OUR LADY OF LA SALETTE

 On September 19, 1846, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, Mary appeared to two children in the small town of La Salette, France.

Fifteen-year-old Mélanie and eleven-year-old Maximin were tending their cows when they saw a "beautiful lady" surrounded with light, sitting on a stone and crying. She wore a crucifix on a chain around her neck. Two tools of crucifixion were attached to the horizontal beam of the cross - on one side a hammer and the other pliers they would use to pull out the nails.

She talked to them in French and in their town's dialect. She gave them a message "to deliver to all her people." As she told them the message, she continued her crying and warned them, "If my people do not obey, I shall be compelled to loose my Son's arm. It is so heavy I can no longer restrain it. How long have I suffered for you! If my Son is not to abandon you, I am obliged to entreat Him without ceasing. But you take no heed of that. No matter how well you pray in the future, no matter how well you act, you will never be able to make up to me what I have endured on your behalf. I have given you six days to work. The seventh I have reserved for myself, yet no one will give it to me. This is what causes the weight of my Son's arm to be so crushing. The cart drivers cannot swear without bringing in my Son's name. These are the two things which make my son's arm so heavy."

She also spoke of future punishments for these sins,

including crop blights and famine.

She asked the two if they said their prayers often, and they honestly replied that they hardly prayed. She told them to say their morning and night prayers at the very least. Then she continued, saying,  "Only a few rather old women go to Mass in the summer. Everyone else works every Sunday all summer long. And in the winter, when they don't know what else to do, they go to Mass only to scoff at religion. During Lent, they go to the butcher shops like dogs."

 She encouraged the children to pray regularly, and she told them because of divine mercy, there was hope for the people who wanted to amend their lives.

She told them to inform everyone about her message. But then she gave the children two secrets in which they were to tell no one, but eventually, the secrets were made known to Pope Pius IX. 

This is an approved apparition of the Catholic Church. It began its approval by the local Bishop in 1851. 

At St. Joseph's Holy Family First Saturday Devotions on September 1st, a seminarian gave a beautiful talk about Our Lady of La Salette. Seminarians will continue to give talks on other Approved Marian Apparitions, so please come October 6th to hear about another Apparition of Mary!