Mary of the Day (September 19, 1846) – Our Lady of LA SALETTE, La Salette-Fallavaux, department of Isère, France
The Apparition
On September 19, 1846, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, on a mountain near the village of La Salette-Fallavaux, two boys, a fifteen-year-old shepherdess named Mélanie Calvat and an eleven-year-old young shepherd named Maximin Giraud, are grazing cows.
According to their account, the apparition consists of three moments. In the first moment a beautiful Lady, dressed in a foreign fashion, appears in a resplendent light. The Lady sits on a rock, in tears, with her head in her hands. This would take place in the place called Ravin de la Sezia.
At a later time the Lady got up and, speaking to the two boys in both French and Patois, would entrust them with a message directed to all humanity and thus to be spread universally. After lamenting the ungodliness and sins of men, which entail eternal estrangement from God and thus hell if they persisted in evil, the Lady announced Divine Mercy for those who converted.
She then communicates a secret to each of the two children before disappearing into the sky above Mont-sous-les-Baisses (third moment of the apparition).
The news of the apparition
The two boys firsttold the incident to their masters, shepherds Baptiste Pra and Pierre Selme. Maximin Giraud was questioned by the village mayor Pierre Peytard on September 21, 1846. The two shepherds, impressed by the event, told parish priest Louis Perrin about it, who mentioned it in his sermon and in turn informed the archpriest of Corps, Pierre Mélin. It was Pierre Mélin who first informed the Bishop of Grenoble Philibert de Bruillard on October 4.
News of the apparition spread quickly. Jean-Maximin Giraud , Maximin’s father, who was not a believer at all, converted on November 8. The first pilgrimage took place on November 24, led by the two visionary children. On May 31, 1847, the pilgrimage in which the cross is planted on the mountain was attended by 5,000 believers.
In October 1846 the two visionaries are questioned by the diocesan priest Mathieu Cat. In February of the following year they are questioned again by François Lagier, a priest who knew the local patois perfectly. On April 16, 1847, they are again interrogated by a justice of the peace in Grenoble, Fréderic-Joseph Long. On this date is recorded the first miraculous healing to Sister Claire Peirron, in Avignon. The children are questioned again by a priest, Pierre Lambert on May 29. On July 22 Clément Villecourt, then bishop of La Rochelle, makes a personal pilgrimage to La Salette and interrogates Maximin and Mélanie. On August 15 another miraculous healing is declared by Mélanie Gamon, in Corps.
On September 19, 1847, the first anniversary of the apparition, a pilgrimage of 50,000 faithful takes place.
The message
The following is an excerpt of the message that Our Lady allegedly communicated to the two shepherd children:
“If the people do not submit, I will be forced to let go of my Son’s arm, it is so strong and so heavy that I can no longer support it […] how long I have been suffering for you! Since I have received the mission to continuously pray to my Son, I want him not to abandon you, but you pay no attention to it. No matter how much you pray and do, you can never make up for the pain I have taken for you […].
“I gave you six days to work, I reserved the seventh and you do not want to acknowledge it“: this is what weighs down my Son’s arm so much […] if the harvest fails it is your fault. I showed it to you last year with potatoes, but you did not consider it. In fact, when you found spoiled ones, you blasphemed the name of my Son. They will continue to rot, and this year, at Christmas, there will be no more. A great famine will come. Before it, children under the age of seven will be stricken with trembling and die…If these people are converted, then, the stones and rocks will be changed into piles of grain and potatoes will spring up on their own in the fields.
So confidentially and maternally Our Lady says to her friends:
“Do you say your prayers, My children?”
“Not very much Lady” – they answer
“Ah, My children, you must say it and well, evening and morning. When you do not have time, say at least an Our Father or a Hail Mary. When you can do better, say more.
Only a few older women go to Mass in the summer. The others work on Sundays, all summer long.
In winter, when they don’t know what to do, they go to mass but to mock religion. In Lent they go to the butcher shop like dogs. Have you ever seen dead grain, My children?”
“No, Madam!” – the boys answer.
Now the Lady turns to Maximinus:
“But you, My son, must have seen it once with your father in the field of Coin. The master of the field told your father to go and see his dead grain. You both went there, took two or three ears of grain in your hands, crumpled them, and everything fell to dust. On the way back, when you were half an hour away from Corps, your father gave you a piece of bread saying, “take, my son, eat some more bread this year because I don’t know who will eat any next year if the wheat continues this way.”
“I have, yes Ma’am, I remember now. I did not remember before.”
