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Light on the Mountain, the Story of La Salette
Seventy years before Fatima, twelve before Lourdes, La Salette was the first of the three great Marian apparitions of warning to the world.
197 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
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October 3, 2025
ONE OF THE FEW BOOKS DEALING WITH THESE 19TH CENTURY MARIAN APPARITIONS
Fr. John S. Kennedy wrote in the Introduction to this 1953 book, "The Queen of Heaven in earnest converse with shabby peasant children---this is a picture which Christendom recognizes, and to which it immediately gives the name of Fatima or Lourdes. Another name with the same connotation deserves to be as familar. It is that of LaSalette, a hamlet in the French Alps, where, in 1846, our Lady appeared to Melanie Mathieu and Maximim Giraud, a pair of small cowherds...
"Why, then, is LaSalette much less reknowned than Lourdes or Fatima?... it will be remembered that the apparitions [at Lourdes] occurred a few years after the solemn definition, in 1854... of the dogma of Mary's Immaculate Conception... and when the luminous figure at Lourdes spoke the words, 'I am the Immaculate Conception,' the effect was sure to be electrifying... As for Fatima... their year is 1917, in the midst of the first World War... In the latter circumstances people are more likely to mark a message and a warning...
"The story of LaSalette deserves universal notice... as that of an authentic appearance of the Mother of God... Mary in her glory is still profoundly concerned for the well-being of her children, and more powerful than ever in coming to their aid. This is dramatically evidenced at LaSalette... before it was at Lourdes and Fatima. She manifested herself to witnesses incapable of imagining or fabricating anything of the sort, witnesses peculiarly qualified to transmit verbatim what it was she wanted said to the world... they are all three of a piece, and far more impressive when seen and studied in relationship one to another. It is to make the first better known that this book was written." (Pg. 9-11. 13)
During the vision, "She went on, 'If you have grain, it will do no good to sow it... A great famine is coming. But before that happens, the children under seven years of age will be seized with trembling and die in the arms of the parents holding them. The grownups will pay for their sins by hunger. The grapes will rot and the walnuts will turn bad.' ... 'Only a few rather old women go to Mass in the summer. Everyone else works every Sunday all summer long. And in winter, when they don't know what to do with themselves, they go to Mass only to scoff at religion. During Lent, they go to the butcher shop like dogs.' ... 'Well, my children, you will make this known to all my people.' These were her last words. She concluded as unexpectedly as she had begun. Her final remark was plainly a command, but she did not specify how it was to be carried out. That was for them to determine." (Pg. 33-35)
Of the report made to the local bishop, "The delegates found altogether extraordinary the unshatterable consistency of the children's story... That they had invented the whole thing was inconceivable. Feature after feature was beyond their ken. Of religion they were appallingly ignorant; it simply did not figure in their lives... That they could fluently repeat a long dialogue in French was hardly short of dumbfounding, since of this language they knew next to nothing.
"The delegates were satisfied that the children were neither deceived nor deceivers. All the sure tests of hallucination failed in their case... Then there was the conviction of people from afar. They had come, seen, spoken to the children, credited something which they had been predisposed to reject. Some of them were doctors, some lawyers, some members of other professions: that is, educated men, trained to scan evidence... slow and gingerly in reaching conclusions.
