Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Virgin

Margaret Alacoque was born on 22 July 1647 at L'Hautecour in Burgundy (now part of Verosvres), the fifth of seven children and only daughter of Claude Alacoque, a well-to-do notary, and Philiberte Lamyn. Raised in a fervent Catholic home, she already loved the Blessed Sacrament intensely as a child and, at about five years of age, consecrated herself to the Lord by a vow of chastity.

When she was eight her father died of pneumonia. She was sent to the Poor Clares at Charolles, where she made her First Communion at nine. Rheumatic fever then confined her to bed for four years. At the end of that illness she vowed herself to the Blessed Virgin for religious life and was instantly restored to health; in gratitude she added the name Mary to Margaret. Family property fell under an uncle's control and the household knew poverty; her consolation was prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. When her brother came of age, circumstances improved. Out of obedience to her mother she took part for a time in social life, believing her childhood vow no longer binding.

One night after a Carnival ball she saw Christ scourged and bloody. He reproached her forgetfulness yet showed her His Heart filled with love because of the promise she had made to His Mother. She resolved to fulfill her vow. Overcoming family resistance, she entered the Order of the Visitation founded by Saint Francis de Sales at Paray-le-Monial on 25 May 1671, nearly twenty-four years old. She received the habit on 25 August 1671 and made profession on 6 November 1672, taking the name Margaret Mary. Humble, simple, frank, kind, and patient, she was tried in the infirmary and elsewhere, and for more than twenty years lived among sisters who often doubted or mocked her visions of Our Lady and of Jesus, treating her as ill or mad. She bore extraordinary graces and severe penances with a smile.

From 27 December 1673, the feast of Saint John, Jesus permitted her to rest her head upon His Heart and disclosed the wonders of His love, choosing her to make them known. For some seventeen years He appeared to her as the "beloved disciple," sharing the secrets of His Heart and the science of love. She saw that Heart radiant like a sun, with its adorable wound, surrounded by thorns, surmounted by a cross, resting on a throne of thorns—the image that shaped later iconography. He spoke of the sadness of receiving only ingratitude and coldness for so great a love, a pain more grievous than His Passion. He asked the First Fridays: Holy Communion on nine consecutive first Fridays, with the Great Promise of the grace of final penitence, the sacraments, and His Heart as safe refuge at death. He asked the Holy Hour each Thursday night in union with His agony in Gethsemane, and that the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi be kept as a feast of reparation to His Heart—the origin of the liturgical Solemnity of the Sacred Heart.

He also asked that the King of France, Louis XIV, consecrate the realm to the Sacred Heart, honor It in the royal house, and place It on standards; she obtained no answer from the sovereign. Many in her community and some consulted theologians rejected her. Her Jesuit confessor, Saint Claude de la Colombière, recognized the charism of the saints, ordered her to write her experiences, and thus her autobiography was preserved. She resisted at first, then obeyed, still thinking she wrote only for herself. Around 1681, with her superior's leave, she carved the name of Jesus upon her breast with a knife and signed in her blood an act of total donation as "Disciple of the Divine Heart." Later, when the marks faded, she tried again and even burned her chest, then humbly submitted to correction in the infirmary.

In 1683 opposition eased; she became assistant and later novice mistress. The monastery began to keep the feast of the Sacred Heart privately in 1686, and a chapel was raised in Its honor. The devotion spread among Visitation houses and, through the Jesuits, far beyond. Margaret Mary died on 17 October 1690; tradition holds that Jesus Himself came to take her by the hand. Through her mission the great Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur rose on Montmartre (1875–1914, consecrated 1919). Pius IX beatified her in 1864; Benedict XV canonized her in 1920.

May Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque obtain for us a heart of reparation, that we may honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus with the same humble love she showed.