Chapter Four
The Seers and the Secrets
During their time on the mountain of La Salette, the
Blessed Mother revealed two secrets – one each to Melanie and Maximin. The
children were not aware of the contents of each other’s secrets. They had both
been instructed not to share them and they honored Our Lady’s request.
Cardinal de Bonald of Lyon, like many others, was very
curious about what those secrets might contain. As a consulter to the pope, he
had the power to do something about it. In June of 1851, he sent a letter to
Bishop de Bruillard requesting that the seers tell him their secrets so that he
might then pass them along to the Holy Father. The bishop agreed that the Holy
Father should be informed of the secrets, but he wanted to do it directly,
without the cardinal acting as middle-man.
The children were not easily convinced to share their
secrets with the pope. After all, they had been sworn to secrecy by Our Blessed
Mother herself. Such a confidence was not to be easily broken. The bishop’s
envoy discussed the matter with Maximin. After some time, Maximin agreed that
if the pope, the Vicar of Christ, asked for the secret, he would give it to
him.
At the bishop’s house, Maximin began to write down the
secret, only to move too enthusiastically and knock over the container of ink.
The paper was ruined. He had to start again. He took more care with the second
attempt. When he was finished, the bishop showed him how to fold the paper and
place it inside an envelope. The bishop then sealed the envelope with molten
wax. Two priests signed the envelope as witnesses.
It took three attempts to convince Melanie to reveal
her secret. In the end, it was Fr. Rousselot who convinced her to do so. In the
course of writing her secret, she asked for the meaning of the word
“infallibly”. Later she asked what the term “anti-Christ” meant. Like Maximin,
she put the secret into an envelope that was then sealed by the bishop. Later,
she remembered a date that she should have included and asked to go to the
bishop in order to make the correction. She was given this permission and,
after adding this information, felt satisfied.
The bishop sent Fr. Rousselot and Fr. Gerin to Rome
with the two secrets along with a letter asking for the pope’s opinion of the
apparitions. Bishop de Bruillard agreed to abide by the pope’s decision.
On July 18, the two priests met with Pope Pius IX. He
read the secrets. He smiled while he read Maximin’s but his response to
Melanie’s was more grave. He said, “Calamities threaten France. But she is not
the only one to blame. Italy is, too, and Germany and Switzerland and all
Europe. It is not without reason that the Church is called militant.”[i]
He told the two priests that he would study the secrets further and then
respond to them.
Pope Pius IX met with Fr. Rousselot again on August 22nd.
The pope said that the bishop was free to make whatever pronouncement about the
apparition that he felt was appropriate. As of the date of this writing, the
secrets have never been officially revealed by the Vatican.
Seeing a vision of Our Lady does not automatically
make a person a canonized saint. Those who have been blessed with such a vision
and then canonized, such as St. Catherine Laboure (Our Lady of the Miraculous
Medal), St. Bernadette (Our Lady of Lourdes), and Saints Jacinta and Francisco
(Our Lady of Fatima), were canonized due to the virtue of their lives after the
apparitions took place. While one might presume that those chosen for such an
honor as a visit from Our Lady would have special help from God to live holy
lives, all humans retain the gift of free will.
Maximin’s life after the bishop pronounced the vision
authentic was one of restless searching. In keeping with his childhood personality,
he could not stay in one place for long. He attempted to become a priest and
entered the seminary, but he was not academically inclined. He thought he might
become a doctor or pharmacist, but that too did not work out. He ended up
working a string of menial jobs and was often destitute and hungry. He decided
to go to Rome where he became a papal zouave (part of the infantry force
designed to defend the Papal States). He served for six months before returning
to France. In 1870, he was recruited to fight for France in the Prussian war;
he never saw battle, instead serving his time in the Grenoble barracks. By this
time, he was thirty-five years old and, like his father before him, suffered
from asthma.
Throughout his life, Maximin struggled, never finding
a place where he belonged. By all accounts, he was unsuccessful in the world’s
eyes. It had been reported that he got drunk easily, but he did not drink much.
It is suspected that he most likely had an intolerance of alcohol that made him
get tipsy after only having a small amount. Unfortunately, he had the
misfortune of living in a place where wine was served with every meal. Despite
his professional and personal challenges, he always remained faithful to Our
Blessed Mother. He strove to live a life of virtue. A comrade in the zouave
testified that Maximin had no patience for off-color jokes or behavior.
