By Fr. Ron Gagne, M.S.
Leonardo da Vinci once said: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” The message of the La Salette Apparition is at once simple and profound, imbedded in the “now” but still speaking of good things to come. It happened one crisp Saturday morning on Sept. 19, 1846, near the small village La Salette. The cows were herded up the mountainside by two poor, unschooled children, expecting nothing but a pleasant lunch with a requisite naps to follow.
Then their simple lives were disrupted by awaking to find their cows gone and a globe of light mysteriously shining in a nearby ravine. And their lives would never be the same.
A Simple Message
With the help of the insights of Fr. Johann Roten, S.M., a well-respected Mariologist from Dayton, Ohio, we will explore some of his insights into the La Salette Apparition.
Simplicity is a definite advantage. The message of La Salette is down-to-earth, to the point and quite practical. Stamped all over it are the words: back to basics. In her message, Mary advocates daily prayer, Mass on Sunday, Lenten observance; she recommends that we pray at least the Our Father and the Hail Mary each day; she bids us refrain from swearing and take seriously seasonal habits of faith (Lenten fast and abstinence).
This simple message has a popular appeal. It addresses the masses and provides those who ask: “What should we do?” with a straight answer (see Acts 2:37). La Salette is blessed with a simple mandate; it is the Church’s link to the masses.
The very simplicity of the message allows for further elaboration: daily prayer becomes a felt need for a properly active life of prayer; fidelity to the discipline of Lent leads to a deeper understanding of the role the various cycles of the Church year play in the life of a Catholic Christian.
An Effective Message
The La Salette message is attractive and moving in the affective and existential sense of the word. It is a meeting of two children with a concerned Mother, who weeps for her children.
The Apparition was only twenty minutes in length and was limited to only one visit. Yet the simplicity of Mary’s brief message is well-suited to revitalizing the Christ-life of pilgrims and to sustaining them on their continuing journey. The immediate effect of Mary’s visit at La Salette was that pilgrims were attracted in large numbers to the sight. In fact, two months after the apparition at La Salette, there were perhaps 500 people on the hillside, mainly from around the nearby town of Corps. But even before the snows had cleared in the following spring larger crowds started to arrive from a much wider area and an estimated 50,000 people were present at the sight on the first anniversary of the apparition.
Her message proposed a concrete and practical spiritual dynamic of prayer, penance and a responsible Christian daily and weekly life that even children could readily understand. Her words were direct yet compassionate. Her examples instantly got the attention of those who lived on the subsistence level from day to day (wheat harvest being ruined, children under seven dying in the arms of their family, and walnuts and grapes rotting).
Over the many years since the apparition, Mary’s message has shown a remarkable resilience. Its impact on the pilgrims from around the world has endured. Children are still drawn instinctively to the Weeping Mother; conversions and renewal of faith happen on the Holy Mountain and beyond. Casual visitors to the La Salette Shrines around the world include many who came out of curiosity and unexpectedly left with their faith renewed, their hearts touched by her words, her compassion, her mandate to make her message known.
The message of La Salette holds within it a tremendous continuing potential for in-depth Christian transformation of lives. Miracles are still happening long after the actual event should have faded into the dustbin of history.
Perhaps one of the secrets of its present-day appeal is that its essence – its genetic code, its DNA – is the fact that its charism (or gift to the Church) is understood as a mission of all God’s people. Every person is being asked to make her message known. And many hear it and share it willingly with those they meet.
The Event and Mission are One
The event and message of La Salette are intimately intertwined; one cannot exist without the other. They reflect in a visual and existential way the essential elements of our faith and are as inseparable as mother and child, speaker and word.
Revelation is event. The Event of the Apparition is an essential element of La Salette’s founding grace. It needs to be explored and translated into theological and spiritual meaning. The Event fulfills a bridging function; it provides a link between theology and popular religiosity, between Christianity in theory and its active practice. In this way, a message rooted in solid theology becomes available to the masses.
Christian life involves mediation: La Salette reminds us that Christianity is a religious tradition based on mediation. Though God gives himself to be shared, God is not immediately present. God entrusts his message to Mary. Mary in turn entrusts her message to the young visionaries. Then the visionaries pass God’s message on to the multitude of people, mostly pilgrims. They are called to share this message with others.
La Salette is Prophetic in Character
While never bypassing its official channels, God elects people – freely and in a timely fashion – to highlight the basic realities of his definitive and total revelation. La Salette is prophetic in character because, like all authentic apparitions, it adapts the Gospel message for today. This, it is important to note, is not a matter of objective novelty but of prophetic adaptation.
La Salette calls us to adapt the essentially complete and definitive Gospel message to a new situation. The verb adapt, however, falls short here because the message of La Salette does more. It makes the Gospel’s hidden potential known. The charism of prophecy – that is, speaking in the name of God – stands out in sharp relief at La Salette.
The La Salette Charism of Reconciliation
Lastly, the La Salette charism of reconciliation has its source, as all charisms do, in the Holy Spirit. In the verses before the familiar quote from St. Paul on how “God… (has) given us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18 and 2 Cor 5:18-20), he introduces this important passage by saying: “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor 17). He refers to the transformation caused by living within a new covenant, characterized by the Spirit, which gives life.
This charism of reconciliation is concrete, down-to-earth and practical in nature and goes to the heart of spiritual change, or conversion. It invites a total response, not a half-hearted, words-only response. It is genetically far more than a pious devotion but rather claims the whole person.
Lastly this charism of reconciliation is eminently useful to the ecclesial community, to the well-being of humanity and to the needs of the world. It asks for total response and a life-long commitment to be minister of reconciliation. It asks us to always remember that 1) God has reconciled us to himself, brought all of us in oneness; 2) like Paul himself, we are entrusted with the message of reconciliation; 3) we are Christ’s ambassador, though whom God appeals to others.
Simple Can Be Beautiful
We began with the quote from Leonardo da Vinci: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Through our brief exploration, we have attempted to show how the message and charism of La Salette is imminently practical and basically beautiful in its simplicity, yet filled with the wisdom of God and spoken through the presence, words and attitude of Our Lady of La Salette. It is a call back to the basics of our faith yet echoing the prophetic and profound call “to love the Lord, your God with all your whole heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30 and Dt 6:5).