"The report also called attention to twenty-three cures which followed upon an appeal to Our Lady of LaSalette. Notable, too, was the improvement in Christian living which had taken place in the diocese and elsewhere... [But] Four of the [sixteen] priests [on the board] did not go along with the majority's approval of the report, and one of these was to make considerable trouble in the years ahead." (Pg. 101-103)
He continues, "One of the four, Father Cartellier, became the promoter of an opposition movement of little weight but great bitterness and even viciousness... He gradually showed that he would stop at nothing to prove that he alone was right in the face of redoubtable evidence to the contrary. He maneuvered artfully to give the impression that there were serious objections to the acceptability of the children's story, but never cited any. He could not demonstrate fraud or lying... All he could do was drop hints, make pinpricks, strike glancing blows. But at this he was clever and persistent." (Pg. 111-112)
Later, he observes, "Did Maximim have a vocation? No. That fact, in time, became indisputable. But it was not so from the start... Candidates less promising than he had made exemplary priests... He was fit only for the pressureless, uncomplex, uncompetitive countryside. But from that he had been divorced by a succession of events... Homeless and itinerant, he spoke everywhere of the apparition... He was a witness... in his faithful and tender, if never esoteric, devotion to our Lady... Why, then, did she not do more for him? To advert again to Bernadette, what did our Lady do for her?" (Pg. 174-176)
He adds, "where in Maximim we have to complain of instability, in Melanie it is rather stubbornness that we must deplore... [she] made a number of attempts to become a religious, and was never convinced that she did not have the capacity and even the right to be admitted to the profession, and each time left feeling that sure that she was right and everyone else, especially the superiors she declined to obey, was wrong. Of course she was wrong. But how much can she be blamed? It was to her credit that she held fast to the facts of the apparition, despite repeated and nagging inquiries, despite threats and troubles of no light nature." (Pg. 184)
He adds, "Say that she became abnormal; say even that she became neurotic. Does this in any way lessen the fact and the terrible exactions of her inner affliction?... She was already an object lesson in how not to manage an unlettered child who had been used as a messenger by our Lady... Melanie's history is a powerful argument for the necessity of submitting all revelations to the judgment and the control of the Church." (Pg. 187-188)
There are few books about LaSalette, and this book will be "must reading" for anyone wanting to know more about it.
Fr. John S. Kennedy wrote in the Introduction to this 1953 book, "The Queen of Heaven in earnest converse with shabby peasant children---this is a picture which Christendom recognizes, and to which it immediately gives the name of Fatima or Lourdes. Another name with the same connotation deserves to be as familar. It is that of LaSalette, a hamlet in the French Alps, where, in 1846, our Lady appeared to Melanie Mathieu and Maximim Giraud, a pair of small cowherds...
"Why, then, is LaSalette much less reknowned than Lourdes or Fatima?... it will be remembered that the apparitions [at Lourdes] occurred a few years after the solemn definition, in 1854... of the dogma of Mary's Immaculate Conception... and when the luminous figure at Lourdes spoke the words, 'I am the Immaculate Conception,' the effect was sure to be electrifying... As for Fatima... their year is 1917, in the midst of the first World War... In the latter circumstances people are more likely to mark a message and a warning...
"The story of LaSalette deserves universal notice... as that of an authentic appearance of the Mother of God... Mary in her glory is still profoundly concerned for the well-being of her children, and more powerful than ever in coming to their aid. This is dramatically evidenced at LaSalette... before it was at Lourdes and Fatima. She manifested herself to witnesses incapable of imagining or fabricating anything of the sort, witnesses peculiarly qualified to transmit verbatim what it was she wanted said to the world... they are all three of a piece, and far more impressive when seen and studied in relationship one to another. It is to make the first better known that this book was written." (Pg. 9-11. 13)
During the vision, "She went on, 'If you have grain, it will do no good to sow it... A great famine is coming. But before that happens, the children under seven years of age will be seized with trembling and die in the arms of the parents holding them. The grownups will pay for their sins by hunger. The grapes will rot and the walnuts will turn bad.' ... 'Only a few rather old women go to Mass in the summer. Everyone else works every Sunday all summer long. And in winter, when they don't know what to do with themselves, they go to Mass only to scoff at religion. During Lent, they go to the butcher shop like dogs.' ... 'Well, my children, you will make this known to all my people.' These were her last words. She concluded as unexpectedly as she had begun. Her final remark was plainly a command, but she did not specify how it was to be carried out. That was for them to determine." (Pg. 33-35)
Of the report made to the local bishop, "The delegates found altogether extraordinary the unshatterable consistency of the children's story... That they had invented the whole thing was inconceivable. Feature after feature was beyond their ken. Of religion they were appallingly ignorant; it simply did not figure in their lives... That they could fluently repeat a long dialogue in French was hardly short of dumbfounding, since of this language they knew next to nothing.
"The delegates were satisfied that the children were neither deceived nor deceivers. All the sure tests of hallucination failed in their case... Then there was the conviction of people from afar. They had come, seen, spoken to the children, credited something which they had been predisposed to reject. Some of them were doctors, some lawyers, some members of other professions: that is, educated men, trained to scan evidence... slow and gingerly in reaching conclusions.
