Une Minute avec Marie
Faire connaître et aimer Marie
On September 19, 1846, two uneducated children, Maximin, 11, and Melanie, almost 15, were tending their flocks in the mountains above the village of La Salette, in the diocese of Grenoble, France, when they saw a bright light revealing a woman they would later call "the Beautiful Lady," seated with her head in her hands and her chest shaking with sobs, in an attitude of deep sadness. At first, the two shepherds were very frightened, but the Beautiful Lady stood up and called to them in a very gentle voice: "Come forward, children, don't be afraid."
Without hesitation, Maximin and Melanie ran to her and stood so close to her that they could almost touch her. On her shoulders shone a heavy chain and from a smaller golden chain hung a resplendent crucifix with a hammer and pincers placed on each side of the Cross, a little beyond the nailed hands.
Her eyes were filled with immense sadness: "She cried the whole time she spoke to us," said Melanie, "I saw her tears flowing.
She told them: “If my people will not submit, I shall be forced to let fall the arm of my Son. It is so strong, so heavy, that I can no longer withhold it.
“For how long a time do I suffer for you! If I would not have my Son abandon you, I am compelled to pray to him without ceasing; and as to you, you take not heed of it.
“However much you pray, however much you do, you will never recompense the pains I have taken for you.
“Six days I have given you to labor, the seventh I have kept for myself; and they will not give it to me. It is this which makes the arm of my Son so heavy.
After speaking of disastrous harvests due to people's sins, she added: “If they are converted, the stones and rocks will change into mounds of wheat, and the potatoes will be self-sown in the land.”
Before departing, she told them: “Well, my children, you will make this known to all my people,” then rose up in the air and disappeared.
On May 6, 1996, Pope John Paul II wrote: "At La Salette, Mary, Mother full of love, showed us her sadness at the moral evil of humanity. Through her tears, she helps us to better grasp the painful gravity of sin, of God's rejection, but also the passionate fidelity that her Son keeps towards His children, He, the Redeemer whose love is wounded by forgetfulness and refusals."
Source: Le Capitaine Darreberg, by H. Perrin
Association des pèlerins de La Salette, 38970 Corps. 6th edition, 1973