Sunday, September 18, 2011

La Salette

So, this is another little miracle.  It is the reason that I started this blog because these "Coincidences" are just too prophetic.

Tonight, at the end of our dinner while we were enjoying some delicious green grapes- something we rarely eat around here!-, my older son tattled on his younger brother for saying "Oh God" while playing outside with the neighborhood kids.  Little Matthew is just six years old so we had a talk about the commandments.  I told him that I would not punish him if he could tell me which commandment he had broken.  So we had a little catechism review.  Then I explained to him how serious respecting the Lord's holy name is, and told him about Our Lady of La Salette, how she said the grapes would spoil, among other consequences, if men did not keep the Sabbath and stop their blasphemy.  We decided to have a story time and go and look up Our Lady of La Salette on the computer.

It was on the 18th of September, 1846 that the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Melanie and Maximin in the hills of La Salette, France.  She warned them of great trials to come which resonate with the prophecies given in other approved Marian apparitions, namely famine and persecutions.  She spoke specifically of sins against the the second and third commandments. 

Today at Holy Mass we heard the readings about the labourers who recieved the payment due to them for their labours and the seeming injustice of the eleventh-hour workers receiving the same as those who worked a full day.  The thoughts come to mind: "Is it really so hard to do what is asked of us when it is reasonable?  Is keeping the Sabbath and honoring  the Lord's name not something we wish to do out of great gratitude for all His great gifts to us?"  As Jesus said, it is the Father's generosity that moves Him to give the eleventh hour workers the same pay as the others.  God is so generous and loving that He gives us not only what is just, but rewards us with abundance.  Shall we not thank Him?

Among the many things prophesied at La Salette, one can not help taking pause at the predictions of clerical sins.  Yet Jesus himself said "I myself will shepherd them, for others have led them astray".   Is it not true that our liturgy is rife with a lack of respect for the second commandment also?   How quickly we forget our history and our patrimony.  There can be no New Testament if there was not first an Old Testament.  And did Jesus not say that not one jot or tittle would be removed from the Law?  

Here's the question:  what is the liturgy?  Is it our own invention, our own personal celebration to make ourselves feel good?  No, it is what God asks of us through Holy Mother Church.  It is deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition and is a Sacraficial Offering, the New Covenant.  God did not give detailed directions for worship in the Old Testament only to have them abandoned to whim and fancy in the New Testament. Niether did he take on the flesh only to ascend to heaven in glory and leave his children orphans. Christ Jesus gave us the Rock on which He built the Church and to him he gave the keys to bind and loose.

Yet at Holy Mass today we were assaulted with the "Becoming Church" campaign.    The Church's direction for liturgical norms is rich, beautiful, and glorious.  Her history is so beautiful!  When will the hearts of the faithful catch fire with love for Christ and His bride, the Church, and reclaim their most fitting heritage?  Oh how I pray for that day when we, the Church, will do the work of Christ with great love and think not about our reward but our service to Him who is so generous to us!  Yes, we are the church, the Mystical Body of Christ, and yet the faithful are so asleep that they fall for this subversive propaganda that they have to "become church" by contributing funds to a campaign. The faithful truly have been ground down little by little to accept the compromises of the devil.  Surely, this is a terrible chastisement, an apostasy, a great and deep sorrow, and a terrible war.

So just what are the chances of looking up Our Lady of La Salette on September 18th, 2001, the precise One Hundred and Sixty-fifth anniversary of the apparition?  It strikes me as just a wee bit more than chance.