was about 3:00 p.m. on September 19, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, in the mountain meadow in the parish of La Salette, France. Melanie, age 15, and Maximin, 11, were watching their cow-herds together.

They had only become acquainted the day before, and Melanie wasn’t the social type, by her own account. She had warmed to Maximin the day before, and after a small lunch, the two of them began to play “Paradise,” a game of Melanie’s invention. It involved gathering stones together and decorating the resulting “house” with many flowers of all different colors. They arranged an area so that their so-called living space would be the ground floor, and a large rock above would be the actual “Paradise” (heaven). They strung garlands of flowers all around it and worked themselves all the way to sleepiness so that, a few feet from their house, they curled up on the grass and took a nap.

They woke, and Melanie noticed that the cows had wandered off. She couldn’t see them, so they both climbed up on the hill beside their “Paradise” to find them. While they were there, a bright light — “shining more brightly than the sun,” Melanie wrote later — caught their attention, drawing them to it. It was coming from a beautiful lady who was on top of their “Paradise,” dressed in a white cloak with a yellow apron, with a crown and shoes decorated with many-colored roses. She wore a crucifix around her neck, with a hammer and pliers on each end of the cross-bar. Her beauty was compelling to the two shepherds, as were the tears streaming down her face.

The children hesitated, and the lady invited them to come closer, speaking at first in French. Melanie and Maximin were illiterate peasant children, and though they spoke French, they were much more comfortable in a local dialect. Soon after telling them, “I am here to tell you great news,” the lady switched to this dialect.

The lady’s tears were a result of her Son’s anger. He was angry about people’s swearing, specifically using God’s name in vain; their working on Sundays and violating the day of rest; and the widespread disobedience of God’s laws. She told the children that she could not hold off her Son’s hand much longer, and that repentance in the form of confession, prayer, and penance were the only things that could stop his anger from taking action.
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