Our Lord made the following promises to those who practice devotion to His Sacred Heart:
I will grant them the graces necessary for their state of life.Dom Prosper Guéranger:
I will establish peace in their families.
I will comfort them in their afflictions.
I will be their safe refuge during life, and especially at death.
I will give abundant blessings on all their undertakings.
Sinners will find a fountain and a boundless ocean of mercy in My Heart.
Tepid souls will become fervent.
Fervent souls will quickly achieve great perfection.
I will bless every place where the picture of My Sacred Heart is exposed and honoured.
I will give to priests the power to touch the hardest hearts.
I will grant to all those who receive Communion on the First Fridays, for nine consecutive months, the grace of final repentance.
They will not die in my displeasure, nor without receiving the sacraments, and my Heart will be their secure refuge in that last hour.
A new ray of light shines today in the heaven of holy Church, and its light brings warmth. The divine Master given to us by our Redeemer, that is, the Paraclete Spirit, who has come down into this world, continues His teachings to us in the sacred Liturgy. The earliest of these His divine teachings was the mystery of the Trinity. And we have worshipped the Blessed Three: we have been taught who God is, we know Him in His own nature, we have been admitted by faith into the sanctuary of the infinite Essence. Then, this Spirit, the mighty wind of Pentecost (Acts ii. 2), opened to our souls new aspects of the truth which it is His mission to make the world remember (John xiv. 26), and His revelation left us prostrate before the sacred Host, the Memorial which God Himself has left us of all His wonderful works (Psalms cx. 3).
Today it is the Sacred Heart of the Word made flesh that this Holy Spirit puts before us that we may know and love and adore It. There is a mysterious connection between these three Feasts, of Trinity, Corpus Christi and the Sacred Heart. The aim of the Holy Ghost in all three is this: to initiate us more and more into that knowledge of God by faith, which is to fit us for the face-to-face Vision in Heaven. We have already seen how God being made known to us by the first in Himself, manifests Himself to us by the second in His outward works — for the Holy Eucharist is the memorial here below in which He has brought together, and with all possible perfection, all those His wondrous works. But by what law can we pass so rapidly, so almost abruptly, from one Feast, which is all directly regarding God, to another which celebrates His works, done by Him to and for us? Then again: how came the divine thought, how came, that is, eternal Wisdom, from the infinite repose of the eternally blessed Trinity to the external activity of a love for us poor creatures which has produced what we call the Mysteries of our Redemption? The Heart of the Man-God is the solution of these difficulties. It answers all such questions and explains to us the whole divine plan.
We knew that the sovereign happiness which is in God, we knew that the life eternal communicated from the Father to the Son, and from these two to the Holy Ghost, in light and love, was to be given by the will of these Three Divine Persons to created beings. Not only to those which were purely spiritual, but likewise to that creature whose nature is the union of spirit and matter, that is, to Man. We are of this lower nature, and a pledge of this life eternal was given to us in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It is by the Eucharist that Man, who has already been made a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter i. 4) by the grace of the sanctifying Spirit is united to the divine Word, and is made a true member of this Only Begotten Son of the Father. Yes: though it had not yet appeared what we will be, says Saint John, still we are now the sons of God. We know that when He will appear we will be like Him, for we are called to live as the Word Himself does, in the society of that eternal Father of His, for ever and ever.