The conversation with the Virgin ends with a heartfelt appeal:
“Well, My children, you will make it known to all the people. Come on, My children, make it known to all the people.”
Having said this she rises from the ground and, slowly rises toward the Collet. Here she is joined by the astonished gazes of Maximinus and Melanie, who see His figure vanish and merge with the light with which He is enveloped, then the light also disappears.
Father Livio Fanzaga and Xavier Gaeta observe:
“These prophecies were in fact fulfilled. In particular, at that time came to France from North America the hitherto unknown cryptogamic epidemic, which indeed was a scourge for the vines; and infant mortality also afflicted the surrounding area of La Salette. Thus men were able to realize how much their behavior in regard to God and divine things was directly connected with developments in earthly things.”
The Secrets
Our Lady would reveal to each of the two children a different secret. The latter wrote them to Pope Pius IX on July 2, 1851; the secret that would be revealed to Mélanie was not made public until 1879.
Nota Bene: From the delivery of the original manuscript into the hands of Pius IX in 1851 to the present day, different versions of the “secret” circulate. Some versions have veiled anti-Semitic overtones, others sing praises with suspicious emphasis toward the pontiff who got to hold the manuscript. There are, in short, several scholars who raise doubts about the authenticity of the circulating versions, or at least suspect cuts or additions for purposes of censorship or social-political instrumentalization of the original message. Only the public exposure of the original holograph text, validated by super partes experts, could finally settle the issue and extinguish the controversy accompanying the contents of this alleged revelation.
THE TWO ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS OF LA SALETTE’S COMPLETE SECRETS SENT TO B. PIO IX:
https://profezie3m.altervista.org/ptm_lasal.htm
Investigation and approval
On July 7, 1847, the bishop of Grenoble asked canons Pierre-Joseph Rousselot and André Berthier (now a servant of God), both professors at Grenoble’s major seminary, to conduct a detailed investigation of the apparition, and prepare a full report. This report was concluded on October 15, 1847. In November 1847 the bishop submitted the report to an investigation commission of sixteen experts, under the leadership of the diocesan bishop.
The members of the commission were all diocesan priests. They were vicar generals canons Clair-Melchior Périer and André Berthier, canons Pierre Joseph Rousselot, Jacques Bouvier, J.-F. Desmoulins, J. Henry, J.-C. Michon, P. Petit, J. Revol and Pierre Chambon, parish priests Jean-Baptiste Gerin, archpriest of Grenoble Cathedral, Jean-Pierre Cartellier, archpriest of St. Joseph, H. Genevey, archpriest of St. Louis, J.-H. de Lemps, parish priest of St. Andrew and Jean-Jules Keisser, parish priest of St. Lawrence, and rector of the major seminary Jacques-Philippe Orcel.
A total of eight sessions were held, all between November and December 1847. In two of them Mélanie and Maximin were present and questioned at length. In the final vote twelve of the sixteen members supported the authenticity of the apparition. Three of these twelve, André Berthier, H. Genevey and J.-H. de Lemps had doubts about the truth of some elements of the apparition. One member, Jean-Pierre Cartellier, expressed certainty that the apparition was a fake. When the commission had finished its work, it approved the report. The bishop waited to give official approval because Cardinal Bonald, archbishop of Lyon, whose diocese of Grenoble was suffragan, supported Cartellier. The report was published by Pierre Joseph Rousselot on June 26, 1848 [4] and sent to Pope Pius IX in August 1848. The findings of the report were approved by the Holy See.
A meeting between Maximin Giraud and John Mary Vianney, the holy curate of Ars, took place on September 19, 1850. After a period of doubt due to a minor incident during the meeting, the saint also became a tenacious defender of the apparition until the end of his life. However, resistance within the hierarchy of the French Catholic Church, which sought an agreement with the authorities, did not disappear completely. Cardinal Bonald did not believe the apparition was authentic and suspected deception. The Cardinal demanded that the children reveal the secrets to him, boasting that he had a special mandate from the Pope.
The children agreed to his request. On July 2 and 6, 1851 , they both wrote an account of the apparition and the secrets the Virgin Mary had communicated to them. Mélanie, who wrote her text at the Sisters of Providence convent in Corenc, wrote only an abbreviated version of the secret and insisted that both texts be sent directly to the Pope. With this assignment two representatives, canons Pierre Joseph Roussilot and Jean-Baptiste Gérin, were sent to Rome. The text of these two secrets were delivered to Pope Pius IX on July 18, 1851.
