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Fr. Silvano Marisa, M.S. Superior General of the La Salette Missionaries |
Our common baptism is a call to intimacy with the Lord. It is a vocation which is a lifelong call given to all. In the past, speaking about vocations used to center on priest and religious. Now we more correctly speak about a vocation or call to the church for every baptized member of the church.
At La Salette Mary gave us an invitation to “make her message known to all her people.” She echoed the words of her Son: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20a).
With the beginning of this New Year of Our Lord, most of us want to look good. Of course, this isn't the world's loftiest motivation but it isn't totally bad either. If is better than not caring at all and better than nothing. It's a beginning. It's a start and for many of us at this time of year, a start is already an achievement.
Go ahead and accuse me of being prejudiced, biased, partial and all that, but a good step toward looking good in sober fashion would be to read the message Our Lady gave at La Salette, think about it, then sit yourself down and scribble down some serious New Year's resolutions. If you follow even one of them, you will look very, very good – guaranteed!
One of the most difficult demands of the Christian life – one might even say the most difficult demand – is Jesus’ insistence on forgiveness. It is clearly taught by Jesus and he obviously expects that those who follow him will exercise forgiveness. For instance, in Matthew 6:14, Jesus has this to say about forgiveness: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.”
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Rev. Vincent Powell Harris, Rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC |
Witness also this exchange between Jesus and Peter again in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 18, verses 21 and 22: “Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.’”
Clearly we are called to forgive by Jesus, but Jesus is Jesus and we are who we are – finite, sinful and mystified people. So there is a problem. How can we ever hope to follow such an exacting and demanding command from Jesus?
I grew up Black in the Deep South in waning years of segregation. Born in 1952 two years before the Brown versus Board decision of 1954, three years before the murder of Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi and the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, and five years before the desegregation of Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. As you can see, I was too young to understand how deeply these pivotal events affected the life of this country in general and the lives of African-Americans in particular.
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Pope Francis, author of his recent Apostolic Exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel)”. |
Many people are, no doubt, well familiar with the warmth of Pope Francis. He is such a genuinely approachable person as witnessed in his visit to the World Youth Conference in Brazil, in his weekly audiences in St. Peter’s Square and his surprising telephone call to various needy individuals around the world.
In keeping with his personable attitudes, his personal Marian spirituality comes through in the conclusion of his recent Apostolic Exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel)”. In fact, if you listen well to his insights, you will hear echoes of Mary’s apparition at La Salette and her call to make the message of her Son known to all her people.
The Pope begins by placing Mary in the midst of her people, present among the disciples in the upper room when the Holy Spirit came upon them (Acts 1:14). In fact, he says: “She is the Mother of the Church which evangelizes, and without her we could never truly understand the spirit of the new evangelization.”
From the very first day of our existence as Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette, our identity has been intertwined with shrines, pilgrimages and welcoming visitors to our churches, residences and ministries.
On September 19, 1851, after “a precise and rigorous investigation” of the event, the witnesses, the content of the
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Bp. Philibert de Bruillard, Bishop of Grenoble |
message, and its repercussions, an aged Philibert de Bruillard, Bishop of Grenoble, pronounced with determination and excitement his judgment in a pastoral letter of instruction. He declared that “the apparition of the Blessed Virgin to two shepherds, September 19, 1846, on a mountain in the Alps, located in the parish of La Salette... bears within itself all the characteristics of truth and that the faithful have grounds for believing it to be indubitable and certain.”
In another pastoral letter, dated May 1,1852, the Bishop of Grenoble announced the construction of a Shrine on the mountain of the apparition, and went on to say: “However important the erection of a Shrine may be, there is something still more important, namely the ministers of religion destined to look after it, to receive the pious pilgrims, to preach the word of God to them, to exercise towards them the ministry of reconciliation, to administer the Holy Sacrament of the altar, and to be, to all, the faithful dispensers of the mysteries of God and the spiritual treasures of the Church.
“These priests shall be called the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette; their institution and existence shall be, like the Shrine itself, an eternal monument, a perpetual remembrance, of Mary's merciful apparition.”
The first priests were imbued with the spirit of the Apparition and devoted themselves to the service of the pilgrims. From the beginning they felt the call to live the vowed religious life. Six of them pronounced their first vows on Feb. 2,1858.
Editor: This article originally appeared in December, 1966, just a year after the conclusion of Vatican II, in the La Salette publication, Reconciliare, (vol. 2, #2) and has been reduced in size for republication. Fr. Novel obtained a Doctorate in Theology and Scripture.
