Mary’s unique crucifix

Solemn Crowning of Our Weeping Mother, a window from La Salette House Chapel, Hartford, ConnecticutMany renowned artists have created masterpieces depicting the Virgin Mother with the infant Jesus in her arms. Still, very few have left us a portrait of Mary carrying the image of the crucified Jesus on her heart – perhaps out of respect for the traditions of religious art.

However – who would have ever thought of it! When Our Lady appeared at La Salette, she wore a bright crucifix suspended from a golden chain on her chest. At the solemn crowning of Our Lady of La Salette on the Holy Mountain by Cardinal Guibert of Paris, Papal Legate, on August 21, 1879, the statue chosen for the occasion reproduced this unique crucifix of the Virgin, and Rome approved this new way of representing the Mother of God.

Here is how the little shepherdess Melanie described this crucifix of the Beautiful Lady:

"She also had a little gold chain around her neck. This chain was one finger wide and held a cross with its Christ. This crucifix was seven to eight inches long. It took from the top of the chest and went down to the crossed arms so that the foot of the cross was a little hidden under the sleeves."

According to the child, the figure of Christ looked alive and shone with a delightful radiance. This crucifix outshone in light and beauty all the finery of the Beautiful Lady.

The La Salette Crucifix – a symbol of our Redemption

The symbol of the Redemption on the breast of Our Lady of La Salette brings out the profound meaning of the apparition, showing us that the Immaculate Heart of Mary was the actual altar on which Jesus the Victim was immolated. Mary could not have done a better job of fulfilling her mission of Reconciliation and reminding a forgetful world of the pain she took for us at the foot of the Cross.

Upper lunette of La Salette Crucifix, window of Weeping Mother, La Salette House Chapel. Hartford. ConnecticutAt La Salette, the Queen of Sorrows transports us to the summit of Golgotha, where she became our spiritual Mother. According to St. Augustine: “When she offered the Heavenly Father the life of her Beloved Son, she cooperated by her love in the birth of the faithful to the life of grace.” After eighteen centuries, she descends on a mountaintop in the Alps, the Calvary of our times, to invite us to repentance – the children of her sorrow.

There she sits – on a stone in the solitude of the ravine of Sezia, bent over in an attitude of agony. This is Mary suffering with Jesus in Gethsemane. If, in the spiritual sense, tears are the blood of the blade, the tears of Our Lady of La Salette flow in union with the blood of Jesus watering the earth. We apply to the weeping Virgin the words of the Book of Lamentation (1:12): “Come, all who pass by the way, pay attention and see: Is there any pain like my pain?”

Mary’s pilgrimage of pain

The whole life of the Virgin Mary on earth was a long pilgrimage of pain. Good Friday marks the supreme stage of this pilgrimage, the day when she accompanied Jesus on the Royal Way of the Cross. Our Lady came to retrace this painful journey on the Holy Mountain of La Salette in the presence of two witnesses, Maximin and Melanie. They saw her rise from the stone where she was sitting and come towards them to deliver her message.

Pilgrims in the 1860s erect wooden crosses as Stations of the Cross on the Apparition site on the Holy Mountain of La SaletteShe stood before these humble children who did not understand the cause of her tears. Standing on Calvary, at the foot of the Cross, she was the Mother with the heart pierced by the sword, the Valiant Woman whose sorrow is beyond all tears and words. Her pain has no name in the human language. At La Salette, her tears fall on the crucifix of bright light, and she pronounces burning words. Then, silent and serious, she climbs the path of the mountain, reiterating, as it were, the drama of the Sorrowful Way.

The first pilgrims of La Salette were not slow to interpret this ascent of Our Lady. They hastened to plant the fourteen stations of the Way of the Cross on this privileged site. Thus, wherever the facsimile of the apparition is erected, a Way of the Cross is erected to respond to the plan of the Virgin. The exercise of the Way of the Cross in the open air is one of the great moments of the day for the pilgrims of the Sanctuary.

Our life seen as a pilgrimage back to God

Every pilgrimage is a Way of the Cross, and every human life is a pilgrimage towards eternity. This journey leads us from the Valley of Tears to the Mountain of God. Our trials and afflictions, whatever they may be – sickness, mourning, misery, conflict, anguish – are all milestones on the road that accepts in a practical way to lead us to the resurrection.

Having dedicated sixteen years of exile to the care of lepers on the island of Molokai and suffering from the awful disease himself, St. Peter Damien wrote these last words of resignation: “I am trying to make my Way of the Cross slowly in the hope of arriving soon at the summit of Golgotha.”

It is not enough for the Christian to carry the image of the crucified Jesus on his person. Each one of us must be a living crucifix. From the top of our cross, we enter the mystery of the Passion as members of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. In this way, we will become co-reconcilers with Our Lady of La Salette, who carried the Living Crucifix of her Divine Son on her heart.

(Translated from the French article, Elle portait un crucifix written by Fr. Emile Ladouceur, M.S.
in the La Salette Publication, Celle Qui Pleure, May 1959, pgs. 19-20)