Secretary of State Cardinal Lambruschini officially confirmed the communication of the documents the following day. His assistant Msgr. Frattini did the same. These documents have been published only very recently, discovered in the Vatican Secret Archives by Michel Corteville, M.S. On the same day, July 19 , 1851, the fifth anniversary of the apparition, the apparition was officially approved in a pastoral letter by the diocesan bishop under the title of “Our Lady of the Salette” (Notre Dame de la Salette). Thus wrote the bishop:
[The apparition] has in itself all the characteristics of truth and […] the faithful are justified in believing beyond doubt and with certainty. … (Art. 1) … Therefore, in order to pay our most heartfelt gratitude to God and the glorious Virgin Mary, we authorize devotion to Our Lady of La Salette. We allow the clergy to preach this great event and to draw practical and moral consequences from it. … (Article 3) … We expressly forbid the faithful and clergy of our diocese to speak or write against what we proclaim today and which therefore deserves the respect of all. … (art. 5)
This letter was later published, in translation, by the Osservatore Romano on June 4, 1852.
Theological significance
According to Catholic doctrine, this phenomenon belongs to the category of private revelations. Father Livio Fanzaga, speaking of the La Salette apparitions, wrote among other things:
“Our Lady’s tears at La Salette come to me spontaneously comparing them in some way to the blood sweat of Christ in Gethsemane. Jesus died for our sins – and thus made his infinite love explicit to us -, however, such love is not understood, is not accepted, is even rejected… Therefore, Our Lady’s tears stand for our non correspondence to grace, that is, the rejection we oppose to God’s mercy. They are tears of sorrow that she sheds on us, on her children who live in sin, because Mary cannot force conversion, but can only express bitterness at the rejection of the gift of love.”
The shrine
The shrine is located near the site of the apparition at about 1,800 meters above sea level and 14 km from the nearest town. The Basilica of Our Lady of La Salette was begun in 1852, finished in 1865 and declared a minor basilica in 1879. It is a large, rather austere church flanked by two massive towers. Inside, the nave of the basilica is bordered by two rows of Byzantine columns supporting a vaulted ceiling. A mosaic depicting Christ dominates the apse. The transept has three medallions representing the three moments of the apparition, the weeping, the message, and the departure. The basilica also includes a small museum on the history of La Salette.
Outside the basilica, pilgrims can walk on a path leading to the site of the apparition. Bronze statues placed in 1864 depict the three moments of the apparition.
A shrine was built at the site of the apparition in the years 1861 to 1879 to accommodate pilgrims who came to pray at the site of the apparition.
The Cross
The La Salette crucifix is the one worn by the Virgin Mary (hanging from a chain around her neck) according to Maximin and Mélanie’s account. Added to the cross are, in the middle of the side arms , a hammer, tongs, and at the foot of the cross is a skull with crossed femurs.
The hammer symbolizes the sinner nailing Jesus to the cross for his sins, and the tongs symbolize Christians attempting to remove the nails of the cross through lives of holiness and faithfulness to the Lord. The skull with crossed femurs represents death, which is inevitable for humans, as a reminder of the urgency of salvation.
PRAYER to Our Lady of La Salette
O Our Lady of La Salette, true Mother of Sorrows, remember the tears you shed for me on Calvary; remember also the care you have always had for me in removing me from God’s justice, and see if, after having done so much for this son of yours, you can abandon him. Reanimated by such a consoling thought, I prostrate myself at your feet, despite my infidelities and ingratitudes. Do not reject my prayer, O reconciling Virgin, but convert me and give me the grace to love Jesus above all things, and also to console You with a holy life, so that I may one day contemplate You in Heaven. So be it.
Our Lady of La Salette, reconciler of sinners, obtain for me the grace to sanctify the feasts and Sunday, the Lord’s day, as He asks of His children. Intercede also, sorrowful Mother, that the grave sin of blasphemy may be eradicated from our homeland. Our Lady of La Salette, pray for me who have recourse to You. Amen.
PILGRIMAGE VIDEO:
SOURCES:
https://biscobreak.altervista.org/2013/09/madonna-de-la-salette/.
http://www.mariadinazareth.it/apparizione%20la%20salette.htm
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostra_Signora_di_La_Salette
https://it.cathopedia.org/wiki/Nostra_Signora_de_La_Salette
https://profezie3m.altervista.org/ptm_lasal.htm
https://it.aleteia.org/2017/09/20/vero-significato-delle-terribili-profezie-madonna-la-salette/2/.
