Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque

Today is the feast day of Saint Margaret Mary, who was chosen by Christ to awaken the Church to the of the love of God symbolized by the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Her early years were marked by sickness and a painful home situation. "The heaviest of my crosses was that I could do nothing to lighten the cross my mother was suffering." After considering marriage for some time, Margaret entered the Order of Visitation nuns at the age of 24. A Visitation nun was "not to be extraordinary except by being ordinary," but the young nun was not to enjoy this anonymity. A fellow novice termed Margaret humble, simple and frank, but above all kind and patient under sharp criticism and correction. She could not meditate in the formal way expected, though she tried her best to give up her "prayer of simplicity."

After being a nun for three years, she received the first of her revelations from Jesus. She felt "invested" with the presence of God, though always afraid of deceiving herself in such matters. The request of Christ was that his love for humankind be made evident through her. During the next 13 months he appeared to her at intervals. His human heart was to be the symbol of his divine-human love. By her own love she was to make up for the coldness and ingratitude of the world by frequent and loving Holy Communion, especially on the first Friday of each month, and by an hour's vigil of prayer every Thursday night in memory of his agony and isolation in Gethsemane. He also asked that a feast of reparation be instituted.

Like all saints, Margaret had to pay for her gift of holiness. Some of her own sisters were hostile. Theologians who were called in declared her visions delusions. Later, parents of children she taught called her an impostor, an unorthodox innovator. A new confessor, Blessed Claude de la Colombiere, a Jesuit, recognized her genuineness and supported her. Against her great resistance, Christ called her to be a sacrificial victim for the shortcomings of her own sisters, and to make this known. After serving as novice mistress and assistant superior, she died when she was 43 years old while being anointed. She said,

"I need nothing but God, and to lose myself in the heart of Jesus."

Christ spoke to Saint Margaret Mary: "Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify its love. In return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrileges, and by the coldness and contempt they have for me in this sacrament of love.... I come into the heart I have given you in order that through your fervor you may atone for the offenses which I have received from lukewarm and slothful hearts that dishonor me in the Blessed Sacrament." (Third apparition)

Around the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a crown of thorns. There is a wound, from the soldier's spear, showing that our sins hurt Him in the Heart. The flames coming from His Heart show the intensity of His Love. Above the flames is a cross showing that His Love for us was so great that He died for us. These are the symbols of His passion. We were redeemed by the cross and we will be saved by it.

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.