But the infinite love of the sacred Trinity which thus called us frail creatures to a participation in Its own blessed life would accomplish this merciful design by the help and means of another love, a love more like what we ourselves can feel. That is, the created love of a human soul evinced by the beatings of a heart of flesh like our own. The Angel of the great Counsel who is sent to make known to the world the merciful designs of the Ancient of days, took to Himself, in order to fulfil His divine mission, a created, a human form. And this would enable men to see with their eyes, yes, and even touch with their hands, the Word of life, that life eternal which was with the Father, but appeared even to us (1 John i. 2). This human nature which the Son of God took into personal union with Himself from the womb of the Virgin-Mother was the docile instrument of infinite love, but it was not absorbed into, or lost in, the Godhead. It retained its own substance, its special faculties, its distinct will, which Will ruled, under the influence of the divine Word, the acts and movements of His most holy Soul and adorable Body. From the very first instant of its existence, the human Soul of Christ was inundated, more directly than was any other creature, with that true light of the Word, “which enlightens every man who comes into this world” (John i. 9). It enjoyed the face-to-face vision of the divine essence, and therefore took in at a single glance the absolute beauty of the sovereign Being and the wisdom of the divine decree which called finite beings into a participation of infinite bliss. It understood its sublime mission, and conceived an immense love for man and for God. This love began simultaneously with life and filled not only His soul, but impressed its own way the Body too — the Body which was formed from the substance of the Virgin Mother by the operation of the Holy Ghost. The effect of His love told, consequently, upon His Heart of true human flesh. It set in motion those beatings which made the Blood of redemption circulate in His sacred veins.
For it was not with Him as with other men, the pulsations of whose hearts are at first the consequence of nothing but the vital power which is in the human frame, and later on when age has awakened reason into act, the ideas so produced will produce physical impressions on us which will, now and then, quicken or dull the throbbings of these our hearts. With the Man-God it was not so: His Heart, from the very first moment of its life, responded, that is, throbbed, to the law of His soul’s love, whose power to act upon His human Heart was as incessant and as intense as is the power of organic vitality — a love as burning at the first instant of the Incarnation, as it is this very hour in Heaven. For the human love which the Incarnate Word had, resulting as it did from His intellectual knowledge of God and His creatures, was as perfect as that knowledge and therefore as incapable of all progress; though, being our Brother, and our model in all things, He day-by-day made more manifest to us the exquisite sensibility of His divine Heart.
At the period of Jesus’ coming on this Earth man had forgotten how to love, for he had forgotten what true beauty was. His heart of flesh seemed to him as a sort of excuse for his false love of false goods: his heart was but an outlet by which his soul could stray from heavenly things to the husks of earth, there to waste his power and substance (Luke xv. 13). To this material world which the soul of man was intended to make subserve its Maker’s glory — to this world which by a sad perversion kept man’s soul a slave to his senses and passions — the Holy Ghost sent a marvellous power, which, like a resistless lever, would replace the world in its right position: it was the sacred Heart of Jesus, a Heart of flesh like that of other human beings, from whose created throbbings there would ascend to the eternal Father an expression of love which would be a homage infinitely pleasing to the infinite Majesty, because there was in that love of that human Heart the dignity of its union with the Word. It is a harp of sweetest melody that is ever vibrating under the touch of the Spirit of Love. It gathers up into its own music the music of all creation, whose imperfections it corrects, and supplies its deficiencies, and tunes all discordant voices into unity, and so offers to the glorious Trinity a hymn of perfect praise. The Trinity finds its delight in this Heart. It is the one only organum, as Saint Gertrude calls it, the one only instrument which finds acceptance with the Most High. Through it must pass all the inflamed praises of the burning Seraphim, just as must do the humble homage paid to its God by inanimate creation. By it alone are to come upon this world the favours of Heaven. It is the mystic ladder between man and God, the channel of all graces, the way by which man ascends to God and God descends to man.
The Holy Ghost, whose masterpiece it is, has made it a living image of Himself. For although in the ineffable relations of the divine Persons He is not the source of love, He is its substantial expression or, in theological language, the term. It is He who inclines the Holy Trinity to those works outside Itself, which first produce creatures and then, having given them being (and to some, life,) He (the Holy Spirit) pours out on them all the effusion of their Creator’s love for them. And so is it with the love which the Man-God has for God and Man — its direct and, so to say, material expression is the throbbing it produces on His sacred Heart. And again, it is by that Heart that, like the Water and Blood which came from His wounded Side, He pours out onto the world a stream of redemption and grace which is to be followed by the still richer one of glory.
