Chapter One
The Apparition
In 1846, the people of the small town of Corps,
located in the French Alps, had largely forgotten God. Sunday Mass drew a small
handful of people; most people treated Sunday as a day like any other. Both
children and adults swore and cussed. There was no fasting and abstinence, even
during Lent.
Maximin Giraud was 11 years old, small for his age but
healthy. His father, Germain Giraud, was a wheelwright and carpenter who drank
heavily. Maximin’s mother had died, but his father had remarried. An active
child, Maximin’s “attention never stayed fixed for long; he could not
concentrate; he darted about ceaselessly and so did his mind.”[i]
This description leads one to believe that if he were a child today, Maximin
might be diagnosed with ADHD. He had never been to school and could barely
recite the Our Father and Hail Mary. His father took Maximin to the café where
he taught him how to smoke and drink. For the most part, Maximin “roamed the
town at will . . . his mongrel dog Loulou tagging at his heels . . . He
collected dung along the heavily travelled highway, or he kept an eye on the
family’s goat and ewe.”[ii]
On September 13, 1846, Pierre Selme made his way to
Corps. He was a farmer from La Salette, a parish with a few hamlets. He was in
search of a child to temporarily watch over his four cows. Maximin was hired to
go for a week. His father negotiated the terms. Maximin would be paid as well
as receive butter and cheese for his work.
Melanie Mathieu, age 14, was also from Corps, but she
and Maximin had never met. One of eight poor children, she begged as a small
child before being hired out when she was seven or eight years old to help care
for babies. When she was a bit older, she worked as farm help. By 1846, she was
considered a professional herder and was employed by Baptiste Pra. She was
undersize, quiet, and fearful. Like Maximin, she knew her Our Father and Hail
Mary, but she also knew some small bits of catechism that her mother had tried
to teach her. She also had a basic concept of saints. Yet, she had only been to
church a few times in her life and had never made her first communion; most
Sundays she could be found tending her cows just as she did every other day.
Maximin and Melanie met on September 17, 1846 while
tending their animals. Two days later, they would experience the apparition
that would change their lives forever. It was noon on September 19th.
The children were in a desolate mountain spot of La Salette, frequented only by
the shepherds of the region. The Angelus bells rang and they took their animals
to a place known as the “fountain”, a drinking place in a nearby ravine. After
eating lunch, the children fell asleep. This was most unusual. Melanie usually
always kept a watchful eye on the animals under her care. She woke up with a
start an hour or two later. Where were the animals? She woke Maximin and the
two searched for the cows. After they successfully found them, the children
returned to the ravine to grab their knapsacks. It was then that Melanie first
saw a great circle of light. She called Maximin to come see it.
The globe continued to grow until it was the size of a
person. Melanie noticed a pair of hands first. In her words:
I had hardly noticed the pair of hands become increasingly
white when, instantly, I saw arms and sleeves down to the elbows resting as it
were upon the knees. I also saw part of the dress below the elbows – it was brilliant with
pearls. I saw before us, upon the stones, as it were, a woman who sat there
weeping, her face buried in her hands and her elbows resting upon her knees but
I could not see her face nor the rest of her body because the brightness was a
hindrance.[iii]
Both children carried shepherd sticks. Surprised by
this vision, Melanie dropped hers, but Maximin held on to his, planning to use
it as a weapon in case the woman did them any harm. Melanie feared it was a
devil coming to get her. As soon as the woman began to speak, their fear left
them. “They were fully reassured and felt, as it were, irresistibly attracted
to this Lady.”[iv]
The woman wept the entire time she spoke to them. Maximin wanted to help her.
He believed that she was hurt by either her son or husband.
The Lady shared the following message with them:
“Come near, my children, be not afraid; I am here to tell
you great news.
“If my people will not submit, I shall be forced to let fall
the arm of my Son. It is so strong, so heavy, that I can no longer withhold it.
“For how long a time do I suffer for you! If I would not
have my Son abandon you, I am compelled to pray to him without ceasing; and as
to you, you take not heed of it.
“However much you pray, however much you do, you will never
recompense the pains I have taken for you.
“Six days I have given you to labor, the seventh I have kept
for myself; and they will not give it to me. It is this which makes the arm of
my Son so heavy.
“Those who drive the carts cannot swear without introducing
the name of my Son. These are the two things which make the arm of my Son so heavy.
“If the harvest is spoilt, it is all on your account. I gave
you warning last year with the potatoes (‘pommes de terre’) but you did not
heed it. On the contrary, when you found the potatoes spoilt, you swore, you
took the name of my Son in vain. They will continue to decay, so that by
Christmas there will be none left.”
