A beautiful woman sat weeping, holding her sorrowful face in her hands.  This was the first striking image of Our Lady that two young children beheld in a ravine within the small village of LaSalette, France, in the year 1846.

France was going through tremendous upheavals at that time.  Churches were abandoned; Catholics were not participating in Mass nor the sacraments, proving that religion and reverence for God had lost its place in the hearts of the French people.

Fourteen-year-old Melanie Mathieu and eleven-year-old Maximin Giraud had taken cattle to graze at a pasture in the country village of LaSalette.  Both were separately employed by local farmers, but would sometimes meet to share a lunch together.  One day, the children ate their meal near a quiet ravine, as their herds grazed above them in a nearby field.  Afterward, they easily slipped off into a restful nap, not realizing that an entire hour would quickly pass.  Upon waking, Melanie and Maximin quickly gathered their belongings and scurried up the hillside to tend to their livestock.  Melanie took a quick glance back to the ravine, only to surprisingly notice a large circle of light, shining as brightly as the sun.  She cried out to Maximin to stop and to look!  Together they watched the image of a Lady, ‘the weeping woman’, appeared as the bright light encircling her simultaneously vanished.  The Lady then stood and crossed her arms over her breast.  Her head was slightly inclined. 

How exquisitely dressed was the beautiful woman!  She wore a long, ivory robe with a full yellow apron that tied at her waist.  A satin veil covered her head.  It fell over her shoulders and draped about her neck like a shawl.  Beneath the headdress, over her shoulders, she wore an ivory colored cloak.  Her dress and slippers were embroidered with precious pearls; and upon her head rested a lovely crown of pink and red roses. More roses lined the hem of the headdress just above her folded arms.  But, the children were more captured by the beauty of the Lady’s face and her eyes – those eyes that shed tears that glistened like diamonds.  And never would they forget the unusual cross she wore, hanging from a heavy chain about her neck.  The cross was a crucifix with a pincers on one end (of the horizontal beam) and a hammer on the other end.  

“Come to me, my children,” she called to them.  “Do not be afraid. I am here to tell you something of extreme importance.”  Melanie and Maximin approached her. The Blessed Virgin then confided to them about Her Son’s heavy arm and warned them about coming worldwide chastisements if people would not amend their ways.  She told the children that Her Son was particularly grieved that people were not keeping the ‘seventh’ day holy and that God was no longer first in their lives.  Then, Mary told them that they, Melanie and Maximin, would make this known to all Her people.

Maximin and Melanie did, indeed, fulfill their heavenly mission.  They reported to their priest and church all they had seen and all that the Lady from Heaven had said.  It took five years to fully convince the bishop of LaSalette that the apparition was authentic.  But because the children’s stories were always identical and never inconsistent, people could not help but believe the Blessed Virgin had appeared to them.  Soon churches all over the countryside began to fill and Catholics returned to the sacraments.  The people were listening.

Mary, Our Lady of LaSalette, only appeared this one time in 1846.  But, five years later the apparition was officially approved by the Church.  Thirty years later, a lovely basilica was built and consecrated in the village, in the name of “Our Lady of LaSalette.”

Melanie Mathieu and Maximin Giraud lived out what seemed to be normal lives.  They were not canonized as saints, but they always looked to Mary as their Blessed Mother.  And, they always testified that the apparition of Our Lady of LaSalette was indeed a heavenly vision of the Blessed Mother Mary, and a heavenly message for the entire world.

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