Tea at Trianon: Messages of Our Lady of La Salette

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Messages of Our Lady of La Salette

From One Peter Five:

Last week, Catholic Joe Biden, the most pro-abortion president in American history, was sworn in as the country’s 46^th president. It was the perfect teaching moment for Catholic leaders. The world was watching!

Yet when the President of the USCCB, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, commented that Biden’s agenda “promotes policies that would advance moral evils,” Cardinal Blasé Cupich of Chicago issued “a scathing tweet,” sorely annoyed by the mention of abortion in the document. A Prince of the Church! And another Prince of the Church, Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., had already affirmed that he would be giving Biden Communion. Yet another leader of the church, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, stated that a Catholic could vote for a democrat in good conscience. This was before the election. Such events made me think of the messages of Our Lady of La Salette. Which occurred 175 years ago. But they seem as relevant to our times now as they did so many decades ago.
It all began on the sunny afternoon of September 19, 1846. Melanie Calvat, age 14, and Maxim Giraud, age 11, were lazily tending their cattle on the grassy slopes of La Salette, high in the French Alps of southeastern France. It was a place of spectacular Alpine beauty, 5,400 ft. above sea level.
Suddenly, Melanie saw a shock of dramatic, vivid light. She shrieked out of fear, “Maxim, look over there at the light!”

“It’s as if the sun had fallen there,” Maxim said later.

He continued: “The light stirred, it moved and swirled.” And within that startling light a beautiful woman emerged. She was sitting on a ledge with her head in her hands. And, to their astonishment, she was crying! “She wept all the time she was talking to us,” Maxim related. They had no idea who she was. At first they thought she was a person from the region “We thought she was a woman from Valjouffrey,” said the children. Because that’s how she was dressed: According to their account, she wore a “long, yellow, housewife’s apron, a shawl, and a peasant bonnet. Roses outlined her shawl and crowned her forehead. She wore a large crucifix around her neck and Maxim noted that it was “from the crucifix that the light shone the brightest.”

“Come near, my children, do not be afraid,” she said. “I am here to tell you great news.”

She also spoke words of warning to the children: “If my people will not obey, I shall be compelled to loose my son’s arm. It is so heavy that I can no longer restrain it. How long I have suffered for you!” She spoke about the absolute necessity of prayer, Sunday Mass, observance of the Sabbath, of not taking the name of the Lord in vain. At this time in France, in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789, almost no one attended Mass on Sunday and prayer, catechesis and the sacraments were shamefully neglected. Almost no one knew their faith. Maxim and Melanie were no exception: Both children, neither of whom could read or write, rarely attended Sunday Mass. “Children, do you say your prayers properly?” she asked. “Hardly ever, Madam,” they sorrowfully answered.

Our Lady predicted a famine if people did not amend their ways. “A great famine is coming,” she said. And sure enough, this did indeed occur in the winter of 1846-1847. It struck with particular intensity in France and Ireland. “However,” she said, “if people repent, the stones and the rocks will become piles of wheat. My children, you must make this known to all the people.”

She spoke about the importance of keeping the Sabbath holy: “Only a few rather elderly women go to Mass in the summer. Everyone else works every Sunday all summer long. And in 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 shop like dogs.” She spoke about two things that made her Son’s arm particularly heavy: “I have given you six days to work. The seventh I have reserved for myself yet no one will give it to me.” And she spoke about swearing: “The cart drivers cannot swear without bringing in my Son’s name.”

The bishop of the diocese of Grenoble, Bishop Philibert de Bruillard, began a prompt investigation of the apparition and five years later, concluded that it was authentic. “It carries with it all the characteristics of truth,” he said. He was also mightily impressed with the resurgence of faith in his diocese. People began attending Sunday Mass in large numbers and receiving the sacraments. In 1852 the cornerstone for the new church was laid. In the same year a community of diocesan missionaries of Our Lady of Sa Salette was founded. In 1871 the first La Salette Sisters congregation was formed and in 1879 the statue of Our Lady of La Salette was pontifically crowned. Soon the church was elevated to the level of a basilica. St. John Vianney, whose parish of Ars was also in the diocese of Grenoble, became an ardent supporter of La Salette. (Read more.)

From Return to Order:

President Biden’s inauguration ceremony was full of symbolism and imponderables. Tension in the air dominated the empty mall as thousands of National Guard troops surrounded the Capitol. The scene was marked not with somber solemnity but nervous inquietude in the face of a divided nation.

One curious observation about the ceremony was its profoundly religious overtones. From beginning to end, the speakers invoked God. They invoked the Christian God and none other. For a secular government that does not officially recognize God, this presidential inauguration called upon God unapologetically. For those who rabidly proclaim the separation of Church and State, the religious note firmly fused to this civil ceremony must have seemed unconstitutional.

The new president surrounded himself in Christian imagery as he began his term. He appeared at Mass in Washington’s St. Matthew’s Cathedral. Later, Father Leo J. O’Donovan III, a Jesuit priest and former president of Georgetown University, delivered the inaugural invocation. Rev. Silvester Beaman, the pastor of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Wilmington, Del., gave a benediction. After the new president’s speech, Garth Brooks sang “Amazing Grace.” (Read more.)