Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque

He opened His garment and showed her His Heart, ringed with a crown of thorns, bleeding and blazing with love, and He lamented:

“Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself to prove its love to them; yet in return I receive from most of them only ingratitude, coldness, irreverence and contempt in this Sacrament of Love!”

The nun entrusted with spreading devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus throughout the world was Margaret Mary Alacoque.

When Margaret was eight, her father died suddenly. Hard times fell on the family at once: the property and the running of the household passed into the hands of domineering, greedy relatives on her father’s side. Margaret and her mother lost all say and were treated cruelly, no better than servants in their own home. Every bite of food and every piece of clothing was rationed; even to go to church, Margaret had to ask permission, and she was often refused and humiliated.

But as she grew into a young woman, her good looks, her lively nature and the family’s partly restored fortunes drew Margaret toward vanity: she came to love fine clothes and parties, and wealthy young men began asking for her hand. Her mother and relatives urged her to marry and secure the family’s future.

Religious life was no bed of roses. Because of her poor health and clumsiness at manual work, the novice mistress often corrected and criticized her. The sisters of the time, influenced by a rigid rationalism, looked on Margaret’s ecstatic prayer with suspicion, thinking her overwrought, deluded, or deceived by the devil. She was given the heaviest work, isolated, and bore humiliation in complete silence.

The first apparition took place on December 27, 1673, the feast of Saint John the Apostle: while she knelt praying before the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus appeared and let her rest her head on His breast, like the disciple John long ago. He showed her His Heart blazing with love and said:

“My divine Heart is so inflamed with love for men, and for you in particular, that it can no longer contain within itself the flames of its burning charity; it must spread them abroad through you... to save humanity from the brink of destruction!”

In the second and third apparitions, in 1674, Jesus appeared in glory, His five wounds shining like five suns. He made known His deep sorrow at people’s ingratitude and coldness toward the Blessed Sacrament.

He taught two practices that became the heart of the devotion:

• Communion of Reparation on First Fridays — faithfully going to confession and Communion on the first Friday of each month for nine consecutive months to make reparation for the offenses against the Sacred Heart;
• and the Holy Hour on Thursday nights — every Thursday evening, from eleven until midnight, prostrating oneself in prayer to share the terrible anguish of Jesus in the Garden of Olives long ago.

As soon as Sister Margaret Mary opened her heart to him in confession, Father Claude de la Colombière recognized the hand of the Holy Spirit. He defended her and cleared her name, and together with her he was the first to consecrate himself solemnly to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. From then on, the Jesuits took up the mission of spreading devotion to the Sacred Heart throughout the world.

After Father de la Colombière’s death, and with the arrival of a new and devout Mother Superior, the community at Paray-le-Monial gradually came to recognize Sister Margaret Mary’s holiness. She was made assistant superior and novice mistress. With gentleness and patience, she kindled the flame of devotion to the Sacred Heart in the very convent that had once rejected her, and from there it spread to other Visitation convents throughout France.

In the autumn of 1690, at forty-three, Sister Margaret Mary fell gravely ill. She knew that the day of meeting her Bridegroom had come. From her sickbed she calmly told the sisters weeping around her:

“I am about to enter my eternal rest... I have nothing left to desire but to be completely lost in the Heart of Jesus!”

Pope Pius IX beatified her in 1864, and on May 13, 1920, Pope Benedict XV solemnly canonized Margaret Mary Alacoque. In 1856, Pope Pius IX officially established the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the whole universal Church. The Church celebrates her on October 16 each year (formerly October 17). Her relics are still kept in the chapel of the Visitation convent at Paray-le-Monial, beneath a wax figure modeled on her features, and pilgrims from all over the world come to kneel and pray in the very place where the Lord appeared to her.

In Vietnam, the movement of reparation to the Sacred Heart, the consecration of families to the Sacred Heart and the practice of the nine First Fridays have nourished the faith of millions of Catholic families.