Fr. Normand Theroux, M.S.

The Priority of “Heeding”

This story is about a rabbi's son. The child was out in the yard playing with some of his friends. All seemed to go well. After a while, the boy strolled into the house with tears streaking down his face. Dad asked what was wrong and what had happened. The boy looked at his father with a hurt expression and said: “We started to play hide and seek... I went to hide, and no one came to look for me.” The rabbi took his son into his arms and said, “Now you know how God feels sometimes.”

Have you ever felt alone or forgotten?

Being rejected, scorned, hated, and demeaned constitutes a sad state of being. But it could be worse. One could be forgotten, overlooked, left alone, disregarded – and worst of all, ignored. There is nothing quite like being passed over and dismissed without reason. Not heeding or not paying attention are relatively weak English verbs. The French, “... vous n'en faites pas cas,” gains in negative completeness: “you ignored it,” or “you dismissed it.”

What does it mean to cast off someone?

What are “my people" ignoring or not heeding? This lack of caring is mentioned twice in the Beautiful Lady's message. The first instance refers to her intercession in heaven: “How long a time I have suffered for you! If I want my Son not to abandon you, I am obliged to plead with him constantly. And as for you, you pay no heed!” This is by far the most threatening expression in the message of La Salette. Famine and death are terrifying, but there is nothing like her Son's “casting off” his people.

La Salette statue fashioned in ItalyThis casting off is dangerously similar to Revelation's prophecy in 3:15-16 addressed to the city of Laodicea: “I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Ignoring the Lady's tears is dangerously close to the lukewarmness to which Revelation refers. Spitting out and casting off are not so dissimilar, either.

Some people paid no attention to Mary’s words at La Salette?

The second mention of heedlessness concerns people's ignoring the spoiled harvest of potatoes. "If the harvest is ruined,” said the Lady, “it is only on account of yourselves. I warned you last year with the potatoes. You paid no heed. Instead, when you found the potatoes spoiled, you swore and threw in my Son's name. They are going to continue to spoil, and by Christmas this year, there will be none left.”

Is it conceivable that warnings such as the potato blight of 1845-1846 are of the same category as the present-day famines of Ethiopia, Sudan, and North Korea? Could these also be warnings of worse calamities to come?

Do we attend to and heed Mary or others?

Attention and heeding come from a combination of noticing and listening. The Beautiful Lady's tears come from the pain and suffering that always come in the wake of sin. I wonder, though, if the source of her sorrow doesn't come from a touch of hopelessness, from the knowledge that it is so difficult to wake someone up from their carelessness. The rapid conversion of the neighboring city of Corps and the hamlet of La Salette gave some hope to the local clergy, and the message of La Salette did make inroads into the Godlessness of that time. But the enthusiasm was not to last very long. The nineteenth century was to end with a craze of Godlessness practically unequaled since the French Revolution.

The two references to heedlessness within the message are the most poignant element of the Lady's message. Sins that make the Virgin weep don't even rate a turn of the head. Lukewarmness is neither too hot nor too cold. It is heedlessness.