“One of the soldiers,” as the Gospel tells us, “opened Jesus’ Side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water” (John xix. 34). We must keep before us this text and the fact it relates, for they give us the true meaning of the Feast we are celebrating. The importance of the event here related is strongly intimated by the earnest and solemn way in which Saint John follows up his narration. After the words just quoted he adds: “And he that saw it, has given testimony of it, and his testimony is true. And he knows that he says true, that you also may believe; for these things were done that the Scripture might be fulfilled” (John xix. 35, 36). Here the Gospel refers us to the testimony of the Prophet Zacharias who, after predicting the Spirit of grace being poured out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem (Zacharias xii. 10) says: “They will look on Him whom they pierced” (Zacharias xii. 10, as quoted in John xix. 37).
And, when they look on his side thus pierced, what will they see there but that great truth which is the summary of all Scripture, of all history: “God so loved the world, as to give it his Only Begotten Son; that whoever believes in him, may not perish, but may have eternal life” (John iii. 16). This grand truth was during the ages of expectation veiled under types and figures. It could be deciphered by but few, and even then, only obscurely. But it was made known with all possible clearness on that eventful day when on Jordan’s banks (Luke iii. 21, 22) the whole sacred Trinity manifested who was the Elect, the Chosen One, of the Father — the Son in whom He was so well pleased (Isaias xliii. 1). Yes, it was Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary. But there was another revelation of deepest interest to us which had still to be made: it was how, and in what way, would the eternal life brought by this Jesus into the world, pass from Him into each one of us?
This second revelation was made to us when the soldier’s spear opened the divine source, and there flowed from it that Water and Blood which, as the Scripture tells us, completed the testimony of the Blessed Three. “There are three,” says Saint John, who give testimony in Heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost: and these Three are One. And there are three that give testimony on earth: the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood”: and these three are one, that is, they are one, because they concur in giving the one same testimony. “And, this,” continues Saint John, “is the testimony: that God has given to us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son” (John v. 7, 8, 11). These words contain a very profound mystery, but we have their explanation in today’s Feast which shows us how it is through the Heart of the Man-God that the divine work is achieved and how, through that same Heart, the plan which was conceived from all eternity by the Wisdom of the Father, has been realised.
To communicate His own happiness to creatures by making them, through the Holy Ghost, partakers of His own divine nature (1 Peter i. 4), and members of His beloved Son — this was the merciful design of the Father. And all the works of the Trinity outside itself tend to the accomplishment of that same. When the fullness of time had come, there appeared upon our earth He that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ —not by water only, but by water and blood. The Spirit who, together with the Father and the Son has already on the banks of Jordan given His testimony, gives it here again, for Saint John continues: “And it is the Spirit which testifies that Christ is the truth” (1 John v. 6), and that He spoke the truth when He said of Himself that He is Life (John v. 26). Yes, the Spirit, as the Gospel teaches us (John vii. 37-39), comes forth with the water from the fountains of the Saviour (Isaias xii. 3), and makes us worthy of the Precious Blood which flows together with the water. Then does mankind, thus born again of water and the Holy Ghost, become entitled to enter into the kingdom of God (John iii. 5), and the Church, thus made ready for her Spouse in those same waters of Baptism, is united to the Incarnate Word in the Blood of the sacred Mysteries. We, being members of that holy Church, have had the same union with Christ. We are bone of His bones, and flesh of His flesh (Genesis ii. 23; Ephesians v. 30). We have received the power to be made adopted Sons of God (John i. 12) and sharers, for all eternity, of the divine life which He, the Son by nature, has in the bosom of the Father.
On, then, you [the people of the Old Testament] who are ignorant of the nuptials of the Lamb, give the signal of their being accomplished. Lead the Spouse to the nuptial bed of the Cross. He will lay Himself down on that most precious wood which His mother, the Synagogue, has made to be His couch. She prepared it for Him on the eve of the day of his alliance when, from His Sacred Heart, there is to come forth his Bride, together with the Water which cleanses her, and the Blood which is to be her dower. It was for the sake of this Bride that He left His Father and the bright home of His heavenly Jerusalem. He ran as a giant in the way of His intense love. He thirsted, and the thirst of the desire gave Him no rest. The scorching wind of suffering which dried up His bones was less active than the fire which burned in His Heart, and made its beatings send forth in the agony in the Garden the Blood which, on the morrow, was to be spent for the redemption of His Bride. He has reached Calvary, it is the end of His journey. He dies, He sleeps, with His burning thirst upon Him. But the Bride, who is formed for Him during this His mysterious sleep, will soon rouse him from it. That Heart, from which she was born, has broken that she might come forth. Broken, it ceased it beat, and the grand hymn which, through it, had been so long ascending from Earth to Heaven, was interrupted, and creation was dismayed at the interruption. Now that the world has been redeemed man should sing more than ever the canticle of his gratitude. And the strings of the harp are broken! Who will restore them? Who will rewaken in the Heart of our Jesus the music of its divine throbbings?
