The La Salette Apparition – A Rich Marian Legacy

 

Editor: This is the third in a series of three talks, based on notes taken by Fr. Donald Paradis, M.S. and expanded by Fr. Ron Gagne, M.S. These talks, entitled “La Salette – Charism as Mission,” were delivered at Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette Attleboro, MA, by Fr. Johann Roten, S.M., Director of the Marian Center at Dayton University, Dayton, Ohio. They were given on two occasions: August 17, 2002, and April 23, 2005.

Mary’s appearance at La Salette on September 19, 1846, is not the abstract, disembodied and remote figure favored in the 19th-century as reflected, for example, in traditional paintings of the Immaculate Conception.

Mary at La Salette is a highly interactive figure, as shown by her gestures, postures, and words: sitting, weeping, standing, speaking, inviting the two frightened herders to come near, going before them, asking them to follow her as she ascends the knoll from the ravine where they had first seen her and talked with her.

The Virgin at La Salette is also a paradoxical figure. Dressed like a local maidservant, she nonetheless radiates as the Queen of heaven. She answers the most crucial question about herself: Which image of Mary is the accurate one?

At La Salette, she is not so much the sorrowful but the compassionate mother. The Apparition points to the two dimensions of her motherly compassion, its Cana and Calvary aspects. She suffers both with Christ, her Son, and with us. Her compassion expresses itself in two ways:

• intercession: “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!”
• intervention: I warned you last year with the potatoes. You paid no heed.”

A Christ-centered charism

Adoration of the Magi by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)The various elements of the La Salette event and message culminate in Jesus Christ. Mary is entirely centered on Christ. She speaks of him, speaks for him, and leads the young seers on their way to him. The spirit of La Salette is, not surprisingly, the spirit of Jesus Christ and anticipated the Christ-centered spirit of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965).

La Salette focuses not so much on the person of Christ as on the work of Christ — a salvation-centered work; and, more precisely, a Cross-centered work. Christ here is faceless, explicitly symbolized through her “Son’s arm,” which brings to mind his total self-giving for our sake.

A phrase frequently used in Scripture, at La Salette, the image of her Son’s arm reminds us that Jesus Christ is never for himself but always for us. The image of the arm brings to mind the giving, guidance, and protection that God’s power and might, God’s love and wisdom, never fail to hold out to us.

• The image of his outstretched arm is the absolute sign that, in Jesus, God made himself a captive of love;
• The arm nailed to the Cross shows Christ’s helplessness. “. . . the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:23-29). He put himself into the hands of human beings, lovingly agreed to rely on human hands to set his might and mercy free to work in human lives;
• The arm image warns us that punishment always remains a possibility. Mary’s words here caution us that if we fail to allow Christ’s word to shape our lives, we are punishing ourselves if we fail to allow Christ’s mercy to heal our hearts.
• Meditation on the arm Christ extends to us from the Cross raises the critical question a true disciple must grapple with: Will I free Jesus to work his will in my life or hold him captive? What will it be? Hammer or pincers?

A Marian Pastoral Approach

An old French Holy Card with the three phases of the Apparition with an overview of ShrineMission calls for practicality. To achieve the church’s goal, our La Salette mission must spell out its objectives and devise a method for reaching them. The La Salette apostolic method is distinctively Marian.

We find it in the event itself and, more specifically, in the fact of the three phases of the Apparition:

