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Fr. Joseph Bachand, M.S., Provincial Superior,
Province of Mary, Mother of the Americas
Opening Address 
 
A sincere and hearty welcome to all of you attending this historic gathering. Since we have never held a gathering such as this, expectations can be all over the place, from “Let’s try to do it all” to “Whatever happens is good.” The truth and success of what we do here will probably lie somewhere in the middle.
 
You are here, however, either because you’ve been invited or because your interest has been piqued by the pre-Summit advertising. Even more profoundly, you have been invited or your interest has been piqued precisely because you have a connection to La Salette: you may work closely with La Salette Missionaries or La Salette devotion/spirituality holds an attraction for you. Whatever the case, you are welcome here.
 
I am taken by the title of this gathering, “La Salette Lay Ministry Summit,” and I see it as my task to draw out the connection between “La Salette,” “laity” and “ministry.” I do not know if that is your understanding of my task, but I hope our expectations converge at some point, and that point may prove both interesting and challenging to you. I undertake this task as a Missionary of Our Lady of La Salette, and so you know the perspective from which I speak.
 
The Laity and La Salettes
 
For a long time, the Missionaries of La Salette would have described the connection between ministry and the laity as the latter being the recipient of the former. In other words, we missionaries ministered and the laity were ministered to. This pretty much describes the way things were in the universal Church. We were not so different in this from other religious communities or diocesan priests. This was not all bad: at its best, it meant that clergy and religious were called to serve – an image Jesus applied to himself. However, it could also lead to a one-sided approach to understanding that service and ministry. 
 
Interior of St. Peter’s in Rome
during Vatican Council II
A major shift occurred with the Second Vatican Council, and it became clear that the laity minister by right because of their baptism and out of the workings of the Holy Spirit. As the gifts of the Spirit were discerned, we came to see that there are not two static groups in the Church: one doing ministry and one being ministered to; rather, ministry can be seen as a function of needs being met by gifts, a more fluid understanding and one more in keeping with the nature of ministry as relationship, rather than a function of state. This theology may be spoken of in more detail by other presenters. My task is to get back to La Salette. However, I would ask you to remember and reflect on that connection between ministry and relationship.
 
We Missionaries have a book simply called The Rule, containing our Constitutions and the Norms governing our life and mission throughout the world. I was unable to find the term “laity” in the Index. Still, there are two passages I would like to share with you. The Constitutions #28 reads: “To provide more effective service we work in close collaboration with the laity, the diocesan clergy and other congregations, under the authority of the Bishop and in keeping with the pastoral guidelines of the local Church.” Please note that this number sees the laity as a group with which the Missionaries are to collaborate – closely! And note that the purpose is to render more effective service. 
 
Fr, Joseph Lamartine Eliscar, M.S.
sharing with another participant at
the Lay Summit in Smyrna, GA
Please keep that in mind as I read Norm #52: “The Missionaries always work in close collaboration with the laity, listening to them, sharing responsibilities with them, being available for their formation and lending them the spiritual support they may need.” 
 
I hope you are able to see how these latter two functions are actually in place for this gathering: it is intended as continuing formation for those of us gathered, as well as a source of spiritual support. One also hopes that we will be listening to you throughout these days (some of us being better at that than others). 
 
Besides the Rule, the ongoing life of the Missionaries is governed by a meeting (called a Chapter in church-speak), convened every six years to choose leadership and tend to the needs of the Congregation. In Brazil in 1994, the Chapter, reflecting on the Norm I read above, recognized “that the laity who share in the mission of reconciliation are 
empowered in virtue of their baptism to be agents of evangelization and to create just structures in the Church and in the world.” It encouraged every Province throughout the Congregation to concretize this principle. 
 

In 2006 in the Philippines, the General Chapter urged each Province and Region to “create a program of Meetings, Encounters, and Workshops to deepen and develop La Salette spirituality for the laity. La Salette Communities will offer this program to men and women who are actively engaged in our works and mission.”
Putting these two decisions together, we begin to paint a picture of how La Salette views the laity: as empowered agents of evangelization, capable of creating just structures, nourished by a shared spirituality, all under the rubric of reconciliation.
 