The new-born Church, His Bride, is standing near that opened side of her Jesus. In the intensity of her first joy she thus sings to God the Father: “I will praise you, Lord, among the people, and I will sing to you among the nations” (Psalms cvii. 1-4) Then, to her Jesus: “Arise, you, my glory! my psaltery, my harp, arise!” And He arose in the early morning of the great Sunday. His Sacred Heart resumed its melody, and with it sent up to Heaven the music of holy Church, for the Heart of the Spouse belongs to His Bride, and they are now two in one flesh (Genesis ii. 24; Ephesians v. 31).
Christ being now in possession of her who has wounded His Heart (Canticles iv. 9), He gives her in return full power over that Sacred Heart of His from which she has issued. There lies the secret of all the Church’s power. In the relations existing between husband and wife, which were created by God at the beginning of the world and (as the Apostle assures us), in view of this great mystery of Christ and the Church — man is the head (1 Corinthians xi. 3) and the woman may not domineer in the government of the family. Has the woman, then, no power? She has power, and a great power. She must address herself to her husband’s heart, and gain all by love. If Adam, our first father, sinned, it was because Eve used, and for evil, her influence over his heart by misleading him, and us in him. Jesus saves us because the Church has won His Heart , and that human Heart could not be won without the divinity also being moved to mercy. And here we have the doctrine of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as far as regards the principle on which it rests. In this its primary and essential notion, the devotion is as old as the Church herself, for it rests on this truth which has been recognised in every age — that Christ is the Spouse, and the Church is His Bride.
The Fathers and holy Doctors of the early Ages had no other way than the one we have been putting before our readers, when expounding the mystery of the Church’s having been formed from Jesus’ side. And the words they used — though always marked by that reserve which was called for by so many of their hearers being as yet uninitiated — were taken as the text for the sublime and fearless developments of later Ages. “The initiated,” says Saint John Chrysostom, “know the mystery of the Saviour's fountains: from those, that is, from the Blood and the Water, the Church was formed; from those same came our Mysteries so that, when you approach the dread chalice, you must come up to it as though you were about to drink of that very Side of Christ.” “The Evangelist,” says Saint Augustine, “made use of a word which has a special import, when he said the soldier opened Jesus’ Side with a spear. He did not say, struck the Side, or wounded the Side, or anything else like that; but he said, he opened Jesus’ Side. He opened it, for that Side was like the door of life. And when it was opened, the Sacraments (the Mysteries) of the Church came through it... This was predicted by that door which Noah was commanded to make in the side of the Ark, through which were to go those living creatures which were not to be destroyed by the deluge. And all these things were a figure of the Church.”
“Enter into the rock, and hide in the pit” (Isaias ii. 10), says Isaias. And what means this, but “enter into the Side of your Lord?” as the expression is interpreted in the thirteenth century by Guerric, a disciple of Saint Bernard, and Abbot of Igny. Saint Bernard himself thus comments the verses 13 and 14 of the second Chapter of the Canticle: “Come, my dove, in the clifts of the rock, in the hollow places of the wall” (Canticles ii. 13, 14): “O beautiful clifts of the rock in which the dove takes safe shelter, and fearlessly looks at the hawk that hovers about!... And what may I see through that opening? The iron has pierced his soul, and his Heart has come near; so that, through the clift, the mystery of his Heart is made visible, that great mystery of love, those bowels of the mercy of our God.. "What else are you, Lord, but treasures of love, but riches of goodness?... I will make my way to those full store cellars. I will take the Prophet’s advice, and will leave the cities. I will dwell in the Rock, and be like the dove that makes her nest in the mouth of the hole in the highest place (Jeremias xlviii. 28). Sheltered there, like as Moses was in the hole of the Rock (Exodus xxxiii. 21), I will see my Lord as He passes by.” In the next century, we have the Seraphic Doctor, Saint Bonaventure, telling us in his own beautiful style how the new Eve was born from the Side of Christ when in His sleep, and how the spear of Saul was thrown at David and struck the wall (1 Kings xviii. 10, 11) as though it would make its way into Him, of whom David was but a type, that is, into Christ, who is the Rock (1 Corinthians x. 4) the mountain-cave where are salubrious springs, the shelter where doves build their nests.
