The Story

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Written by Fr. Normand Theroux, M.S.

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)

True, they were very often recognized as celebrities of a sort, but they manifested all the shortcomings of ordinary human beings. It would seem that Our Lady wanted to hold them up to the world as people able to serve God and the Church even though their lives gave no evidence of outstanding holiness.

Mary’s Tears

Details: Written by Fr. Norman Theroux, M.S.

closeup of statue of the Weeping Mother at La Salette Shrine in France

No one can say that La Salette is a colorless, cold apparition. Our Lady did not appear on this high mountain to hand down a few warnings and prescribe prayers and practices. Nothing calm and cold about this event. The children, Maximin and Mélanie, saw her sitting on a stone, her face in her hands, and she was weeping.

Tears are always an overflow. They are pressured out of the heart by an excess of pain or joy. This is a case of pure pain.

Tears are not a merely physiological reality. They are also, as is the case here, signs of loving concern. Christ wept over Jerusalem because he was concerned. People weep because they care. Tears are the opposite of fish-coldness, indifference, disinterest and apathy. They signal involvement and the intense will to be part of another person's life.

These tears are La Salette's most powerful unspoken message. The beautiful Lady weeps but she never refers to her tears, never so much as alludes to them. They are meant to speak for themselves and they do. They are an unspoken message but they add a crucial dimension to her words. When we read the message of La Salette, we must remember that it was spoken by someone in tears. Without the tears, the ‘a capella’ words would take on an icy aloofness, even a kind of muffled ferocity. The words she spoke had to be spoken. The Lady's ‘problem’ was how to communicate this sad news without sowing worldwide panic and the threat of Armaggedon by famine instead of fire…

Read more: Mary’s Tears

A Song of La Salette

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Written by Fr. James P. O’Reilly, M.S.

For those who are both devoted to Our Lady of La Salette and fond of poetry, Fr. James P. O'Reilly, M.S., has written a beautiful poetic account of Mary's apparition on the Holy Mountain of La Salette. Line after line, Fr. O'Reilly draws us ever more deeply into the mystery of La Salette, sharing the fruit of many years of meditation. (The stained glass windows below summarize the La Salette Message and are in the Mary Keane Chapel, La Salette Shrine, Enfield, NH. The image of the La Salette crucifix is from the chapel windows in the Hartford House.)