Spirituality & Charism

Our Mission from the La Salette Apparition

Editor: This is Part One (of two parts) of the concluding chapter of “A Search into the Origins and Evolution of the Charism of the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette”, a thesis submitted in 1975 by Fr. Gene Barrette, M.S., our eventual Superior General (1982-1988). His entire thesis is available here.
Mary, seated, weeping
The journey from the mountain top at La Salette has been a long and winding one. The echoes responding to “make this known to all my people” have sounded in many tongues and very distant lands.

The …chronicle of the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette is not the typical history of glorious deeds. There are inside views that are usually glossed over with the phrase, “a difficult period.” And yet, the facts do a great deal to accentuate the role of grace and divine providence in the evolution of the Congregation, as well as the heroism of its great men.

Several Wonderfully Gifted Men

The pages of history demonstrate that these were not men who were being led by quick success or the promise of personal fulfillment; there was little of either. Rather, these were men drawn into a vocation of sacrifice by the magnetic pull of a mother’s tears and the urgency of her message. The years of inner turmoil and of difficulties with ecclesial authorities and the State should serve as an inspiration to those who find the process of renewal a tedious and, at times, discouraging one.

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Covenant and Reconciliation in the La Salette Apparition

Reconciliation is not only a call to a simple return to God, to a kind of arm's-length relationship, a sort of friendly non-aggression pact between God and his people. It is a call to what once were the close ties of the covenant. And more than that, it is a call to the mutual belonging implied in the covenant formula:

Returning to God

At La Salette, Mary said: “If my people will not obey...” To obey is to return, to submit. This call is the same as God's invitation to return. The frequent use of this expression by Mary (“my people”) is suggestive, bringing to mind as it does the covenantal references to the chosen nation of Israel, as well as to the new people of God.

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Reflections on the Phases of the La Salette Apparition

(Editor: This is part of the Introduction to the First Intercultural Workshop on La Salette Spirituality, held in Attleboro, MA, from April 27-May 7, 1993, edited)
French Holy Card from early 1900s depicting all three phases of the Apparition
There are reflections on the three phases of the Apparition of Our Lady of La Salette.

Phase One: The Beautiful Lady appears in tears as she sees her needy, sinful people, yet she assures us there is reason for hope.


Phase Two: Mary enters into dialogue with these two poor, unschooled children and soon addresses Maximin about his father’s concerns for the coming famine. She urges people to draw closer to ways of her Son through prayer, Eucharist and the Lenten habits of faith.

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La Salette and Lourdes

In our ongoing efforts to learn more about our faith, we are invited, as devotees of Our Weeping Mother of La Salette, to study more closely the traits of spiritual affinity that exist between La Salette and Lourdes. Strange differences in motive and appeal distinguish the two apparitions. There is a marked sort of austerity and isolation belonging to the Virgin of the Alps. No less discernible is the communicative joy drawing us to the Virgin of the Pyrenees.

At first glance, little in common appears between the tears of the Sezia and the smiles of Massabielle. Upon due reflection, however, our heart cannot fail to recognize the same tender loveliness peculiar to each of these Visions. Leaving aside all personal leanings and preferences, it would seem a fair and free compromise to select from the two devotions the chief elements of divergence apt to satisfy varied yearnings of the soul. The proper balance of piety thereby obtained might prove most appeasing and fruitful.

Different Externals but a Similar Mission

Each apparition brings before our eyes the same Mother of God’s people under a particular garb and guise, a distinct attitude and pose, with diversified action and discourse. The message, nevertheless, and the mission of each are similar. The grace and bounty is identical in both.

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The Basics of La Salette Spirituality

(Editor: This is part of the Introduction to the First Intercultural Workshop on La Salette Spirituality, held in Attleboro, MA, from April 27-May 7, 1993, edited)

Assumption of Our Lady of La SaletteWithin the last several years, over twenty percent of the membership of our La Salette Congregation has participated in the La Salette Month. Many others have been involved in personal and professional reflection on the meaning of La Salette – the event, the message, its biblical roots and its relevance – understood in the content of the signs of the times in which we live.

For many, this process of prayer; study and reflection has become a form of continuing education and has been enriching personally and within our ministries. Despite these efforts, many have continued to ask for a deepening of our understanding of a “La Salette Spirituality.”

Our International, Multi-Cultural Community

As an international, intercultural Congregation, we live the message in diverse economic, political, religious and social situations. In calling members of the Congregation together for this workshop, it was hoped that the participants would speak not only from an intellectual and academic orientation but particularly out of the content of their world, culture, economic situation and lived personal and ministerial experiences.

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Seeking Justice For Childbearing Women

Childbearing women today face a number of social inequities in the United States. More than 40% of US counties have no maternity care provider. Urban and rural hospitals are closing labor and birth units, especially impacting services to women of color and women with limited financial or social resources. Mismatches often exist between the payment method a pregnant woman has and the local practices that will accept her reimbursement, leading to restricted choices or financial hardships.

Racial and ethnic groups, such as African-American women and Hispanic women, experience higher rates of infant and maternal morbidity and mortality compared to Caucasian women.

A Rise In Maternal Death

In spite of spending the most money per individual for healthcare, the United States is the only developed nation that is experiencing a rise in maternal death, a tragedy that occurs to more than two women in this country every 24 hours.