On November 11, 1865, the newspaper La Vie Parisienne published an article
saying that Maximin no longer believed in the apparition. Maximin sued for
libel. The case was settled out of court and an apology was printed in the
paper. Maximin responded by publishing a seventy-two page booklet, My Profession of Faith in the Apparition of
La Salette.[ii]
Maximin died at the age of forty. La Salette water was
his last drink and the Eucharist his last food.[iii]
Maximin had the final word on his life and the apparition in his last will and
testament:
I believe in all that the
holy, apostolic, Roman Church teaches, in everything defined by our Holy
Father, the Pope, the august and infallible Pius IX. I firmly believe, even
were it to cost the shedding of my blood, in the renowned apparition of the
Blessed Virgin on the holy mountain of La Salette, September 19, 1846, the
apparition to which I have testified in words, works, in writings, in
suffering. After my death let no one assert that he has heard me make any
retraction concerning the great event of La Salette, for in lying to the world
he would be lying in his own breast. With these sentiments, I give my heart to
Our Lady of La Salette.[iv]
Unlike Maximin who died young, Melanie lived to be
seventy-two. Like Maximin, she attempted to enter religious life. In fact, she
attempted this several times, moving from convent to convent, but never making
her vows. Melanie had been a shy child who did not like to be in the spotlight.
With time, however, she came to thrive on the adulation of pilgrims. She could
not live a quiet life as a religious sister and struggled to obey her
superiors.
She also ended up living a wandering life, bouncing
frequently between France and Italy. She wrote a largely fictional
autobiography in which she claimed to have had extraordinary piety and mystical
experiences in childhood, despite all evidence to the contrary. Melanie needed
people to honor her and pay attention to her and was willing to tell them what
they wanted to hear in order to have that continue. She began to tease people
with information about the secret that Our Lady had revealed to her.
“In a series of letters to Abbé Félicien Bliard,
beginning on December 26, 1870, Melanie made it clear that she had seen and
felt, rather than heard, much of what she had related in the Secret, and that
it was impossible to put everything fully into words, as she wrote:
The Holy Virgin spoke all
the words, either of the secrets, or of the rules, but I could only guess or
penetrate the rest of what she said in words: a great veil was lifted, events
were uncovered to my eyes and to my imagination as She spoke all the words and
a great space was opened before me; I saw events, the changes in the operation
of the earth, and the unchanging God in His glory watching the Virgin, who
lowered Herself to speak to two peasants. . .”[v]
In 1879, Melanie published a booklet with the
imprimatur of Bishop Salvtore Luigi Zola entitled Apparition of the Blessed Virgin on the Mountain of La Salette.
This version of the secret is much longer than the one Melanie wrote for the
pope in 1851 and contains much more detail. In 1923, this booklet was put on
the Index of Forbidden Books. As of 1966, the Index of Forbidden Books no
longer exists. Unfortunately, this episode led many to believe that the
apparition at La Salette as a whole was now rejected. That was not the case at
all.
The 1879 version of the secret is widely available on
the internet.[vi]
Indeed, that was the first thing I found when I searched for the message of Our
Lady of La Salette. It is highly apocalyptic in nature and is best treated with
skepticism. There are those who take this version of the secret as the word of
Our Blessed Mother, including the prediction that Rome will suffer apostacy,
and use it to argue that this is the case in the world today. This is most
unfortunate. Melanie desired attention. She may have been suffering from some
sort of mental illness. While one cannot be 100% certain, there is no reason to
believe that Our Blessed Mother conveyed this longer, more specific secret.
Yet, despite Melanie’s struggles with pride and her
casual relationship with the truth, she did retain a great faith, attending
Mass daily. She also never changed a word of her testimony about the original
apparition. One can be confident that her reports of what happened on September
19, 1846 were true.
What about the
original secrets from 1851? They had seemed to be lost. Father Jean Stem who
had been an archivist of the Missionaries of La Salette, had tried to find the
official version. The Congregation of the Faith had informed him that they
could not be found. However, in 1998, Monsignor Bertone, then secretary of the
Congregation of the Faith, opened the files of Pope Leo XIII to researchers.[vii]
Father
Michel Corteville found the original documents of the secrets among Pope Leo
XIII’s papers on October 2, 1999. They became “the subject of a doctoral thesis
in theology which was supported by Fr. Corteville in 2000 at the Angelicum, the
Pontifical University of the Dominicans. This thesis of more than 1000 pages
was summarized in 2002 in a format more accessible to a wider audience, in a
book published by Editions Fayard, under the title Découverte du secret de La
Salette (Discovery of the Secret of La Salette) by Father Corteville and Father
René Laurentin.”[viii] This
book has not been published in English.
