La Salette Family

(Feast of the Holy Family: 1 Samuel 1:20-28; 1 John 3:1-2, 21-24; Luke 2:41-52)

Hannah had made a deal with the Lord. If he gave her a son, she would give her son back to the Lord. And so she did. He would minister in the Lord’s house. In becoming a member of Eli’s household, he entered what we might call the Temple family.

In the Scriptures, house and family and similar words are often used and translated interchangeably. Today I would like to reflect on the La Salette family. 

Unlike natural human families, we have not grown up together. On the contrary, we live in different worlds: country, language, culture. There are many things that divide us. What unites us, however, first and foremost, is our love for a Beautiful Lady. We take her words to heart, we try to live by them, we do our part to make them known.

Then there is a ‘La Salette culture,’ which is filtered through our local cultures. For many, it is summed up as Reconciliation; for others, the Weeping Mother, or the invitation to ‘come closer,’ or the challenge to recompense the pains she has taken for us.

Everywhere events, political and otherwise, raise concerns that touch the La Salette heart. For example, who of us can fail to be aware of famine and the death of children, of which Mary spoke, and which is still a reality in many parts of the world. Such things evoke a La Salette response in us, tears first, perhaps, but also a desire to reach out to those who suffer.

Here we can read again the words of St. John: “We should believe in the name of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.” Mary at La Salette leads us to a renewed faith, which in turn, especially through the sacraments, nourishes our love of neighbor.

At the end of the Gospel, we are told that Mary “kept all these things in her heart.” Her coming to La Salette was, precisely, a matter of the heart. Without love, her presence and her message make no sense.

The boy Jesus said, “I must be in my Father’s house.” Members of the La Salette Family who go to the Holy Mountain for the first time, often have the experience of being home. Why not? After all, they are in their Mother’s house.