St. Margaret Mary: Herald of the Heart of Jesus

Oct 16

“Vision of Margaret Mary Alacoque, nun of the Visitation," by Armand Cambon at the Montauban Cathedral in France

Today we celebrate the life and legacy of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. In his book This Saint’s for You, Thomas Craughwell observes:

“In 1675 Margaret Mary had a vision of Christ while praying in the monastery chapel. He told her that he wanted her to be his messenger, spreading throughout the world devotion to his Sacred heart that, he told Margaret Mary, was ‘burning with divine love’ for the human family. Christ asked that the Church institute a new feast day in honor of his Sacred Heart and that, for love of him, Catholics should attend Mass and receive Communion on the First Friday of each month.”

“Margaret Mary Alacoque encountered a great deal of skepticism when she began to tell the other sisters in the monastery about her visions. The nuns accused her of lying; they questioned her sanity. The local clergy dismissed her visions, saying that the Sacred Heart devotion went too far in humanizing Christ and thus diminished his divinity. The Jesuits, however – including the monastery’s chaplain Father Claude de la Colombiere, SJ – argued successfully that Margaret Mary’s revelations put fresh emphasis on the perfectly orthodox principle of confidence in God’s infinite love. Today veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a mainstay in Catholic devotional life.”

Cloistered though she was, God chose Margaret Mary to be a herald of the redemptive power of the Heart of Jesus in an incredibly remarkable way. How might we imitate her example by modeling for others that same loving heart of Christ in simple, ordinary ways?