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The Lady's Lovely Cross Radiates Freedom's Light

Editor: This reflection was originally the first part of the La Salette Triduum, given at the La Salette Shrine in Enfield, N.H., in September 1998 by Fr. Paradis, M.S.

The mid-afternoon sun paled that Saturday, September 19, 1846. “Come quick, Memin, come and see,” a stunned Melanie stammered. “Come and see a brightness.” “Where?” her puzzled young companion replied. “Over there, see?”

And in the ravine where they had shared a meager midday meal of hard bread and goat cheese, and where, not at all routinely, they had napped, a globe of dazzling, radiant light swirled. This brightness eventually parted and the mountain herders saw a pair of very white hands, a face buried in these hands, elbows resting on knees, a woman, seated on a pile of stones, weeping.

She rose, tall and stately, and gently, reassuringly called them to herself. Their eyes were soon riveted upon the source of the blinding light that clothed the Lady, that enveloped her and embraced them both; what they called “the Lady's lovely cross.”

The Cross – Jesus’ Finest Hour

The cross of Jesus is history's critical turning point – human freedom's finest hour, the hour of Jesus; the hour he both dreaded and eagerly anticipated, an hour in which his mother shared deeply. “This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again” (John 10:17). “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). This gift that Christ brings is freedom from self-delusion, from all that is self-deception, all that is escapism, evasion and rationalization.

Indeed, there are many ways to tell the story of the cross. According to St. John, it involved a collision between politics and religion. The chief priests and Pontius Pilate conspired to solve the “Jesus Problem” while managing to remain enemies. Jesus, meanwhile, and in that unmistakable dignity which personal integrity confers, stood at center stage like a light, like a mirror in which all those around him saw themselves clearly for who they really were.

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La Salette Spirituality – Latin American Style

Our Roots – Awareness of Our World

The father of Rigoberta Menchu was burned alive by the members of the Guatamaltecan (or Guatamalan) Army. Her mother died around the same time, and five of her sixteen brothers and sisters were killed by members of the military. All this suffering led her to make an option that would mark her existence, an option for the life and dignity of indigenous peoples. That option earned her the Nobel Peace Prize for 1992.

For Rigoberta, the burning bush wasn't the folkloric one that Moses saw; hers was the holocaust of her own father. On that sacred ground, she had an experience of pain and of God that were the source of her calling. “I have seen the humiliation of my people in Egypt, I have heard them cry to me when they were being maltreated. I'm aware of their suffering. I have come down to save them” (Exodus 3:7-8).

 

Observe, Judge, and Act

As we attempt to speak of a La Salette Spirituality from the perspective of Latin America, and specifically of Argentina and Bolivia, the starting point must be the world we find ourselves in. The method of analysis, "Observe, Judge, Act", used with strength in Medellin and Puebla – and authoritatively suppressed by the powerful appointed leaders of Santo Domingo – is the best method to give direction to this reflection on spirituality because it is a method that avoids the pitfalls of lofty abstractions and insists on realism. This respects the principles of the Incarnation: God saves us in and through the human condition of Jesus Christ.

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Converted at La Salette

The Rev. William A. Fillinger, S.J., the only Norwegian Jesuit in the world, who has been teaching in colleges and high schools for the past 37 years, and will celebrate his golden jubilee as a member of the Society of Jesus on September 13, owes his conversion to a pilgrimage he made to the Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette. The 69-year-old priest who was born at Christiania (now Oslo), Norway, on November 11, 1867, has taught at various times in New Orleans where he has been stationed permanently since 1920.

Much beloved by his students, but considered a "terror" in the classroom, Father Fillinger has his own way of enforcing discipline. He is reputed to be the "strictest" teacher in the order, but it is his custom never to give an unsatisfactory note in conduct. All his boys get A's in deportment. "They cut up, but they mean well," he said. Father Fillinger is the only one in the Southern Province of the Jesuits to teach as long as 37 years, with the exception of Father Yenni, who during his lifetime wrote Yenni's "Latin Grammar." In his long career, he has taught 1,800 boys and there is no record or rumor of his having made a single enemy among the number.

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I Gave You Six Days to Work

The Beautiful Lady of La Salette, as the spokesperson of God, addresses these words to us about labor on the Lord’s Day. They are an echo of that mandate given to our first parents after the first sin: "By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground, from which you were taken;" (Genesis 3:19a).

We Live, We Work, We Give Thanks

And so it has been all through the ages of our history. Part of our life on earth has been a struggle for existence against the unruly elements. From dawn until dark humans have had to wrest from an ungenerous earth the necessities of human life. Labor and toil have been our lot, in the field and mill, in the office and the store. Often enough, perhaps, we have not unreasonably revolted against the seeming drudgery of it all; and yet in our inmost heart we have always coveted as a blessing an honest occupation.

Work is a Gift, a Right and a Responsibility

It is a blessing, indeed, for it ennobles the human character and adds a zest and purpose to what would else be a dull, dreary existence. There is something inspiring about those who toil, using nature's gift of body and spirit to insure for themselves and their progeny the joys of a modest home. A physical necessity, honest work is also a moral safeguard. An excess of leisure has brought many a person upon evil days. It is an accepted truth that “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop”; and the prevailing unemployment of millions of people today confirms too well this time-worn adage.

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