Our Lady of Happy Meetings

Le Laus, France · 1664 – 1718

TLDR

Our Lady appeared to a young shepherdess for fifty-four years, the longest approved apparition in Church history prior to Medjugorje, and focused her messages on the sacraments, especially confession. A heavenly perfume accompanied her visits and was detected by thousands of pilgrims. She came not for a single dramatic moment but for a lifetime of quiet, daily formation of one faithful soul.

Year	1664-1718
Location	Le Laus, France
Visionary	Benoîte Rencurel
Apparitions	54 years of apparitions
Church Status	Fully approved by Bishop di Falco (2008)
Key Message	Focus on the sacraments, especially confession. Heavenly perfume. Longest approved apparition until Medjugorje.

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The World She Entered

In the mountains of southeastern France, in the second half of the seventeenth century, the wounds of the religious wars were still raw.

The Protestant Reformation and the violent conflicts that followed had torn France apart for over a century. Whole regions had been devastated. In the remote valleys of the Alps, far from the cathedrals and courts of Paris, the people were poor, isolated, and many had drifted quietly away from the sacraments. They still believed, in a way, but the living practice of the faith, confession, the Eucharist, penance, had grown cold. The priests were few. The churches were crumbling. The distance between the people and God felt wider than the mountain passes that separated their villages.

Into that quiet distance, Our Lady came. Not for a single visit or a handful of apparitions, but for fifty-four years. She came and she stayed, because the work of bringing her children back to her Son is not the work of a single afternoon. It is the patient, daily, relentless work of a Mother who will not give up.

To Whom She Appeared

Benoîte Rencurel was born on September 16, 1647, in the small village of Saint-Étienne d'Avançon, in the French Alps. Her family was poor, and when her father died when she was seven, life became even harder. By the age of twelve, she was working as a shepherdess, tending flocks in the rocky mountain pastures to help her family survive. Sometimes she tended two flocks at once to earn extra money.

She could not read or write. She had no formal education of any kind. But she had one thing that set the course of her entire life: she prayed. Every day, while her sheep grazed, Benoîte prayed the Rosary. Hour after hour, decade after decade, walking the mountain trails with beads in her hands and the Blessed Mother on her lips.

She was seventeen years old when heaven answered.

How She Appeared

In May of 1664, Benoîte began seeing a beautiful Lady and Child standing on a large rock called Les Flours, in a valley near her village. The Lady smiled warmly but did not speak. She came back nearly every day for two months, silent and present, as if she was waiting for Benoîte to be ready.

When a local magistrate suggested Benoîte ask the Lady who she was, she did. The Lady answered:

"I am Mary, the Mother of my very dear Son."

Not a title. Not a theological definition. Something far more tender. She called Jesus her very dear Son, the way a mother speaks of the child she loves most in the world.

Then Mary began to do something she has done at no other apparition in quite the same way. She stayed. Day after day, she appeared to Benoîte and spoke with her, teaching her, forming her, educating the heart and mind of this girl who had never set foot in a school. Others could not hear what Our Lady said, but they could see the transformation taking place in Benoîte. She was being shaped, quietly and steadily, into someone who could carry a mission.

At the end of September 1664, Our Lady told Benoîte to leave the valley and go to a place called Le Laus:

"Go to Laus. You will find a chapel there from which sweet scents will emanate, and there you will speak to me often."

Benoîte walked to Le Laus and found a small, forgotten chapel called Notre-Dame de Bon Rencontre, Our Lady of Good Encounter, or as it has come to be known, Our Lady of Happy Meetings. The chapel was old and neglected, but when Benoîte stepped inside, she was overwhelmed by a heavenly perfume that filled the air. She looked up and saw the Blessed Virgin standing above the altar.

And there, in that small and crumbling chapel, Our Lady revealed the heart of her message:

"On this spot I wish a church built, a privileged sanctuary, wherein many sinners will repent. Means will not be wanting, despite the poverty of the country people around."

