La Salette-Fallavaux, Isère, France · 1846
High in the French Alps, almost six thousand feet above sea level, two cowherding children — eleven-year-old Maximin Giraud and fourteen-year-old Mélanie Calvat — saw a beautiful Lady weeping bitterly upon a stone, her face hidden in her hands. She rose, spoke to them, and gave them a message of repentance and warning. La Salette is the shrine of the weeping Mother — a place of mountain silence where Mary asked her children to come back home.
The Beautiful Lady Weeping
On the afternoon of September 19, 1846, the Saturday before the third Sunday of September, Maximin and Mélanie were tending their cows on the slopes of Mont Sous-les-Baisses, above the hamlet of La Salette-Fallavaux. They had eaten a small lunch by a dry spring and had fallen asleep. They woke in alarm to a great light, and saw, in the gully below them, a woman seated upon a stone, her elbows on her knees, weeping bitterly into her hands.
The Lady stood. She wore a long white robe, a yellow apron, a high crown of roses, and a heavy crucifix on her chest. She spoke to them — first in French, then in their own dialect of Patois — for nearly half an hour. She wept as she spoke. She said her people were in great need of repentance, that they had abandoned the Sabbath and the name of her Son, that the ear of grain would fail and the harvest of the trees fail with them — and that those who would convert and do penance would be granted mercy.
She entrusted to each child a personal secret. Then, weeping still, she rose and ascended into the light. Maximin and Mélanie ran home and told what they had seen. Within months, the message of La Salette had spread across France. Pilgrims began to climb the steep mountain. The Bishop of Grenoble approved the apparition in 1851. A great basilica was raised on the slope itself.
The Sanctuary Today
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of La Salette is the highest Marian shrine in Western Europe. It can only be reached by a long climb up a winding alpine road. The basilica stands beside the stream of tears, where bronze statues mark the moments of the apparition: the Lady seated and weeping, the Lady standing and speaking, the Lady ascending into light. The Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette and the Sisters of La Salette together keep the prayer of the mountain.
In the high silence — only the wind, the streams, the distant bells of the cattle — pilgrims walk between the bronze figures and the basilica. The Mass is celebrated daily. The Rosary is prayed in many languages. La Salette is a sanctuary that, like its Lady, weeps and intercedes — a place where the suffering can lay their grief beside hers.
A Prayer at La Salette
Beautiful Lady of La Salette,
you who weep upon the high mountain
for the wandering of your children —
weep us home.
For the children we have lost track of,
for the families that no longer pray together,
for those who have forgotten their Sabbath —
weep, Mother, until they remember.
Reconcile us to your Son. Amen.
Live from La Salette
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of La Salette broadcasts the daily Mass and the Rosary from the high alpine basilica, particularly during the great pilgrim weeks of summer when the mountain fills with the voices of those who have climbed to the place of the weeping.
Visit & Learn More
- Sanctuaire de Notre-Dame de La Salette: www.lasalette.cef.fr
- Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_La_Salette
Journey with Mary: A Path to Jesus 