Our readers will not expect us to do more than give them this general view of the great mystery, and tell them how the holy Doctors of the Church spoke of it. As far as Saint Bernard and Saint Bonaventure are concerned, the devotion to the mystery of Christ’s side opened on the Cross is but a part of that which they would have us show to the other wounds of our Redeemer. The Sacred Heart, as the expression of Jesus’ love, is not treated of in their writings with the explicitness with which the Church would afterwards put it before us. For this end, our Lord Himself selected certain privileged souls through whose instrumentality He would bring the Christian world to a fuller appreciation of the consequences which are involved in the principles admitted by the whole Church.
It was on the 27th of January in 1281, in the Benedictine Monastery of Helfta near Eisleben in Saxony, that our Divine Lord first revealed these ineffable secrets to one of the Community of that House, whose name was Gertrude. “She was then twenty years of age. The Spirit of God came upon her, and gave her her mission... She saw, she heard, she was permitted to touch, and what is more, she drank of, that chalice of the Sacred Heart, which inebriates the elect. She drank of it, even while in this vale of bitterness. And what she herself so richly received, she imparted to others who showed themselves desirous to listen. Saint Gertrude’s mission was to make known the share and action of the Sacred Heart in the economy of God’s glory and the sanctification of souls. And in this respect, we cannot separate her from her companion Saint Mechtilde. On this special doctrine regarding the heart of the Man-God, Saint Gertrude and Saint Mechtilde hold a very prominent position among all the Saints and mystical writers of the Church. In saying this we do not except even the Saints of these later ages by whom our Lord brought about the public, the official, worship which is now given to His Sacred Heart. These Saints have spread the devotion, now shown to it, throughout the whole Church, but they have not spoken of the mysteries it contains within it, with that set purpose, that precision, that loveliness, which we find in the Revelations of the two Saints, Gertrude and Mechtilde.
It was the Beloved Disciple, who had rested His head upon Jesus’ breast at the Supper, and perhaps heard the beatings of the Sacred Heart — the Disciple who, when standing at the foot of the Cross, had seen that Heart pierced with the soldier’s spear — yes, it was he who announced to Gertrude its future glorification. She asked him how it was that he had not spoken in his writings in the New Testament of what he had experienced when he reclined upon Jesus’ Sacred Heart: he thus replied: ‘My mission was to write for the Church, which was still young, a single word of the uncreated Word of God the Father, that uncreated Word, concerning which the intellect of the whole human race might be ever receiving abundant truth, from now till the end of the world, and yet it would never be fully comprehended. As to the sweet eloquence of those throbbings of His Heart, it is reserved for the time when the world has grown old, and has become cold in God’s love, that it may regain favour by the hearing such revelation.’” (The Legate of Divine Love. Bk. iv. Ch. 4)
“Gertrude was chosen as the instrument of that revelation, and what she has told us is exquisitely beautiful. At one time, the divine Heart is shown to her as a treasure which holds all riches within it. At another, it is a harp played upon by the Holy Spirit, and the music which comes from it gladdens the Blessed Trinity and all the heavenly court. It is a plenteous spring whose stream bears refreshment to the souls in Purgatory, strength and every other grace to them that are still struggling on this Earth, and delights which inebriate the blessed in the heavenly Jerusalem. It is a golden thurible from which there ascend as many different sorts of fragrant incense as there are different races of men, for all of whom our Redeemer died upon the Cross. It is an altar on which the Faithful lay their offerings, the elect their homage, the Angels their worship, and the eternal High Priest offers Himself as a Sacrifice. It is a lamp suspended between Heaven and Earth. It is a chalice out of which the Saints, but not the Angels, drink, though these latter receive from it delights of varied kinds. It was in this Heart, that was formed and composed the Lord’s Prayer, the Pater noster: that Prayer was the fruit of Jesus’ Heart. By that same Sacred Heart are supplied all the negligences and deficiencies which are found in the honour we pay to God and His Blessed Mother and Saints. The Heart of Jesus makes itself as our servant, and our bond, in fulfilment of all the obligations incumbent on us. In it alone,do our actions derive that perfection, that worth, which makes them acceptable in the eyes of the divine Majesty, and every grace which flows from Heaven to Earth passes through that same Heart. When our life is at its close, that Heart is the peaceful abode, the holy sanctuary, ready to receive our souls as soon as they have departed from this world. And having received them, it keeps them in itself for all eternity, and beatifies them with every delight!” (Preface to the Revelations of St. Gertrude, translated into French, from the new Latin Edition, published by the Benedictine Fathers of Solesmes).
