Virgin Mary: “My daughter, you have searched diligently for Me, and you should not have wept. Even so, you pleased Me by not being impatient.” Benoite humbly accepted this remark and then noticed with sadness the pitiful condition of the altar.
Benoîte: “Honorable Lady, would You like me to spread my apron under Your feet? It is very white.”
“No… soon nothing will be lacking here neither vestments nor altar linens nor candles. I want a large church built on this spot, along with a building for a few resident priests. The church will be built in honor of my dear Son and Myself. Here many sinners will be converted. I will appear to you often here.”
“Build a church? There’s no money for that here!”
“Do not worry. When the time comes to build, you will find all you need, and it will not be long. The pennies of the poor will provide for everything. Nothing will be lacking.”
Throughout the winter of 1664-65, in spite of the four kilometers that separated the village of Saint-Étienne from the Laus chapel, Benoîte went up to it every day. And there she often saw the Virgin.
Virgin Mary: “Pray continually for sinners.”
Oftentimes, She would name those She wanted her to pray for. In this way the Virgin was forming Benoîte for her mission, which was to help priests in the ministry of Confession and the conversion of sinners. As of 1665, the Blessed Virgin asked her to stop tending flocks in order to devote herself to her mission.
Virgin Mary: “I asked My Son for Laus for the conversion of sinners, and He has granted it to Me.”
On September 14, 1665, Father Antoine Lambert, the Vicar General of the Diocese of Embrunand most unsympathetic towards the apparitions, came to Laus in the company of several eminent priests, equally unsympathetic to the events at Laus, hoping to put an end to “this sorcery,” prove Benoîte guilty of a hoax, and shut down the chapel. When the poor shepherd girl heard that they had arrived, she was so afraid that she wanted to leave.
Virgin Mary: “No, My daughter, you must not run away. You must remain, for you must do justice to churchmen. They will question you one by one and try to catch you with your own words. But don’t be afraid. Tell the Vicar General that he can very well make God come down from Heaven by the power he received when he became a priest, but he has no commands to give the Mother of God.”
One day in the winter of 1665, Benoîte was advised by the Virgin Mary to invite those with illnesses to apply oil to their afflicted members.
Virgin Mary: “If they take oil from the lamp in the chapel and apply it to themselves, and if they have recourse to Her intercession and have faith, they will be healed “that “God has given Her this place for the conversion of sinners.”