Perhaps less well-known than Fatima or Lourdes, Our Lady appeared in September 1846 to two shepherd children near La Salette, a hamlet in what is today southeastern France. Many of us today think of southern France as the “Côte-d’Azur” and the Mediterranean, forgetting that inland the terrain ascends there, in northern Italy and around Switzerland into the Alps. 

We also perhaps forget that, within six years of the La Salette apparitions, a religious congregation was founded both to care for the pilgrims coming to the site as well as to spread the La Salette message. The La Salette Missionaries have played a role in the Catholic history of the United States, especially in New England, where Francophone communities and connections to nearby Québec were strong. They conduct the National Shrine of La Salette in Attleboro, Massachusetts. A special highlight of the Shrine is its annual “Christmas Festival of Lights,” illuminating the grounds of the Shrine, which is open from Thanksgiving until Jan. 1. It also features a crèche museum.

Our Lady appeared to Maximin Giraud and Melanie Mathieu on Sept. 19, 1846. They spoke of a “beautiful” woman who emerged from a great light, sitting and weeping. She spoke of “restraining” her Son’s arm through constant prayer, although the gravity of human sinfulness had assumed such proportions that “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 do I have to 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 do not take heed of it. However much you pray, however much you do, you will never recompense the pains I have taken for you.” 

Her message, like later at Lourdes and Fatima, is one of conversion: she identifies moral failings and calls on people to “do better.” Specifically, at La Salette, Our Lady spoke of three things perhaps currently commonplace and seemingly dismissed by some as “less important.”

First, prayer. She asked the visionaries if they prayed and, to their shy demurrals, she urged people to “pray well.” Her advice was concrete: “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.”

Second, Sunday. She commented on neglect of the Sabbath. “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 religion. During Lent, they go to the meat-market like dogs. … Six days I have given you to labor, the seventh I have kept for myself: and they will not give it to me.” These children lived in an ideologically anti-clerical France. We claim religious freedom. But how often is Sunday Mass the victim of work or the demands to wedge in on weekends what cannot be done because of “overwork?” How often is Mass just another “thing” to be “scheduled” into the “weekend?” How many would still vacillate between returning to Mass, staying at home, or “watching Mass” like some kind of spectator sport on TV or online? How often is Lent a perfunctory observance?

Third, reverence in speech. She criticized swearing. “Those who drive the carts cannot swear without introducing the name of my Son.” How often does profanity, including profanity that employs the names of “God” or “Jesus Christ,” lace conversations? Have we so inured ourselves to such practices that we deem them trivial?

Conversion is a constant Marian call and, in this instance, she focuses on religion. Religion is not an “optional extra.” St. Thomas Aquinas includes “religion” as a virtue under the cardinal virtue of justice, i.e., something we owe to another, in this case, God. When Mass and prayer become “optional extras” or just another “thing” to be “fit in” someplace, we fail in our debt to recognize that we are not doing God a favor but, in fact, allowing him to help us. As Weekday Ordinary Preface IV puts it well: “You have no need of our praise. Our desire to thank you is itself your gift. Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness but makes us grow in your grace …” (emphasis added). 

As we draw closer to October, the month of the Rosary, are we tending to these ordinary responsibilities of Catholics?

Our Lady appeared in La Salette in 1846. Alonso Cano (1601-1667) designed “La Virgen intercediendo por la humanidad” (The Virgin Intercedes for Humanity) around 1667, presciently capturing the La Salette message. This pencil drawing was commissioned for a Dominican house in Granada, Spain, a city that had once been a Muslim stronghold but had been recaptured during the Reconquista won in the end by Ferdinand and Isabela. It is held by Madrid’s Prado Museum.

There are four figures in this illustration. Jesus, the Judge of Humanity, looks toward his Mother on his right, who is pleading with him on behalf of humanity. Her extended hands express that plea: the tension in her fingers accentuates its gravity.

Below, clasping a globe that symbolizes humanity, Sts. Dominic and Francis also look toward heaven. Mary is presented as pleading for the founders of the two great mendicant orders to continue their missions of conversion on behalf of a sinful humanity. The expressions on the two saints faces, along with that of the angels on Jesus’ left and of Mary’s hands, underscores the gravity of the moment.

At La Salette, Our Lady warned of imminent crop failures as evidence that her ability to restrain God’s justice was growing weaker. As we consider the state of current humanity, how much greater should our recourse to the Rosary be to bind Our Lord’s hands against the rightful wrath man has earned?

(The La Salette Missionaries have composed a way of praying the mysteries of the Rosary focused on the theme of reconciliation so prominent in Our Lady’s apparition: see here.)