While the Vatican has not
made any statement on the texts of these secrets, it seems reasonable to
believe that these are the original secrets. The events described in these
secrets are open to debate. As with all prophetic messages, the details are
subject to change based on humanity’s response to the call for conversion.
Maximin’s Secret (written on July 3, 1851)
On September
19, 1846, we saw a beautiful Lady. We never said that this lady was the Blessed
Virgin but we always said that it was a beautiful Lady.
I do not know
if it is the Blessed Virgin or another person. As for me, I believe today that
it is the Blessed Virgin.
Here is what
this Lady said to me:
"If my
people continue, what I will say to you will arrive earlier, if it changes a
little, it will be a little later.
France has
corrupted the universe, one day it will be punished. The faith will die out in
France: three quarters of France will not practice religion anymore, or almost
no more, the other part will practice it without really practicing it.
Then, after
[that], nations will convert, the faith will be rekindled everywhere.
A great
country, now Protestant, in the north of Europe, will be converted; by the
support of this country all the other nations of the world will be converted.
Before all
that arrives, great disorders will arrive, in the Church, and everywhere. Then,
after [that], our Holy Father the Pope will be persecuted. His successor will
be a pontiff that nobody expects.
Then, after
[that], a great peace will come, but it will not last a long time. A monster
will come to disturb it.
All that I
tell you here will arrive in the other century, at the latest in the year two
thousand."
Melanie’s
Secret (written on July 6, 1851)
J.M.J.
Secret which
the Blessed Virgin gave me on the Mountain of La Salette on September 19, 1846
Mélanie, I
will say something to you which you will not say to anybody:
The time of
the God's wrath has arrived!
If, when you
say to the people what I have said to you so far, and what I will still ask you
to say, if, after that, they do not convert, (if they do not do penance, and
they do not cease working on Sunday, and if they continue to blaspheme the Holy
Name of God), in a word, if the face of the earth does not change, God will be
avenged against the people ungrateful and slave of the demon.
My Son will
make his power manifest! Paris, this city soiled by all kinds of crimes, will
perish infallibly. Marseilles will be destroyed in a little time. When these
things arrive, the disorder will be complete on the earth, the world will be
given up to its impious passions.
The pope will
be persecuted from all sides, they will shoot at him, they will want to put him
to death, but no one will not be able to do it, the Vicar of God will triumph
again this time.
The priests
and the Sisters, and the true servants of my Son will be persecuted, and
several will die for the faith of Jesus-Christ.
A famine will
reign at the same time.
After all
these will have arrived, many will recognize the hand of God on them, they will
convert, and do penance for their sins.
A great king
will go up on the throne, and will reign a few years. Religion will re-flourish
and spread all over the world, and there will be a great abundance, the world,
glad not to be lacking nothing, will fall again in its disorders, will give up
God, and will be prone to its criminal passions.
[Among] God's
ministers, and the Spouses of Jesus-Christ, there will be some who will go
astray, and that will be the most terrible.
Lastly, hell
will reign on earth. It will be then that the Antichrist will be born of a
Sister, but woe to her! Many will believe in him, because he will claim to have
come from heaven, woe to those who will believe in him!
That time is
not far away, twice 50 years will not go by.
My child, you
will not say what I have just said to you. (You will not say it to anybody, you
will not say if you must say it one day, you will not say what that it concerns),
finally you will say nothing anymore until I tell you to say it![ix]
[i]
Kennedy, 140.
[ii]
James P. O’Reilly, M.S., The Story of La Salette: Its History and Sequels,
(Techny, Illinois: Divine Word Publications, 1953) 122.
[iii]
O’Reilly, 126.
[iv]
Kennedy, 182-183.
[v]
The La Salette Controversy – Part VI,
http://www.salvemariaregina.info/SalveMariaRegina/SMR-171/LaSalette6.htm
[vi]
I debated including the text of this longer secret here, but decided it was
best not to give something so questionable additional publicity. For those who
wish to read it, please visit: http://www.miraclehunter.com/marian_apparitions/approved_apparitions/lasalette/secret-of-our-lady-of-lasalette-to-melanie-1879.html
[vii]
Mark Wyatt, La Salette Secrets II, http://veritas-catholic.blogspot.com/2006/08/la-salette-secrets-ii.html
[viii]
The Secrets of La Salette, https://www.michaeljournal.org/articles/roman-catholic-church/item/the-secrets-of-la-salette
[ix]
Both the original French and translated English versions may be found at: http://patristica.net/La-Salette&f&e
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