Chapter Five
The Blessed Mother’s Message and its
Importance for Today
Our Blessed Mother’s apparition at La Salette was over
170 years ago. Does her message still matter for today? The answer is an
unequivocal yes.
In examining the message of Our Lady of La Salette in
more detail, let us first look at the message itself and its relevance in the
context of the time in which it was given.
Our Lady of La Salette spoke in the name of God. In
that respect, she followed the tradition of the Old Testament prophets. The
Blessed Virgin is the “Queen of Prophets”.[i]
She is calling the people to return to God and repent of their sins. In this
particular case, she was speaking out against Sunday work and blasphemy,
violations of the second and third commandments: keep holy the Sabbath and do
not take the Lord’s name in vain. Indirectly, these are also violations of the
first commandment because those who work on Sunday or take God’s name in vain
are not putting God before everything else as the first commandment directs us
to do. These sins are the reason for her tears.
Our Lady of La Salette indicated that during the
previous year (1845), there had been a poor potato crop. According to her, this
had been a warning from God that the people should change their ways, but they
did not heed the warning. Instead they blasphemed even more. Our Lady indicated
that by the coming Christmas (of 1846) there would be almost no potatoes to be
found. This proved to be the case. Not only France, but also Germany, England,
and most especially Ireland suffered from a terrible potato famine.
The people of Corps did heed Our Lady’s warnings and
experienced a great conversion. After the years of 1846 and 1847, they had good
harvests and only a minimal number of potatoes were affected by disease.[ii]
Our Lady also foretold that the wheat crops would
fail. “For several years after the Apparition, it was observed in certain
localities that the wheat did almost literally fall into dust at threshing, or,
at least, so little grain did it yield, that it seemed to melt under the flail.
The ears of corn, which at first appeared fair and full, produced but few
grains of wheat.”[iii]
She predicted that many children would be seized by
trembling and that a great famine would follow. “During the years immediately
following the Apparition of La Salette, a great number of children died from
the effects of a strange epidemic.”[iv]
“In 1847 there was a very unusual mortality among the children of Corps and
nearby villages, and in 1854 great numbers were carried off by cholera,
complicated by miliary fever (probably tuberculosis). These little victims were
suddenly seized with a violent chill, began trembling all over and died after
two or three hours of agony.”[v]
As for the famine, many in Europe died due to food
shortages in the years following the apparition. In 1855, “nearly one hundred
thousand people had died of starvation in France alone! And according to
conservative estimates, from 1854 to 1856 inclusively, as many as one million
persons throughout Europe died victims of the same ‘high price of food.’”[vi]
In all of Our Lady’s apparitions, her warnings are
conditional. Like the prophets of old, she states that if the people do not
repent, evils will befall them. The future is not set in stone. We do have the
power to change the dire predictions for the future if we repent, pray for the
conversion of sinners, and turn back to God.
Our Lady of La Salette commanded the children to what
seemed like an impossible task. They were to make her message known to all the
world. That mission continues today.
Back in 1953, Fr. James O’Reilly wrote:
Never more than now have men
so much needed the salutary teachings of La Salette. We look out on a world
today that seems to be in complete revolt against all authority, human and
divine. . . . The Christian principles that once ruled our lives and fostered
obedience, modesty, and respect, have been repudiated as old-fashioned. In
every department of human activity, in the home, in business, in our national
life, our educational system, all forms of entertainment, in music, literature
and art, the seeds of revolt, irreverence, indecency and unbridles license have
been cultivated, and now we are reaping the whirlwind in a national crime wave,
in gross immorality, in an alarming breakdown of the marriage bond and of home
life that seems unparalleled in nearly two thousand years of Christianity. . .
[Our Lady’s] tears still flow, her work of merciful intercession still goes on
for a heedless world. What then, does she ask of each one of us? She pleads for
our conversion, and in her gentle maternal way urges us all to lead lives of
prayer, penance and reparation.[vii]
How is it possible that those words were written in
the 1950s, an era we now look back on as so conservative compared to our own?
How much more in need is our world today when so many have turned their backs
on God and religious practice?
Our Lady wants all of us to be reconciled to her Son.
She wants this so much that she weeps for her children who have fallen away.
These tears are La Salette’s
most powerful unspoken message. The beautiful Lady weeps but she never refers
to her tears, never so much as alludes to them. They are meant to speak for
themselves and they do. They are an unspoken message but they add a crucial
dimension to her words . . . [The tears] are liquid sorrow, molten streams of
pain running down the Lady’s face and a very obvious show of love. . . [They]
highlight the words and give urgency and crucial importance to the entire
message. If someone from heaven, and the Blessed Virgin at that, is provoked to
tears over disrespect for the Day of the Lord and the Name of Jesus, then the
word is out that these offenses are more evil than people think they are and
should be carefully avoided.[viii]
How true that last statement is. How many people think
nothing of skipping Mass (or never attend at all)? How often do we hear the
name of the Lord used in vain? Truly, these acts matter to God.
Not honoring God in his Name
and on his day, not worshiping, not praying are the root causes, the
deep-seated sins against God that bring on those ‘sins against the neighbor.’
The Lady says, without actually pronouncing the words, that serving God and
serving the neighbor are not two acts, but one.
On the face of it, the La
Salette message is limited in its demands: Mass, prayer, penance, and respect
for Christ’s name appear to be the bare bones of religion . . . On the other
hand, when these elements are observed well, they launch an intimate and
powerful Christian life, for all of Christian life is based on those demands.[ix]
Our Blessed Mother took the people to task for not
paying attention to the sorrow that they were causing her and her Son. “She
also reproached her people for not seeing the signs of the times when the
potatoes rotten. ‘You paid no least heed,’ she said.”[x]
Do we pay heed to the world around us? Our world, our
environment, is in such pain. Our physical world is connected to the spiritual
realm. Yes, we need to take practical, concrete actions to help our physical
world. But the role of the spiritual should not be neglected. What would our
world look like if everyone returned to God, loved God and neighbor, respected
God’s name, and kept the Lord’s Day holy? It isn’t too late.
Our Blessed Mother still weeps for us. She wants us to
return to her Son. Will we answer her plea?
Prayers to Our Lady of La Salette
Our Lady of La Salette, reconciler of sinners,
pray without ceasing for us who have recourse to thee.
pray without ceasing for us who have recourse to thee.
The Memorare to Our Lady of La Salette
Remember, Our Lady of La Salette, true Mother of
Sorrows, the tears which thou didst shed for me on Calvary; be mindful also of
the unceasing care which thou dost exercise to shield me from the justice of
God; and consider whether thou canst now abandon thy child, for whom thou hast
done so much. Inspired by this consoling thought, I came to cast myself at thy
feet, in spite of my infidelity and ingratitude. Reject not my prayer, O Virgin
of reconciliation, convert me, obtain for me the grace to love Jesus Christ
above all things and to console thee too by living a holy life, in order that
one day I may be able to see thee in Heaven. Amen.
[i]
Ladouceur, 42.
[ii]
Ladouceur, 45.
[iii]
Ladouceur, 52.
[iv]
Ladouceur, 52.
[v]
O’Reilly, 52.
[vi]
O’Reilly, 51.
[vii]
O’Reilly, 163-164.
[viii]
Fr. Normand Theroux, M.S., Our La Salette
Mission: To Reconcile Her People With Her Son (Attleboro, MA: La Salette
Communications Center Publications, 2017).
[ix]
Theroux.
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