Some Notes on the La Salette Message

First: Perhaps too much has been read into this sentence over the years, but scriptural references to the phrase "do not be afraid" is highly encouraging. Each time it is said in Sacred Scripture it occurs in a saving event.
Each time, it is God speaking, or one of his representatives and the injunction not to be afraid is meant to calm the frightened individual. For example:

• "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home" (Matthew 1:20).
• "Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear a son..."(Luke 1:13).
• "Then the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold you will conceive..." (Luke 1:30-31).
• "The angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid; for behold I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people" (Luke 2:10).
• "At once Jesus spoke to them: "Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid. Peter said to him in reply, 'Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water" (Matthew 14:27-28; John 6:20).

Second: "How long have I suffered for you. If my Son is not to cast you off, I am obliged to entreat him without ceasing."

Third: "During Lent, they go to the butcher shop like dogs."

This is probably the most forceful sentence in the entire message. Tough love. But why such insistence on penance? Penance is not just doing without but also and especially giving. Giving and sharing oneself, for example, loving in particular, is impossible without a sense of penance. In this way of understanding it, it is essential in any life if it is to be quickened by love for others. There is no love possible without penance because love demands vast quantities of it, often daily.

Fourth: Prayer is prominent in the message of La Salette.

• The Lady confesses that "if my Son is not to cast you off, I am obliged to entreat him without ceasing."
• The Lady asks: "Do you say your prayers well, my children?" In response to Maximin's negative answer, the Lady says that "it is very important to do so, at night and in the morning. When you don't have time, at least say an 'Our Father' and a 'Hail Mary', and when you can, say more."
• The Lady places the interesting word "well" into her question, "Do you say your prayers well ... ?" There is a clear insistence on the quality of the prayer she asks for.
• The Lady highlights the Mass in her discourse: "Only a few rather old women go to Mass in the summer....they go to Mass only to scoff at religion."

Fifth: "If (people) are converted, the rocks will become piles of wheat and it will be found that the potatoes have sown themselves."

Conversion must have a high priority in God's scale of values, if such remarkable results are to flow from it. It is the only event in a person's or a people's life that will trigger off such a miraculous consequence.

We can conclude that conversion, or personal reconciliation will bring about Messianic abundance among the people. If God's pleasure is shown by the gifts he showers on his people then we can conclude that surely God must be extremely pleased by any attempt at conversion. Mary refers to an abundance as a consequence of conversion when she says: “If (people) are converted, rocks and stones will turn into heaps of wheat, and potatoes will be self-sown in the fields.”

Sixth: The incident of the field of Coin is an example of how to manifest care toward people.

Caring, as the Lady shows in her caring-clinic, is basically interested in details:

• "with your papa"
• "The owner of the field said to your papa..."
• "You took two or three ears of wheat in your hands"
• "You rubbed them and they crumbled to dust."
• "Then you came back from Coin" etc. etc.

The sheer proliferation of details is meant to jump-start Maximin's memory, but it also shows the limits to which the Lord will go to show care and interest, even in the apparently useless and meaningless details of a person's daily life.

Seventh: La Salette is not just a visit made by the Virgin or a message given. It was, and is a way of life proposed to everyone.

The message surely bears repeating but the people who will extend the apparition must also live by its demands. The Lady said much about herself in the discourse to show the world what she was doing to reconcile the world to her Son. She prayed, she suffered, and all this without ceasing.

Eighth: The cross of La Salette says, as St Paul did, that Christians must "preach Christ, and Christ crucified, folly to the Gentiles...."

Ninth: The tears of Our Lady are the most prominent sign and feature of the La Salette event.

It is the ultimate sign of concern and deep-seated caring. Tears are the sign of a letting-go, a surrender to irrepressible emotion, be it grief or joy. It is a symptom of complete frustration. In this case it is frustration over the Lady's people unwillingness to come to conversion and reconciliation.

A reconciler is one who eventually will earn the true gift of tears. We cry for the neighbor when his welfare has become so personal that his hurt becomes our own. Hence the tears. Hence her tears.

Still, tears are a manifested mark of concern. In this sense, they are a compliment, a homage and a vast source of encouragement. The Lady could have said that she cried for her people, but she found that this sadness, these tears, had to be shown.

The apparition took place especially to show this attitude and these tears and this concern for her people. The message itself might have been communicated in many other spectacular ways but there is no other way to communicate "tears" than by showing them on the face of a live person. A reconciler is one who first shows, manifests, exhibits, displays, demonstrates concern. After this his chances of serving as intermediate and "arbitrator" are enhanced.

Tenth: The Lady spoke to her time. She also phrased her discourse in a manner adapted to the future.

She spoke of "down to earth" issues such as potatoes and the potato famine, of spoiling wheat and dying children, but also of peoples' broad-based alienation from God. The Lady's message addresses both personal and social sin, as well as the consequences of both upon people.

Michael Crosby, O.F.M., in his Spirituality of the Beatitudes (pages 18-19) writes:

"To be at the heart of the world with good news, we must understand our world. We need to analyze society in its entirety — the individual, the interpersonal, and the societal dimensions – if we are to go to "all the nations" (28, 19) (Mary: "All my people").

“In a special way, because they have so much influence over the lives of people and groups, we must understand the institutions, "isms," and ideologies around us so that we might discover how to address them with the authority of the word within us."

"In the past we have tended to limit our Gospel and spirituality to the first and second dimensions of life (individual and interpersonal). Even though Matthew could view the individual in terms of the whole generation (Matthew 12:39-43), we have not taken sufficient cognizance of the impact of the infrastructure with its institutionalization of people into social arrangements reinforced by ideologies.

“Spirituality based on the awareness of the infrastructure and the impact of social sin on people and groups goes largely ignored in our country and in other developed nations. Consequently we have been unable to promote seriously the cosmic change demanded by the Gospel."

Eleventh: "Well, my children, you will make this known to all my people."

When she spoke this command a second time, she said with more emphasis, in French: "Eh bien! mes enfants, vous le ferez bien passer à tout mon peuple." This means: "Well, my children, you will make this known to all my people."

Note: Some of these visuals are original German stained glass windows from the Enfield, New Hampshire Chapel which have now been repaired and placed into the Attleboro Shrine Church in Attleboro, Massachusetts on Sept. 19, 2021. Others (“Come near, my children” and “Do not be afraid”) have been fashioned with the French stained glass windows in the La Salette House Chapel in Hartford, Connecticut.