• First Phase: Mary seated and shedding tears – emphasis on solidarity with and presence to the world;
  Mary is seated and that she is weeping conveys the sense of her sharing in and presence to the human condition. The heavenly Visitor is by no means an outsider, observing and assessing the situation from afar and in a detached way. Neither does she shrug her shoulders or wring her hands as if to say: “This is a terrible situation. There is nothing you and I can do.”
• Second Phase: Mary speaking and teaching – emphasis on the conversation about the correct order of things;
• Mary stands and engages Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud in conversation. We witness here a decisive teaching moment. Effective teaching requires that we meet people where they are, reflect with them on the specific contours of their situation, and help them come to see for themselves how it can be improved radically.
  She relates the concrete reality and the situation people are struggling with in their ruined crops to the whole truth and down-to-earth quality of their God’s compassionate presence to them. She hopes to guide them toward a healthy self-image as committed adult Christians, responding more faithfully to their God-given potential and to the bright promise the world entrusted to them holds.
• Third Phase: Mary ascends into the light – emphasizing creation’s progress toward end-of-time fulfillment. Mary’s behavior displays a logical sequence and a gradual progression.
  Mary, we could say, “walks the walk.” She climbs the steep slope up from the ravine of the Sézia, where she had spoken with the two seers, and eventually vanishes. She does not, however, take her leave without a significant gesture. When she reached the top of the knoll, she stood motionless, “looked up to heaven and then looked one last time to the children” before merging with the light.

The two previous phases find their complete meaning in the third. Active presence in the world and wise teaching in the ways of God must have a future orientation. Without this dimension, the La Salette apostolic method falls short of its ultimate goal: conversion. This means that we, too, must walk the Mary walk.

Our daily life must witness to the reality of the life beyond, witness to that glory of God to which everything we do should be pointing. As people on an urgent mission, we must walk in the same direction we would wish to see everyone walk . . . toward justice and peace and compassion and the grateful, joyful, reverent worship of God. Call it commitment, consistency, or conversion — what this ultimately comes down to is living out our Christian discipleship fully today.

A Sign of Contradiction

Steeped in the spirituality of the Cross, the spirit of La Salette is a sign of contradiction. It is founded on the same love that led Jesus to the Cross and made Mary weep:The La Salette Crucifix with its hammer and pincers

• The La Salette spirit is based on the Cross, the supreme sign of contradiction; it affirms life where the world promotes death; it denounces as a culture of death what the world publicizes as life;
• The La Salette message denounces (in the style of the 19th century) rationalism and materialism, which evolved into secularization and consumerism in the second half of the 20th century.
• The continued existence and survival of La Salette is a prophetic sign of contradiction against those who negate the apparition, question its relevance, and overlook its missionary effectiveness.

Therapeutic Sensitivity

Deeply rooted in the La Salette spirit is what one might call a therapeutic sensitivity. Misery, human brokenness, and spiritual blindness constitute the social and psychological context of the apparition. The message is healing in soul and body, a healing subordinate to the healing of the primary relationship, the relationship with God.

La Salette is called to serve as a model of compassion in its twofold understanding. Not least, compassion means sharing one’s brokenness with others. Above all, it means undivided presence, genuine and loving presence to one another. Such sensitivity leads to reconciliation because it seeks wholeness, the proper order of things, the desired harmony between different mindsets and worlds, and a trusting dependence on God.

Lived Identity

A La Salette mosaic from St. Peter’s Church in Dagenham, EnglandThe fundamental questions of our identity frequently haunt us. Who am I? Who are we? How should we define ourselves? The precise answer – individually and collectively – will forever escape us because it is life rather than reason that seeks to define and identify us.

The search for our identity often turns into a game that people play, leading to frustration. The quest for identity should not come first. The mission must come first because mission relates to action, and action is something you can see, touch, and examine. A mission must come first is especially true for La Salette.

There is ample proof that La Salette gives us a method and a strategy of evangelization that commits its members to spiritual alertness, prayerful discernment, and staunch witnessing. La Salette is an ordering for a mission that finds commonality in a shared vision, inspiration, and vigor in a Marian pastoral spirituality.

In conclusion

And so, to conclude: The Event on the Holy Mountain so many years ago became story. Let the event become a story – one which is the living memory of the event in the lives of this generation and a channel through which the founding La Salette charism will still reach out and touch Mary’s people today. Drink deep of this founding grace, soak it up, for it will change the message into a living mission. For this world of the twenty-first century, it can mean new life and new hope.

Our Lady of La Salette, Reconciler of Sinners, pray for us who have recourse to you.