"The report also called attention to twenty-three cures which followed upon an appeal to Our Lady of LaSalette. Notable, too, was the improvement in Christian living which had taken place in the diocese and elsewhere... [But] Four of the [sixteen] priests [on the board] did not go along with the majority's approval of the report, and one of these was to make considerable trouble in the years ahead." (Pg. 101-103)
He continues, "One of the four, Father Cartellier, became the promoter of an opposition movement of little weight but great bitterness and even viciousness... He gradually showed that he would stop at nothing to prove that he alone was right in the face of redoubtable evidence to the contrary. He maneuvered artfully to give the impression that there were serious objections to the acceptability of the children's story, but never cited any. He could not demonstrate fraud or lying... All he could do was drop hints, make pinpricks, strike glancing blows. But at this he was clever and persistent." (Pg. 111-112)
Later, he observes, "Did Maximim have a vocation? No. That fact, in time, became indisputable. But it was not so from the start... Candidates less promising than he had made exemplary priests... He was fit only for the pressureless, uncomplex, uncompetitive countryside. But from that he had been divorced by a succession of events... Homeless and itinerant, he spoke everywhere of the apparition... He was a witness... in his faithful and tender, if never esoteric, devotion to our Lady... Why, then, did she not do more for him? To advert again to Bernadette, what did our Lady do for her?" (Pg. 174-176)
He adds, "where in Maximim we have to complain of instability, in Melanie it is rather stubbornness that we must deplore... [she] made a number of attempts to become a religious, and was never convinced that she did not have the capacity and even the right to be admitted to the profession, and each time left feeling that sure that she was right and everyone else, especially the superiors she declined to obey, was wrong. Of course she was wrong. But how much can she be blamed? It was to her credit that she held fast to the facts of the apparition, despite repeated and nagging inquiries, despite threats and troubles of no light nature." (Pg. 184)
He adds, "Say that she became abnormal; say even that she became neurotic. Does this in any way lessen the fact and the terrible exactions of her inner affliction?... She was already an object lesson in how not to manage an unlettered child who had been used as a messenger by our Lady... Melanie's history is a powerful argument for the necessity of submitting all revelations to the judgment and the control of the Church." (Pg. 187-188)
There are few books about LaSalette, and this book will be "must reading" for anyone wanting to know more about it.
November 8, 2024
The apparitions of La Salette are certainly under-rated in the modern world and the modern Church.
Two simple farm children, Melanie and Maximin, were up on the fields tending the goats, when near a pool of water, Our Lady appeared, weeping to the children. She was weeping due to people taking the Lord's name in vain, and the profanation of Sundays.
The book has the apparition right at the beginning, at the majority of the fallout was the rest of the children's lives and the quite large fallout that ensued. From priests who sullied the name of La Salette out of spite, to the Cure of Ars St John Vianney becoming involved.
The book is told in a simple narrative style way which is easy to enjoy and the 1950s style of writing is endearing to the story.
The Church approved the apparitions in 1851 (the apparitions took place in 1846) and it has remained a busy pilgrimage site since. As with Fatima, secrets were imparted to the children (which are not available in the book) which were sent to the Vatican for the Pope.
The lives of Melanie and Maximin were not not so rosy after the apparitions and they were shipped around from pillar to post without any clear direction, and both faired worse as a result of the apparition, receiving no material gain from the experience. Indeed they didn't even get on with each other!
"Why had out Lord held up little children as models? Because what you say to them they will take literally. They will not discount it, adapt it, interpret it away." p.68
"So it was in countless cases. The lapsed, the case-hardened, the cynical, those who regarded themselves as not merely unreligious but irreligious and even anti-religious fell under the sway of a gentle-seeming but inexorable power which broke the hard-packed, stony surface of their souls and there brought to life and to growth a disused if not forgotten faith, a piety dead or dormant, compunction for sin. Where the beautiful lady had wept, there now wept men who had long mocked at religion, who had gone gladly along with the smug materialism of the age, who had indulged every appetite, whim, mood regardless of the laws of God. Where the unearthly light had shone, there now was routed the darkness of ignorance, error, corruption which had made reeking dungeons of souls meant to be temples of the Holy Spirit." p.166-167
"Thus he [Maximin] was a living refutation of the easy assumption, current in his day and in ours, that material conditions determine whether people will adhere to virtue or to vice, that sin is to be expected and explained away when security and plenty are lacking. Heaven would not hear of this fallacy." p.188
Two simple farm children, Melanie and Maximin, were up on the fields tending the goats, when near a pool of water, Our Lady appeared, weeping to the children. She was weeping due to people taking the Lord's name in vain, and the profanation of Sundays.