What She Said

The message of Our Lady of Laus, Our Lady of Happy Meetings, is about one thing above all others: bringing sinners home through the sacraments.

She asked for the chapel to be rebuilt into a place of Eucharistic adoration. She asked for a house to be built where priests could live and minister to the people who would come, hearing their confessions, celebrating Mass, and helping them find their way back to God. She told Benoîte:

"My Son wishes to be especially honored in this valley."

This was not a shrine for spectacle. It was a place for encounter, a meeting point between a soul weighed down by sin and a God who is waiting to forgive. That is why the name fits so perfectly. Notre-Dame de Bon Rencontre. Our Lady of the Good Encounter. Our Lady of Happy Meetings. Because what happens when a sinner comes to confession and meets the mercy of God? That is the happiest meeting there is.

Our Lady also gave Benoîte a specific instruction for the healing of the sick. She told her that the oil from the sanctuary lamp, the lamp that burns before the Blessed Sacrament, should be used to anoint the sick with faith in her intercession. The healings that followed were so numerous and so well documented that it was ultimately a miracle of physical healing that convinced the skeptical Vicar General of the authenticity of the apparitions. Within eighteen months, 130,000 pilgrims had come to Le Laus. And still, Our Lady did not leave.

She continued to appear to Benoîte for the rest of her life. Fifty-four years of daily companionship, guidance, correction, and love. During those decades, Benoîte endured enormous suffering. She was kept under house arrest for fifteen years due to the political actions of local clergy who opposed her. She received the stigmata every Friday for many years. She bore the weight of a mission she never asked for, sustained by the presence of a Mother who never abandoned her.

A heavenly perfume was reported to fill the church whenever Our Lady appeared, and many pilgrims experienced it for themselves. The fragrance became one of the most distinctive signs of the apparition, a sweetness that could not be explained and did not come from any earthly source.

Benoîte Rencurel died three days after Christmas, on December 28, 1718, and was buried in the church at Le Laus. Pope Benedict XVI declared her Venerable in 2009, one year after the apparitions were formally approved by the Holy See in 2008.

The Heart of Her Message

Our Lady of Happy Meetings teaches us something that no other apparition quite captures in the same way: the patience of a Mother's love.

At Le Laus, she came for fifty-four years. She did not deliver her message and depart. She moved in. She walked alongside Benoîte through every season of her life, through suffering and joy, through opposition and perseverance, through the long and ordinary work of daily faithfulness.

And her message was not about the end of the world or the fate of nations. It was about the sacraments. Go to confession. Come to the Eucharist. Let God meet you in the place where mercy lives. That is where the happy meeting happens, where heaven and a human heart sit down together and the distance between them disappears.

The church was built, as she promised, despite the poverty of the countryside. The priests came. The sinners came. And they are still coming. Over 120,000 pilgrims visit Le Laus every year, and the oil from the sanctuary lamp is still used in prayer for healing.

She called herself the Mother of her very dear Son. She chose a crumbling chapel as her sanctuary. She spent fifty-four years with a girl no one else would have chosen. And she called the whole thing a happy meeting, because that is what it is when a Mother brings her children home.

Sources and Further Reading

The details of the apparitions at Le Laus are drawn from the manuscripts documenting Benoîte Rencurel's testimony, first fully examined and published in Father De Labriolle's work Benoîte, la bergère de Notre-Dame du Laus (1977), and from the historical records maintained by the Sanctuary of Notre-Dame du Laus. The apparitions were formally recognized by the Holy See on May 4, 2008. All excerpts of Our Lady's words are from Benoîte's recorded testimony.

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For those who want to go deeper:

• Our Lady of Laus · The Miracle Hunter

• Our Lady of Happy Meetings · Institute for Mariology and Formation, St. Vincent Seminary

• Our Lady of Happy Assembly · The Visitation Project

• Our Lady of Laus · Wikipedia