la salette

[prismaticbleed]

Our Lady of La Salette.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, in her appearance as Our Lady of La Salette, has always struck my heart most deeply. This face of hers– weeping yet serene, crowned with pearls and roses– is the face of a beloved mother to me, a mother whose sorrowful heart I dearly wish to console, whose warnings of mercy I strive to heed. She is beautiful but she is quietly terrible, gilded with chains and reminding us of sovereign Justice. But I love her so much the more for that. I love that absolute honesty, that glory of Heaven she manifests in its ineffable purity– and the consequences our sins against that purity will have if we do not repent, if we do not refashion our damaged hearts to more closely resemble hers, with its swords and roses both. Mary is always a Mother, always a presence of compassion and gentleness, but like any good mother, she will always admonish us for our disobedience, pointing us strongly in the right direction. Thank God for Mary.

...

Let me be blunt. For most of my life, I sadly had little to no devotion to Mary, because I had a history of long-term traumatic abuse perpetuated by women, beginning in childhood. Therefore I could not even imagine a non-abusive female figure, especially not a mother figure, and so, even Mary felt threatening to me. This was a shallow and false assumption, true, but unfortunately my mind had no other grounds from which to view a woman at that time. To me, women hurt you. That was all I knew. And so I never knew Mary either.

As I grew older and entered an equally disturbed adulthood, I reached a crisis point and tried to strengthen my battered faith. God was my sole refuge and I was now desperate enough to want to have at least one kind woman in my life-- so where better to look than to Mary?

And so I gradually began to learn about Marian apparitions and devotions. Once again, none drew me in. All still felt frightening or foreign.

Then I met Our Lady of La Salette. The weeping virgin. She looked so different from all other depictions of Mary. And yet it was still her!

(left unfinished)