Small Town Mary

In the 1980s, when I was growing up in a small town in Ohio, there was a popular song that we all loved. It glorified life in a small town and made us feel that we were something special because we didn’t have all the conveniences of urbanity. We could forget that we had a 45-minute drive to “civilization” and all the fun of life in the city.

We used to play that song, my dad and I, and later my friends and I, over and over, and the melody of it got into my bones. I still live in a small town, though it’s a different small town. I’ll probably raise my children in this small town, and when I think of that song, I smile. I could make it my anthem.

Life is pretty predictable in small towns, and the news spreads fast. If someone dies, the church committee knows before the funeral home. If a neighbor finds out someone hs cancer, the prayer chain goes into full gear by sundown. When there are family battles and babies born, there’s a support crew lined up before the reality sets in at home.

A Quiet Village Receives a Heavenly Visitor

When the Blessed Mother appeared to Melanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud — two uneducated peasant children — in 1846, the word spread quickly.

 

It was about 3:00 pm on September 19, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, in the mountain meadow in the village of La Salette, in southeastern France. Melanie, age 15, and Maximin, 11, were watching their cowherds together.

They had only become acquainted the day before, and Melanie wasn’t the social type, by her own account. She had warmed to Maximin the day before, and after a small lunch, the two of them began to play “Paradise,” a game of Melanie’s invention. It involved gathering stones together and decorating the resulting “house” with many flowers of all different colors. They arranged an area so that their so-called living space would be the ground floor, and a large rock above would be the actual “Paradise” (heaven). They strung garlands of flowers all around it and worked themselves all the way to sleepiness so that, a few feet from their house, they curled up on the grass and took a nap.

A Bright Globe of Light

They woke, and Melanie noticed that the cows had wandered off. She couldn’t see them, so they both climbed up on the hill beside their “Paradise” to find them. While they were there, a bright light — “shining more brightly than the sun,” Melanie wrote later — caught their attention, drawing them to it. It was coming from a beautiful lady who was on top of their “Paradise,” dressed in a white cloak with a yellow apron, with a crown and shoes decorated with many-colored roses. She wore a crucifix around her neck, with a hammer and pliers under each end of the cross-bar. Her beauty was compelling to the two shepherds, as were the tears streaming down her face.

The children hesitated, and the Beautiful Lady invited them to come closer, speaking at first in French. Melanie and Maximin were illiterate peasant children, and though they spoke French, they were much more comfortable in a local dialect. Soon after telling them, “I am here to tell you great news,” the Lady switched to this dialect.

Her Message

The Lady’s tears were a result of her Son’s anger. He was angry about people’s swearing, specifically using God’s name in vain, their working on Sundays and violating the day of rest, and the widespread disobedience of God’s laws. She told the children that she could not hold off her Son’s arm much longer, and that repentance in the form of confession, prayer, and penance were the only things that could stop his anger from taking action.

…She gave each of the children a secret of their own, which the other could not hear, with instructions as to when and how they could be shared. Before disappearing, Mary asked the children to spread her message. They returned home and told their incredible tale, and it was put in writing the next day.

The Word Spreads

It didn’t take long for the word to spread. La Salette was, after all, a small town, and this was a miraculous apparition. The Church officials were very cautious, opposing devotion to this vision of Mary and questioning it from every angle. In July of 1847, not quite a year later, the detailed investigation began, including eight conferences of questioning and debate.

Though it seemed inevitable that the apparition was true — 12 of 16 voted in unquestionable favor of its truth — the opposition, especially within the Church in France, was remarkable. There is still some lingering controversy, though in July, 1851, the apparition was officially approved, under the title Our Lady of La Salette, in a pastoral letter by the diocesan bishop (Msgr. Philippe de Bruillard).

…During the investigative process, in 1851, both Melanie and Maximin wrote their secrets and sent them to Pope Pius IX, where they remain in the Vatican secret archives… The miracles at La Salette started… Twenty-three cures were later accredited to that spring in the first year after the apparition. Since then, hundreds of additional miraculous cures have been reported.

Pray Morning and Evening!

…Our Lady of La Salette… admonished the two children: we should be in prayer morning and night. This is easier said than done in our hustle and bustle society.

If time is a problem, the Virgin Mary continued, at least say an Our Father and a Hail Mary. Perhaps she knew that women like myself, bearing the burden of busy, would roll our eyes at the idea of continual prayer.

“When will I get my work done?” I imagine myself asking her.

“Just say an Our Father and a Hail Mary, dear” she replied through the La Salette apparition.

Though it’s currently home to only 200 people, (the village of) La Salette remains a pilgrimage destination. Our Lady of La Salette appeared to a couple of small town nobodies, and she fanned the flame of controversy with the difficult message she brought. At the heart of it, though, was a call to conversion.

Mary leads us, always, to Jesus, and in this instance she was no different. At La Salette, France, Mary called all of us back to the fold from our sins, back to the arms of God, back to the glory of heaven. We can choose not to go, because free will remains ours to use. At La Salette, Mary also tells us, just as any loving mother would, of the consequences we’ll face.

(Article reprinted with permission from Catholic Exchange, Jan. 31, 2014)