.
The ND Grotto resembled a dump site again after a fire on September 23, 1985. Some 1,500 candles had been lit on the day of a home football game against the University of Michigan. The flames ignited the plastic candle holders, and heavy, black smoke rolled from the shrine.
Although soot from that fire has long since been cleaned off of the walls, evidence of the event can still be seen on the keystone and other boulders, which were chipped when cool water from fire hoses hit their intensely hot surfaces.
To prevent a recurrence, the Holy Cross Brothers who monitor the Grotto now limit the numbers of burning candles, and glass containers have replaced plastic.
Grotto candles haven't always been used for prayerful devotion. Before the early 1960s, when electricity was shut off at 11 p.m. in the residence halls, crammers would snatch candles from the Grotto to read by. Getting there could be difficult, however. Before outdoor lighting, the campus faithful would grope through the dark to the warm glowing niche. Lamp posts were installed and the grounds paved during a year-long celebration of the centennial of the Lourdes Grotto in 1958.
That was also the era of candlelight processions to the Grotto every May -- the month of Mary. Flickering lights would swarm from every dorm and meld together 5,000 strong to illuminate an evening of devotions.
In an earlier Grotto tradition, Notre Dame men paraded from the South Dining Hall for prayers and hymns every evening. The group practice fell away after cafeteria-style dining began in 1948 and students no longer ate at the same time.
Other traditions remain: The "Senior's Last Visit" brings the graduating class together for prayer, song and celebration. And the Grotto is still a popular place for marriage proposals by alumni who found meaning there during their student years. For many of them, a return trip to campus is not complete without a walk to the cave of candles.
by Mary Pat Dowling Beal, assistant editor of alumni publications who has compiled and published Grotto Stories: From the Heart of Notre Dame.