Honoring Our Lady of La Salette in Hartford, CT

Fr. Joe O’Neil, M.S., near the La Salette Facsimile; photo: Aaron Joseph/Catholic TranscriptOn a peaceful autumn afternoon on September 19, 1846, high in the French Alps, a Beautiful Lady appeared to two children who were herding their cows on the hillside. She gave them a message for the entire world, a message of reconciliation and hope that still resonates in our 21st century.

The Beautiful Lady, dressed in white and gold, was seated on stones with her face in her hands, weeping. She told the frightened girl and boy, “Come nearer, my children. Don't be afraid. I am here to tell you great news.”

The Lady, who appeared on Sept. 19, 1846, in La Salette, France, came to be known as Our Lady of La Salette, Reconciler of Sinners, and her message is as urgent today as it was 175 years ago, says Father Joseph M. O’Neil, a priest of the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette and Pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Hartford, Connecticut. “Her message is important because there is a strong similarity between 19th-century France after the Revolution and twenty-first-century North America, where there is a dramatic decline in religious practice,” Father O’Neil says. “Basically, her message invites us to come back to God, to come back to her Son, Jesus.”

Her merciful message

The Beautiful Lady told the children—Maximin Giraud, 11, and Melanie Calvat, 14: “If my people refuse to submit, I shall be forced to let fall the arm of my son. It is so strong and so heavy, I can no longer hold it. How long a time I have suffered for you. If I want my son not to abandon you, I must plead with him without ceasing. And as for you, you pay no heed. However much you pray, however much you do, you will never be able to repay the pains I have taken for you.”

She decried those who worked on the Sabbath and who took her Son’s name in vain. She also prophesied that a great famine would occur and urged the children to attend Mass and to say their prayers at night and in the morning. Finally, looking toward Rome, she said, “Very well, my children, make this known to all my people.” Then she then rose and gradually disappeared in a resplendent light.

The apparition of Our Lady to the two shepherd children in the hamlet of La Salette was approved five years later by the local Bishop, Philbert de Bruillard. It is the first of the three major modern Marian apparitions, which include Lourdes and Fatima.

The 175th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of La Salette will be marked on Sept. 19, 2021, the feast day of this Marian apparition A grotto with a small stream of running water, devoted to Our Lady of La Salette, with statues of Our Lady, Maximin, Melanie and their dog, Loulou, is located inside Our Lady of Sorrows Church in a cave facsimile of the apparition, containing the three phases of the Apparition.

A Vocation to the La Salette Missionaries

The La Salette Facsimile is a special grotto inside Our Lady of Sorrows Church; photo: Aaron Joseph/Catholic TranscriptBorn in Dorchester, Mass., Father Joseph M. O’Neil originally worked as an underwriter for the Firemen’s Fund Insurance Co. At 26, he was transferred from the Boston office to Hartford, where he began attending Mass at Our Lady of Sorrows.

“For years, I had been struggling with a vocation and then after meeting the Missionaries at Our Lady of La Salette, I signed up,” he recalls. In August 1987, he entered the La Salette Missionaries, and a year later went to the novitiate in Washington, D.C. He was ordained in 1993. He has also served at the parish of Good Shepherd in Orlando, Florida; this is his second time as pastor at Our Lady of Sorrows.

The Congregation of the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette was founded in 1852 to serve as a “perpetual remembrance of Mary’s merciful apparition.” And in 1892, two La Salette Missionaries arrived to explore settlements in the New World and settled in Hartford. Since that time, the United States presence has grown nationwide. Their province is known as the Province of Mary, Mother of the Americas.

The La Salette religious congregation of priests and brothers was formed to spread the message of reconciliation and its charism is “calling people to be reconciled with God, their neighbor and themselves,” Father O’Neil says. “In our ministries, we help people find God, peace and forgiveness.”

Window of Our Lady of Sorrows in Our Lady of Sorrows ChurchOur Lady of Sorrows Church has been staffed by the Missionaries since it was elevated to the status of a parish in 1895. It was their religious community’s second parish after coming to the United States and the one they have been ministering in the longest.

Ministry at Our Lady Of Sorrows Church, Hartford, Connecticut

Meanwhile, there is an intimate connection between Our Lady of La Salette and Our Lady of Sorrows, whose feast is observed on Sept. 15.

The statues in a grotto devoted to Our Lady of La Salette, original to our last to Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Hartford have been had been part of the church since 1925.

(Republished with permission of The Catholic Transcript, Archdiocese of Hartford, CT, September 2021, pgs. 18-19)