Province of Mary, Mother of the Americas

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What a difference perspective can make. The way we see things at one point in our life can radically change as time goes by. As I look back on Christmases past, my focus as a child was totally and completely on gifts, and this continued long after I grew into adulthood.

As children, we were given various catalogues that came to our house through the mail, and we were asked to choose one big gift and one small gift. Anything else we were to receive would be of a practical nature, mostly clothes.

I would agonize for days over my choices, and the agony became especially intense.....

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Where were you born and raised?

I was born and raised in Our Lady of Sorrows Parish in Hartford, CT, and ironically I’m going back there in January 2012. My mother died when I was seven years of age and my dad was an uneducated immigrant from Ireland. We lived in an unheated flat with no hot water. This experience has helped me live very simply for my entire life. This simple lifestyle brought me to the La Salette Seminary in Hartford, next to my parish church.

My mom was a woman of faith, but I remember snippets of my experience of her. I had two brothers, but both died within a few months of birth.

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As we begin a New Year of Our Lord 2012, it’s good to remember that the “good news” underlying Mary’s words at La Salette to pray and follow her Son each day and we will be blessed beyond measure. Now that’s a New Year’s resolution on which we can all take time to reflect!

Our Past and Present – A Growing Proposition

For the past several years, I have been serving as Director of our La Salette Communications Center in Attleboro, MA. It has been one of the most challenging and enjoyable ministries in my forty years of priesthood as a La Salette Missionary. READ MORE.....
There is much to learn, I believe, from the behavior of Our Lady of La Salette toward Maximin and Melanie. First, she chose them humble, ignorant and poor. There is nothing much to envy in them. Second, they were not saints in the sense of official recognition as such by the Church. Nor will they ever be. Third, their lives after the apparition and after the local Bishop and assumed responsibility for spreading the news of La Salette, were still very ordinary.

“God chose the foolish of the world
to shame the wise” (1 Cor 1:27)

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A Tale of Two Christmases
Meet Fr. Jim Donagher, M.S.
Making Mary's Message Known...Digitally
Mary Chose Maximin and Mélanie

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Meet A La Salette

“Living and working with a people who suffer many privations gives all missionaries a different perspective on life. They serve a people who, despite their problems....READ MORE
A fearsome predator in the bush country of Madagascar is the crocodile. Known as the Nile crocodile, its origins are in Africa where it is the largest reptile south of the Sahara. It can weigh as much as 2,100 lbs....READ MORE
Windhoek, the capital city of Namibia, is situated on a plateau in the geographic center of a country half the size of Alaska. In 2002, acquiescing to the request of the Archbishop of Windhoek, La Salette Missionaries from Angola came to minister in Opuwo....READ MORE

The La Salette Missionaries have a formation house in Washington, DC, in the northeast area of the city, a poorer part of the city. Whenever I go down for a meeting or a visit, I try to get out to see some of the sights, sometimes a museum, at other times something new.

Just after the opening of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, I went to do “the tourist thing” but I was pleasantly surprised how uplifting and touching my experience was. On a beautifully pleasant summer day I went with a few other La Salettes and we walked through the new memorial nestled on the shores of the Tidal Basin, the sight of the yearly Cherry Blossom Festival. I remember my mother telling me about the Depression years and World War II but I was far too young to remember. Now it was my turn to learn about my country and “the days that try men’s souls.” READ MORE.....
Migrant worker
in Florida

I once participated in a workshop where the opening statement was: “Jesus Christ is an alien!” They went on to explain that, being divine, Jesus alienated himself by taking on our human nature. This, of course, came from Paul’s letter to the Philippians with reference to Jesus who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God something to be grasped. But he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are...” (Phil 2:6-7).

Migration is a far-flung phenomenom of our times. Many people, differently from Jesus, are aliens in our world today – over 175 million people live in country other than their country of birth. Most moved, as did my grandparents, searching for a better life. Some found fulfillment in their dreams. Others became – and still become – prey to exploitation with loss of human dignity, abuse of their human rights, victims of violence and prostitution. Many die while journeying to their dreams. READ MORE......
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French
writer, poet and pioneering aviator.

At times we can make life so complicated. One of the prime elements of a good life is following the “KISS” principle; namely, “Keep it simple, stupid.” As the online Wikipedia Encyclopedia explains: “(This) principle most likely finds its origins in similar concepts, such as… Albert Einstein's maxim that ‘everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler’, Leonardo Da Vinci's ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’, or Antoine de Saint Exupéry's ‘It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.’”

Within the realm of faith, there are similar basic statements that can illuminate the purpose of our life with great but profound simplicity. Mother Teresa of Calcutta encourages us to be aware that when many people do good things, marvelous deeds can be accomplished. She said: READ MORE......