Our Lady of La Salette
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September 19, 2024On September 19, the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette,of which I am a member, will celebrate the 178th Anniversary of our founding event - Mary’s Apparition at La Salette. LaSalette is not a household name, but you hear it preached in many countries in Asia, America, Australia, Africa, andEurope, and in a small alpine village where it was first heard.Two Congregations bear the name of La Salette. Some others are linked to it. All over the world, pilgrims, saints,writers have sung its praises and continue to make it known.You can see it over entrances, in parishes, spiritual centers and cooperatives; at shelters for lepers and their families; yousee it in humble places where the handicapped work, and you see it at high mountain shrine.
Before the apparition, La Salette was an unknown hamlet lost in one of those giant crevices of the French Alps. A dozen tiny villages clung to the low regions of a ring of mountains that rise over seven thousand feet. Spring torrents rushing down these heights run through dark, winding passes and exit below the market town of Corps, where the highway junction joins it to the rest of the world. No one could have seen fame in the offing.
On September 19, 1846, two shepherds, a boy and a girl,each urging on their four cows, climb the barren slopes that rise above the village of La Salette. After an uneventful morning, they meet within this solitude a woman more beautiful than creation; she appears within a light that is brighter than the sun.
Through her tears she converses with them. She finished her discourse and, having climbed a narrow path, disappeared in her halo of light. That evening the children speak of this to their respective employers, and the very next morning rumors are running. The young boy, Maximin Giraud, skittish and carefree, is eleven years old and has replaced a shepherd that week. Melanie Calvat is nearing fifteen years of age. Forfive years she has been performing odd jobs in the neighboring farms; she is timid and withdrawn. Simply, but with great precision, the two children answer the questions put to them.Their testimonies agree. The whole world takes hold of their story: the curious, the believers, the official investigators and the journalists, religious and civil authorities. Detractors attack it, visionaries hallucinate over it, creating serious and lasting delusions. Missionaries and pilgrims will make this echo of the Good News known to all the world.
After five years of detailed and rigorous inquiry, the Church attest to the reality of the event and recognizes "The Beautiful Lady": she is Mary, the mother of Jesus, she who has been missioned at the foot of the Cross to be the mother of all those who search and doubt, who journey in faith. Always present to her children, she comes to warn their hearts, to challenge consciences in the face of a godless world, a world without justice and without love. With vigor and with tenderness, she raises us up and puts us on the road together, on the path of her Son Jesus.
The story told by Maximin and Melanie travelled everywhere and, no doubt, profoundly touched a world that is in need of reconciliation.
