Feastday
17th October
Born
1647
Died
1690
Also
known as Margarita Mary Alacoque; Margherita Mary Alacoque; Marguerite Mary
Alacoque. Healed from a crippling disorder by a vision of the Blessed Virgin,
which prompted her to give her life to God. After receiving a vision of Christ
fresh from the Scourging, she was moved to join the Order of the Visitation at
Paray-le-Monial in 1671.
There she received a revelation from our Lord in 1675, which included 12 promises to her and to those who practiced a true to devotion to His Sacred Heart, whose crown of thorns represent his sacrifices. She was inspired by Our Lord to establish the Holy Hour and pray lying prostrate with her face to the ground from eleven till midnight on the eve of the first Friday of each month to share in the mortal sadness He endured when abandoned by his Apostles, His Agony and to receive Holy Communion on the First Friday of every month. This became known as the Nine First Fridays Devotion of the Sacred Heart.
In the first great revelation, He made known to her His ardent desire to be loved by men and His design of manifesting His Heart with all Its treasures of love and mercy, of sanctification and salvation. He appointed the Friday after the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi as the feast of the Sacred Heart; He called her “the Beloved Disciple of the Sacred Heart,” and the heiress of all Its treasures. The love of the Sacred Heart was the fire which consumed her, and devotion to the Sacred Heart is the refrain of all her writings. In her last illness she refused all alleviation, repeating frequently: “What have I in heaven and what do I desire on earth, but Thee alone, O my God”, and died pronouncing the Holy Name of Jesus.
The
devotion encountered violent opposition, especially in Jansenist areas, but has
become widespread and popular. On June 17, 1689, the seeress St. Margaret Mary
had a vision of Christ in which He asked that the King of France erect an
edifice in which the King would consecrate himself to the Sacred Heart.
“I
understand that devotion to the Sacred Heart is a last effort of His love
towards Christians of these latter times, by proposing to them an object and
means so calculated to persuade them to love Him…” 1
1. Rev R. Gerald.
Culleton The Prophets and Our Times (Tan Books and Publishers 1941) p 171