There are candle-lit processions. There are hundreds of candles burning around the clock lit for the intentions of loved ones. There is the option to get a candle set up online if you can’t be there in person. There is something magic around candles, their warm light, the smell, the flicker.

Pádraig lit a couple of candles today he had been given as a present by a really nice lady who had lost her son in a traffic accident some years ago. He lit one for her intentions and in memory of her son. The second one was for the Dreamboat, its crew and passengers – all the people who believe that you need to go for what you believe in, and that you can achieve whatever you believe in if you make the necessary effort.

As this train speeds through the marvellous South of France in this warm summer’s night, with the windows wide open and the fresh air loaded with the incredible smells from the mediterranean mixed with the scent of wild flowers and gras clearing the wasted air inside from the inside of this very special midnight train, it’s probably a bit too early to take stock of the past few days.

One thought so that struck a note with me came up in the sermon at our last mass together this morning: if we were to bring one thing back with us from Lourdes, could it be the realisation that we are here for a reason – otherwise we would not be around. Could this reason be that we all had a mission in life, no matter how ‘big’ or ‘small’, how ‘complex’ or ‘simple’? The request was to take that mission and work on its realisation.

My ‘mission’ in life has never been as clear to me as today. – What’s yours?