The French expression “pommes de terre” intrigued Melanie.
In the local dialect the word for potatoes was “las truffas”, whereas “pommes”
for Melanie meant the fruit of the apple tree. Hence she instinctively turned
towards Maximin to ask for an explanation, but the Beautiful Lady forestalled
her.
“Ah, my children, you do not understand? Well, wait, I shall
say it otherwise.”
And she continued her discourse in the local dialect of
their region.
“If you have wheat, it is no good to sow it; all you sow the
insects will eat, and what comes up will fall into dust when you thresh it.”
“There will come a great famine. Before the famine comes,
the children under seven years of age will be seized with trembling and will
die in the hands of those who hold them; the others will do penance by the
famine. The walnuts will become bad, and the grapes will rot.”
Here the Beautiful Lady addressed the children separately,
confiding to each a secret. She spoke first to Maximin, and though the little
shepherd did not perceive that her tone of voice had changed, Melanie at his
side could not hear a word, though she still saw the Beautiful Lady's lips
moving. Then came Melanie's turn to receive her secret under like conditions.
Both secrets were given in French.
Again addressing the two children in the idiom familiar to
them, the Lady continued: “If they are converted, the stones and rocks will
change into mounds of wheat, and the potatoes will be self-sown in the land.
“Do you say your prayers well, my children?” she asked the
shepherds. Both answered with complete frankness: “Not very well, Madam.”
“Ah, my children”, she exhorted them, “you must be sure to
say them well morning and evening. When you cannot do better, say at least an
Our Father and a Hail Mary; but when you have time, say more.”
“There are none who go to Mass except a few aged women. The
rest work on Sunday all summer; then in the winter, when they know not what to
do, they go to Mass only to mock at religion. During Lent, they go to the
meat-market like dogs.”
“Have you never seen wheat that is spoilt, my children?” the
Beautiful Lady then asked them. “No, Madam”, they replied.
“But you, my child”,
she insisted, addressing the little boy in particular, “you must surely have
seen some once when you were at the farm of Coin with your father. (Coin was a
hamlet near the town of Corps). The owner of the field told your father to go and
see his ruined wheat. You went together. You took two or three ears of wheat
into your hands and rubbed them, and they fell into dust. Then you continued
home. When you were still half an hour's distance from Corps, your father gave
you a piece of bread and said to you: ‘Here, my child, eat some bread this year
at least; I don't know who will eat any next year, if the wheat goes on like
that.’”
Confronted with such precise details, Maximin eagerly
replied: “Oh yes, Madam, I remember now; just at this moment I did not
remember.”
Then the Lady, again speaking French as at the beginning of
her discourse and when giving the secrets, said to them: “Well, my children,
you will make this known to all my people.”
Now she turned slightly to her left, passed in front of the
children, crossed the brook Sezia, stepping on stones emerging from it, and
when she was about ten feet from the opposite bank repeated her final request,
without turning around or stopping: “Well, my children, you will make this well
known to all my people.”[v]
The children found it hard to gaze directly at the
apparition due to the brightness of the great light. As the Lady went up to
heaven, she gazed earthward. Melanie’s eyes met hers. “She was no longer
weeping but a profound sadness marked her features.”[vi]
The apparition lasted approximately half an hour, even
though to the children the time passed quickly. There were other shepherds
present on the mountain that day, but none of them saw the light of the
apparition. Maximin’s dog was also unaffected by the apparition. Despite being
a keen watchdog, Loulou slept peacefully through the whole experience a step or
two behind the children, even as the light enveloped him. The children did not
know who had visited them. Melanie thought she might be a great saint. They
began to refer to her as the “Beautiful Lady”.
Melanie and Maximin heard the message more with their
hearts than with their ears. At times, the Lady spoke in proper French, which
neither child knew much of. At other times, she spoke in their local dialect.
“They retained all of it perfectly, the French as well as the dialect, whether
or not they understood everything.”[vii]
For the rest of their lives, they would not forget.
[i]
Msgr. John S. Kennedy, Light on the
Mountain: The Story of La Salette (New York: McMullen Books, 1953) 15.
[ii]
Kennedy, 15.
[iii]
Fr. Emile A. Ladouceur, M.S., The Vision
of La Salette: The Children Speak, editor Fr. Ron Gagne, M.S. (Hartford:
Missionaries of La Salette Corporation, 2016) 25.
[iv]
Ladouceur, 31.
[v]
“La Salette: The Message and Its Meaning”, https://www.lasalette.org/about-la-salette/apparition/the-story/705-the-message-of-la-salette.html
[vi]
Ladouceur, 81.
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