The book has the apparition right at the beginning, at the majority of the fallout was the rest of the children's lives and the quite large fallout that ensued. From priests who sullied the name of La Salette out of spite, to the Cure of Ars St John Vianney becoming involved.
The book is told in a simple narrative style way which is easy to enjoy and the 1950s style of writing is endearing to the story.
The Church approved the apparitions in 1851 (the apparitions took place in 1846) and it has remained a busy pilgrimage site since. As with Fatima, secrets were imparted to the children (which are not available in the book) which were sent to the Vatican for the Pope.
The lives of Melanie and Maximin were not not so rosy after the apparitions and they were shipped around from pillar to post without any clear direction, and both faired worse as a result of the apparition, receiving no material gain from the experience. Indeed they didn't even get on with each other!
"Why had out Lord held up little children as models? Because what you say to them they will take literally. They will not discount it, adapt it, interpret it away." p.68
"So it was in countless cases. The lapsed, the case-hardened, the cynical, those who regarded themselves as not merely unreligious but irreligious and even anti-religious fell under the sway of a gentle-seeming but inexorable power which broke the hard-packed, stony surface of their souls and there brought to life and to growth a disused if not forgotten faith, a piety dead or dormant, compunction for sin. Where the beautiful lady had wept, there now wept men who had long mocked at religion, who had gone gladly along with the smug materialism of the age, who had indulged every appetite, whim, mood regardless of the laws of God. Where the unearthly light had shone, there now was routed the darkness of ignorance, error, corruption which had made reeking dungeons of souls meant to be temples of the Holy Spirit." p.166-167
"Thus he [Maximin] was a living refutation of the easy assumption, current in his day and in ours, that material conditions determine whether people will adhere to virtue or to vice, that sin is to be expected and explained away when security and plenty are lacking. Heaven would not hear of this fallacy." p.188
September 20, 2013
Winner of the Marian Library Medal in 1953, John S. Kennedy's book, Light on the Mountain: The Story of La Salette, is one of the most historically definitive books available regarding the Marian apparition in the mountains of La Salette, France to two iron-willed, overworked, discarded, uneducated shepard children-Maximin Giraud, aged 11 and Melanie Mathieu, aged 14-on September 19th, 1846. Through his own research and readings, John S. Kennedy creates a very visual and accurate and convincing profile that slowly transports the reader to the very day the apparition occurred, as well as to the positive aftereffects that continued, even to this very day. The La Selette apparition was quite unique in that it was the first time the Blessed Mother appeared to children, long before Lourdes, Fatima, Beauraing and Banneux. And she appeared to two less-than-stellar, rude, poor practitioners of the Christian faith. But in her choosing of them, she chose all of us, for these kids, were, in essence, a mirror for what we all were and unfortunately continue to be, self-absorbed and wolfish people with a heavy disregard not simply for faith but for people completely. Faith in God evolved, somehow, into an unnecessary philosophy whereby it was actually viciously derided with a unified sneering jocularity by almost all the villages that were on the outskirts of the mountains. People drank and cussed, lived lecherously and only went to church to mock it, for as the Virgin Mother stated to Melanie and Maximin: "If my people will not obey, I shall be compelled to loose my son's arm. It is so heavy, so pressing that I can no longer restrain it. How long I have suffered for you! If my Son is not to cast you off, I am obliged to entreat Him without ceasing. But you take no least notice 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 for your sake. I have appointed you six days for working. The seventh I have reserved for myself. And no one will give it to me. This it is which 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 burdensome...Only a few rather old women got to Mass in the summer. All the rest work every Sunday throughout the summer. And in winter, when they don't know what to do with themselves, they go to Mass only to poke fun at religion. During Lent they flock to the butcher shops, like dogs..." What is so stark about the La Sallette apparition is not only the choice of messengers but the frightening directives and secrets, the very latter so relevant, especially in today's times.
June 2, 2009
I am intermittently on the lookout for discussions of apparitions of Our Lady that deal with the topic dispassionately and without bias. Such works are few, and this isn't one of them. However, the author, believer though he obviously is, does take a nearly objective stance, matter-of-factly relating the story of two young shepherds' vision of the Blessed Mother at La Salette in 1846 and the equally interesting story of the sadder, later lives of these two, Melanie and Maxinim.
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