I didn't really know what to expect. A volunteer stretcher-bearer for the first time on the Romand pilgrimage, I went there simply with my goodwill and my two hands.
What I discovered goes beyond anything I could have imagined.
Arrival
There were 140 sick pilgrims this year. Each with their own pathology, their pain, sometimes their loneliness — but also a humanity of rare intensity. As if illness, by stripping away the superfluous, made the essential visible. Some came looking for a miracle, others for a simple breath, a parenthesis, a moment of being cared for.
We were 480 volunteers at their side — stretcher-bearers, care assistants, nurses, doctors. Not united by the same convictions, but by a shared impulse.
The modest gesture of the stretcher-bearer
The work of a stretcher-bearer seems modest. Pushing a wheelchair. Pulling those 1960s carts that make you smile and still roll. Accompanying someone from one place to another, then taking them back.
And yet, in these tiny journeys, something happens.
A word exchanged. A glance. A shared silence. Suddenly, you are no longer two strangers. You are together.
This simple presence, without expectation or performance, is perhaps one of the most beautiful gestures one can offer another person.
And that's the paradox of Lourdes: by putting yourself at the service of others, you receive infinitely more than you give.
"The sick person is my master"
During the mass celebrated by the bishop of Basel, one sentence cut through the silence of the assembly and reached me immediately:
"The sick person is my master."
These words shed light on everything else. It is not the stretcher-bearer who does the sick person a favour. It is the sick person who, by accepting our help and letting us approach their vulnerability, offers us something precious: the possibility of becoming more human, more attentive, more true.
They teach us without knowing it.
A reversed logic
Lourdes is a strange and powerful place. Even those who don't come with faith do not remain entirely indifferent. Something circulates there — between the pilgrims, between the volunteers, in the candlelit processions, in the evening songs. Something that resembles what we all seek, often without knowing how to name it: the feeling of belonging to something greater than ourselves.
Those who come without faith, with doubts, even with scepticism — are not outside of something. They are already part of it. The community that forms there asks for no entry card. It recognises itself in a common impulse, in this shared capacity to put oneself at the service of others, to be touched by human vulnerability. Faith does not separate — it names what we all live together.
In just a few days, bonds form between people whom nothing had brought together. You arrive a stranger, you leave bound.
In a world saturated with calls to performance and self-absorption, Lourdes offers a reversed logic. It's not about fulfilling yourself, but about giving yourself. Not about shining, but about being there. And this simplicity — presence, listening, attention to others — reveals resources we all carry and too often forget to offer.
The place of women
What also deeply struck me is the place of women in this pilgrimage. The women stretcher-bearers, in direct contact with the sick, carry a quiet devotion of rare depth. Their gentleness without weakness. Their way of holding, soothing, watching over almost naturally. They are at the heart of everything, often without seeking to be seen.
This silent strength moved me.
Next year
Next year, I will be there again.
Beside the sick. Beside those who give their time and their presence. Because taking care of others is not a sacrifice.
It may be a way of being fully in the world.
A new opening, a gift to celebrate
To celebrate the practice opening every other Saturday, I'm offering you the chance to win a voucher for an Ayurvedic massage. One question, one answer — good luck.
Enter the contestThérapeute Complémentaire spécialisé en Ayurvéda
And you, what carries you?
If this story moved you, or if you are going through a time when you are searching for meaning, the door of the practice is open.
