Our Lady of La Salette
Our Lady of La Salette is a Marian apparition reported by two French children, Maximin Giraud and Mélanie Calvat, to have occurred at La Salette-Fallavaux, France, in 1846.
On 19 September 1851, the local bishop formally approved the public devotion and prayers to Our Lady of La Salette. On 21 August 1879, Pope Leo XIII granted a canonical coronation to the image now located within the Basilica of Our Lady of La Salette. A Russian-style tiara was granted to the image, instead of the solar-type tiara used in the traditional depictions of Our Lady during her apparitions.
Quotes
[edit]- Approach, my children, don't be afraid, I'm here to tell you great news. If my people won't submit, I'm forced to let go the hand of my son. It is so strong and so heavy that I can no longer maintain it, for the time I have suffered for you. If I don't want my son to abandon you, I have all the charge to pray to him unceasingly. For you, you don't care. No matter what you do, you will never be able to compensate for the trouble I have taken for you.
- I gave you six days to work, I've reserved the seventh for myself and they don't want to give it to me, that's what weighs my son's hand down so much. And also those who drive the carts don't know how to swear without putting my son's name in the middle, these are the two things that make my son's hand so heavy.
- If the harvest goes bad, it's only for you! I made you see it last year with the apples, but you didn't take it into account. On the contrary, when you found bad potatoes you would swear and put my son's name in the middle.
- This will continue, to the point that this year, for Christmas there will be no more.
- (you don't understand, my children, I'm going to tell you otherwise...)
- If you have wheat you must not sow it, all that you will sow the beasts will eat it and what will remain that the animals will not have eaten, the year which comes it will crumble into dust when you will beat it.
- There will come a great famine. Before the famine comes, children under seven will take a quake from which they will die at the hands of those who hold them.
- The others will do their penance in starvation. The nuts will become spoiled and the grapes will rot, but if they convert the stones and rocks will become heaps of wheat, and the potatoes will be sown (for the coming year). In the summer, only a few older women go to mass on Sundays and the others work, and in the winter the boys, when they don't know what to do, only go to mass to make fun of religion. People don't make lent, they go to the butcher's like dogs. Are you praying well, my children? Not much, madam. You have to do it night and morning and say at least a pater and an ave when you can't do better.
- Have you not seen spoiled wheat, my children? No, Madam. But my child, you must have seen it this time when you went with your father to the Coin and when there was a man who told your father to come and see his spoiled wheat. Then your father went there and he took some ears in his hand, he rubbed them and they fell into dust. Then, on returning, as they were still half an hour away from Corps, your father gave you a piece of bread and told you: "Well my child, still eat bread this year. We don't know who will eat it the coming year if it continues like this."
- Come, my children, pass it well on to all my people.
- Pra Report written by Abbé Lagier (February 1847), as reported in Jean Stern, La Salette, Documents authentiques, t. 1, Desclée De Brouwer, 1980, pp. 47-48 (in French).
See also
[edit]Bibliography
[edit]- L'apparition de la Très Saint Vierger sur la Montagne de La Salettepar la bergère de La Salette avec l'imprimatur de Mgr l'éveque de Lecce, Pierre Téqui éditeur, Paris, 2018, pp. 44. ISBN 978-2-7403-2158-4. (full text of the messages given by the Virgin Mary to Mélanie Calvat and Maximin Giraud, firstly published on November 15, 1879 with nihil obstat and imprimatur by bishop Salvatore Luigi Zola and Archbishop Carmelo Cosma, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Lecce; in French). French original text and English translation available here.