By thus revealing to Gertrude the admirable mysteries of divine love included in the doctrine which attaches to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Spirit was, so to say, forestalling the workings of Hell which, two centuries later on, were to find their prime mover in that same spot. Luther was born at Eisleben in the year 1483. He was the apostle, after being the inventor, of theories the very opposite of what the Sacred Heart reveals. Instead of the merciful God as known and loved in the previous ages, Luther would have the world believe Him to be the direct author of sin and damnation who creates the sinner for crime and eternal torments, and for the mere purpose of showing that He could do anything, even injustice! Calvin followed. He took up the blasphemous doctrines of the German apostate and rivetted the protestant principles by his own gloomy and merciless logic. By these two men the tail of the dragon dragged the third part of the stars of Heaven (Apocalypse xii. 4). In the seventeenth century the old enemy put on hypocrisy in the shape of Jansenism, changing the names of things but leaving the things unchanged, he tried to get into the very centre of the Church and there pass off his impious doctrines. Ad Jansenism which, under the pretext of safeguarding the rights of God’s sovereign dominion, aimed at making men forget that He was a God of mercy, Jansenism was a favourable system with which the enemy might propagate his so-called Reformation. That God “who so loved the world” (John iii. 16) beheld mankind discouraged or terrified, and behaving as though in Heaven there was no such thing as mercy, still less, love. This Earth of ours was to be made to see that its Creator had loved it with affectionate love, that He had taken a Heart of flesh in order to bring that infinite love within man’s reach and sight, that He made that human Heart which He had assumed do its work, that is, beat and throb from love, just as ours do, for He had become one of ourselves, and, as the Prophet words it, had taken “the cords of Adam” (Osee xi. 4): that Heart felt the thrill of joy when duty doing made us joyous. It felt a weight and pang when it saw our sorrows. It was gladsome when it found that, here and there, there would be souls to love Him in return.
How were men to be told all this? Who would be chosen to fulfil the prophecy made by Gertrude the Great? Who would come forth, like another Paul or John, and teach to the world, now grown old, the language of the divine throbbings of Jesus’ Heart? There were then living many men noted for their learning and eloquence, but they would not suit the purpose of God. God, who loves to choose the weak (and often it is that He may confound the strong) (1 Corinthians i. 27), had selected for the manifesting of the mystery of the Sacred Heart a servant of His of whose existence the world knew not: it was a Religious woman who lived in a monastery which had nothing about it to attract notice. As in the thirteenth century, He had passed by the learned men, and even the great Saints, who were then living, and selected the Blessed Juliana of liege as the instrument which was to bring about the institution of the Corpus Christi Feast — so in this present case: He would have His own Sacred Heart be glorified in His Church by a solemn Festival. And He imparts and entrusts his wish to the humble Visitandine of Paray-le-Monial, now known and venerated throughout the world under the name of Blessed Margaret-Mary. The mission thus divinely given to her was to bring forward the treasure which had been revealed to Saint Gertrude and which, all the long interval, had been known to only a few privileged souls. Sister Margaret Mary was to publish the secret to the whole world, and make the privilege cease, by telling every one how to possess it. Through this apparently inadequate instrument, the Sacred Heart of Jesus was a heavenly reaction offered to the world against the dullness which had settled on its old age: it became a touching appeal to all faithful souls that they would make reparation for all the contempt, and slight, and coldness, and sins, with which our age treats the love of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus.