The Event of La Salette… has caused a chain reaction of “salettine” spirituality, more especially a movement (centered on reconciliation) which Bishop Ginouilhac attributed to La Salette. The grace has left its mark, profoundly so at times, upon certain religious communities of priests, sisters and laymen. It is still happening.
A New Grace
It has been said that “La Salette is not a new doctrine, but a new grace”; and so it is. It adds nothing new to revealed truth, but it sheds new light upon that truth; it highlights certain aspects of it which, while not exactly forgotten remained nonetheless overlooked, in spite of their direct bearing on our God-centered life. The grace of La Salette has been designed to bring vanishing Gospel values back into focus.
As the people of God, ours is the unfinished task of reinterpreting the "sign" of La Salette over and over again; we will always need to think it over anew and to draw fresh inspiration from it.
Mary, who speaks at La Salette, is thoroughly well versed in matters of faith; she speaks to her people, a believing people grown forgetful of the mystery of its faith. Once reminded by its Queen, this people delve into the mystery once again, since it remains anchored in faith.
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The Irish Republican Army (IRA) used guerrilla tactics involving both urban guerrilla warfare and flying columns (as pictured) in the countryside during the Irish War of Independence of 1919 to 1922. |
It has been said that the Irish forgive and forget nothing, and yet, Northern Ireland has arguably become an international showcase of forgiveness, even against the bloody backdrop of Protestant-Catholic strife. This political drama, still unfolding, is captured in The Power of Forgiveness and the experiences of Northern Ireland – together with some other fractious societies – offer a fresh look at Catholic peace-builders in our time.
Reconciliation in Northern Ireland
In recent years, many voices of forgiveness and reconciliation in Northern Ireland have transcended what the Irish call their “troubles,” the merciless cycle of tit-for-tat revenge that erupted in the late 1960s. Even the Irish Republican Army, which led the armed resistance against British rule, began speaking the language of forgiveness in 2002 when it formally apologized to the families of innocents killed as a result of its campaigns in past decades. Still, as the film chronicles, the harsh memories of offense are vivid, and the healing has just begun.
Editor: Fr. Ted Brown, M.S. spoke to a large gathering of La Salette Associates from around New England on October 5, 2013.
It’s good to be back in Attleboro, MA, in my La Salette home and be with you today. The Retreat Center was my first assignment as a priest.
This a great time to be among the laity because Pope Francis sees the desirability of a fully engaged laity. He is inviting us to “be Church” and be actively involved as members of it.
As a La Salette Missionary speaking to La Salette Associates, I see four aspects of the La Salette Apparition that are important
With Vatican II, the Church has emphasized the Sacrament of Baptism as the source of our common call to follow Christ. Our unity as Church is now centered on the Pauline baptismal theology from the early Church:
“For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:27-28).
With this renewal of our common call to holiness, the members of religious communities worldwide were called, in response to Vatican II’s call to renewal, to rediscover the charism of their own religious community, thus exploring their special and unique calling by the Holy Spirit to live their charism within the church. With that renewal, there also was an effort to rethink and update their theology of their religious vows within the context of our common Baptism.
The scripture scholar, Bonnie Thurston, gives a truly biblical and refreshing vision of the three religious vows (1). First of all, she states that religious vows do not have as their prime purpose to merely “keep” the vows. They are intended to nurture and deepen certain qualities in the daily Christian life of religious, to extend and deepen their awareness of solid Christian values.
The Vow of Poverty – a Call to Detachment
The vow of poverty, as many religious learned in their novitiates of old, was seen as a call to be openhanded with regard to their possessions (perhaps their first and only thought). But poverty is also intended to develop in us detachment at the deepest level of our being, and this detachment is, itself, for the end of freedom. In fact, each vow, in its own way, has greater freedom as its goal (2).
The subject of suffering always brings people down to Monday morning reality. The reconciler's task consists in praying, greeting people, establishing a relationship... and suffering.
Why this is so is a mystery, just as suffering is a mystery. The only reason we can offer is that Jesus himself suffered for the sins of humankind. He suffered harassment from those who were jealous of his ministry, he suffered at Gethsemani and he endured death on the cross. Suffering played a large part in his life.
The first Reconciler thus made a bold statement: he came to rescue humankind from sin and he did it out of love, in the power of God and through suffering. Suffering is not popular. Mere mention of it is commonly avoided. We rarely, if ever, read of it in Catholic publications or hear about it from the pulpit.
At La Salette, Mary brings it to the fore as the principal means of protecting her people from punishment. This reconciliation ministry is only for those who love God and people enough to suffer for them and with them. The mention of suffering in Mary's discourse is bold indeed: the Mother of God is suffering in the very heart of glory. Who could have imagined it if she had not clearly stated it?