Our Province in North America recently put together a Vision Statement. In the middle of that statement there is the simple sentence, “We unite our gifts to those of the laity.” I believe the placement of that sentence acts as a hinge describing our relationship in ministry.
 
This brief look at our Rule and official documents shows the explicit connection among the La Salette Missionaries and laity in ministry. I would like to draw your attention to another source of inspiration for us – one considered a grace for the whole church – and one that shows the implicit connection between the terms noted above. That is the story of the apparition of Our Lady at La Salette. 
 
The Message of Reconciliation
 
If you work with La Salettes, chances are you’ve heard the story in whole or in part. In fact, some of you are probably able to recite the story better than my conferes. (We’ll not test this.) I suspect you are aware that La Salette is not opposed to the Gospel, nor does it add anything to it. Rather, La Salette provides a focus or lens through which we look at Jesus’s life and ministry. It’s as if this lens puts the rest of the Gospel in perspective. We are used to referring to this focus as “reconciliation.” It is a word mentioned nowhere in the Apparition, but one which arose shortly after the apparition to explain the message and purpose of Mary’s appearing. 
 

The term reconciliation has an honored place in Saint Paul’s writings. He portrays Jesus as reconciling us to his Father, and reconciling us to one another (for example, Jew and Greek), as well as reconciling the world to himself. Paul says that we in turn are given this ministry of reconciliation. In general, one gets the impression of subjects once alienated being brought back into relationship. But reconciliation is not a word that features often in our ordinary vocabulary. So I would like to share with you what I have come to see at work beneath the term reconciliation.
 
The call of Our Lady to remember her Son and remember what Church is all about is the result of God’s initiating love. Recognizing the central place the Cross has at La Salette, the words of John 3:16 come easily to mind: “God so loved the world…” I couple this with a line from John’s First Letter, “Love consists in this: not that we have loved God, but that God has first loved us.” 
 
If we do not understand that love is at the foundation of the apparition, we can easily misinterpret the resulting call to ministry as badgering people into attending Mass and berating them into cleaning up their language. I believe this dishonors the seriousness of the apparition. It is God’s initiating love that underlies the plea of a Mother in tears, and I paraphrase her message: “Come back; don’t remain alone, isolated, victimized; that’s not what God had in mind for you.” 
 

What God “had in mind” for us is rather portrayed in our Lady’s message as a life in abundance: rocks turned into heaps of wheat and potatoes self-sown in the fields – enough for all. And it all centers on the powerlessness of a God who graced us with free will – the ability to choose, or not. In the words of La Salette, “If my people are converted…; if my people do not submit.” 
 
This freedom to choose is at the heart of the message, at the heart of any response to Jesus’s preaching and person, at the heart of the possibility of a moral life and at the heart of the La Salette ministry of evangelization. I mention the latter because this is the task entrusted to us through the witnesses of La Salette: “Make this known to all my people.”  The “this” to be made 

 

known is the possibility of a response, of things being other than they are at present. Choosing things (and one’s self) to be otherwise is at the 

heart of a response to Our Lady’s message, and we call this conversion. In the words of Twelve-Step spirituality, it is the possibility of being restored to sanity through submitting to a Power greater than oneself.
 
This ministry of proclaiming a message of conversion is not simply a matter of learning the right words and getting across the proper content. We are called to embody the message of reconciliation. That’s what is most convincing. As May Sarton once wrote, “being something irresistible converts more surely than demanding something impossible.” I think that’s why the popular story of St. Francis found an immediate response in my heart. 
 
The story concludes with the maxim, “Preach the Gospel at all times; when necessary use words.” Our lives speak more loudly than our words, and perhaps it has to be so among a people who celebrate the Incarnation as a central truth of faith. This is what I think lies behind the ministry of La Salette and our understanding of reconciliation.
 
Relationships are Central
 

The ministry in which we engage as a people drawn together by La Salette will ultimately be seen in the relationships we form. After all,

any sense of reconciliation has to include the restoring of relationships. To one who has experienced rupture or alienation in a relationship, nothing will be so convincing of the possibility of new life as healthy, positive relationships. In a society where function is emphasized and evaluations subject us to constant measurings, relationship is a bit intangible. 

Yet I encourage you to reflect on this, because relationships are at the heart of Jesus’s own preaching, especially the relationship that formed people into community. Relationships can only be formed over time; nothing instant about them. It is not as if someone comes to us with a problem and we hold the secret book where we look up the answer. What we offer people in need is ourselves. 
 
Relationships are also organic – flexible, living things, which grow in mutual trust and are liable to breakdown now and again. But I believe La Salette calls us to a particular kind of relationship, and I will do my best to convince you.
 
Mary’s Three Commands
 
Painting of the Apparition of La Salette
by Fr. Alfredo Velarde, M.S.  Argentina.
It was only recently that I asked the question as to why Our Lady at La Salette suggested we pray the Our Father and the Hail Mary, when commanding the children to “pray well.” As I reflected on this, it occurred to me that this is one of only three commands in the entire message at La Salette. The first is the opening invitation to “Come near;” “be sure to pray well, my children; say at least an Our Father and a Hail Mary…” is the second, and “Make this known to all my people” the third. 
 
In her command to pray, Our Lady is inviting us to address our prayers regularly to the Father of Jesus and the Mother of Jesus. In doing so, of course, we are to recognize that Jesus’s Father is Our Father; that his Mother is Our Mother. (Recall how she refers to the two witnesses as “my children,” -- never by name.) If we share the same father and mother as Jesus, we are his brothers and sisters – and therefore brothers and sisters to one another. 
 
The relationship that describes our ministry of reconciliation is that of adoptive siblings – a relationship of care and one attuned to justice. Make this known to all my people: all are brothers and sisters in Christ; all are called to reconciliation; all are loved by the God who created them. La Salette ministry involves the ongoing discovery of new brothers and sisters in all corners of the earth.

This ultimately displays the relationship between our spirituality and our mission. These two terms – spirituality and ministry – are not opposed; and neither is optional. The two are in a mutual relationship, where our own belonging to God is nourished and valued, and it is this connection that enables us to proclaim that truth to others. This is what I believe all of you know on some level. 
 
To know oneself loved by God is convincing on a deep level, and all of us struggle at times to put that into words. But we act out of that deep awareness, because it is ultimately the only strength we can rely on. We work collaboratively in ministry because we recognize the strength that kind of support gives us as well as the way it speaks more clearly the very message we are trying to communicate.
 
The Signs of the Times
 
I return to the Chapter decision that refers to the laity as empowered to create just structures in the world. We have a time-honored phrase in La Salette that has to do with paying attention to the “signs of the times.” I find this particularly appropriate in deciding how we 

are to listen to you. Vatican II said the laity find themselves in the heart of the world. I think this puts you in an appropriate place for being aware of the injustice that binds people. This is why we need to listen to you. 
 
One way to be aware of this injustice and the needs of God’s people is to notice your own heart: as children of the Weeping Mother at La Salette, you do well to pay attention to your own tears, whether those be internal or external. Where does the suffering of others grab your heart and hold your attention? These are the situations that need to be addressed, these are the relationships that need to be restored, these are the places God’s Spirit calls us to be instruments of reconciliation. 
 
We do that through a ministry of intercessory prayer when we do not know where else to start (very Salettine). We do that by proclaiming the hopeful possibility of restoration I spoke of above. But in the kind of “preaching that does not need words” (of which St. Francis spoke) we may find ourselves setting up programs and providing alternative structures that address real needs and enflesh God’s abiding mercy and justice. These are limited only by our imagination: if we can imagine it, we can do it. The needed resources always have a way of turning up.
 
An International Gathering of La Salette Laity
 
In closing, I remind you that this takes place on a global stage as well. In a couple months laity and La Salettes from around the world will 

be gathering at the site of the Apparition from September 1-10, 2011, to listen to one another and reflect on the internationality of the ministry we share. 
 
This global perspective helps call us away from a narrow, self-absorbed approach to anything we do. At the same time, we recognize the locus of our attention and activity as an important embodiment of what that global perspective is all about. It is as if we were saying, “The whole world cries out for reconciliation; and here’s the place I/we can be of service in that.”
 
The original message of La Salette was made known by two innocent, unpretentious children who found their lives forever changed by a loving encounter with the Divine. May you be blessed by such an encounter, and may you too be effective in making known the message that is thus made known to you.