“I was praying before the Blessed Sacrament on one of the days during the Octave” (of Corpus Christi, June 1675), says the Blessed Margaret, “and I received from my God exceeding great graces of His love. And feeling a desire to make some return and give Him love for love, He said to me: ‘You can not make me a greater, than by doing that which I have so often asked of you.’ He then showed me His divine Heart and said: ‘Behold this Heart which has so loved men as that it has spared nothing, even to the exhausting and wearing itself out, in order to show them its love. And instead of acknowledgement, I receive from the greater number nothing but ingratitude by their irreverences and sacrileges, and by the coldness and contempt with which they treat me in this Sacrament of love. But what is still more deeply felt by me is that they are hearts which are consecrated to me, which thus treat me. It is on this account, that I make this demand of you: that the first Friday after the Octave of the Blessed Sacrament be devoted to a special Feast in honour of my Heart. That you will go to Communion on that day and give it a reparation of honour by an act of amendment, to repair the insults it has received during the time of its being exposed on the Altar. I promise you also that my Heart will dilate itself, that it may pour forth, with abundance, the influences of its divine love upon those who will thus honour it and will do their best to have such honour paid to it.’” By thus calling His servant to be the instrument of the glorification of His Sacred Heart, our Lord made her a sign of contradiction, just as He Himself had been (Luke ii. 34). It took more than ten years for Blessed Margaret to get the better, by dint of patience and humility, of the suspicions with which she was treated by the little world around her, and of the harsh conduct of the Sisters who lived with with her in the same Monastery, and of trials of every sort. At last, on the 21st of June in 1686, the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi, she had the consolation of seeing the whole Community of Paray-le-Monial kneeling before a picture which represented the Heart of Jesus as pierced with a spear. It was the Heart by itself. It was encircled with flames and a crown of thorns, with the Cross above it, and the three Nails. That same year there was begun in the Monastery the building of a Chapel in honour of the Sacred Heart, and Blessed Margaret had the happiness of seeing it finished and blessed. She died shortly afterwards, in the year 1690. But all this was a very humble beginning: where was the institution of a Feast, properly so called? and there its solemn celebration throughout the Church?
So far back as the year 1674, our Lord had in His own mysterious way brought Margaret-Mary to form the acquaintance of one of the most saintly Religious of the Society of Jesus then living — it was Father De la Colombiere. He recognised the workings of the Holy Spirit in this His servant, and became the devoted apostle of the Sacred Heart, first of all at Paray-le-Monial, and then later on in England where he was imprisoned by the heretics of those times and merited the glorious title of Confessor of the Faith. This fervent disciple of the Heart of Jesus died in the year 1682, worn out by his labours and sufferings. But the Society, in a body, inherited his zeal for the propagation of devotion to the Sacred Heart. At once, numerous confraternities began to be formed, and everywhere there began to be built Chapels in honour of that same Heart. Hell was angry at this great preaching of God’s love. The Jansensists were furious at this sudden proclamation, at this apparition, as Saint Paul would say, “of the goodness and kindness of God our Saviour” (Titus iii. 4), and the men who were proclaiming it were aiming at restoring hope to souls in which they, the Jansenists, had sowed despondency. The big world must interfere, and it began by talking of innovations, of scandals, of even idolatry. At all events, this new devotion was, to put it mildly, a revolting dissecting of the sacred Body of Christ! Erudite pamphlets were published, some theological, some physiological, to prove that the Church should forbid the subject! Indecent engravings were circulated, and witticisms, such as indignation can make, were made, in order to bring ridicule upon those for whom the world had coined the name of Cordicoloe, or Heart-Worshippers.
But, human wisdom, or human prejudice, or even human ridicule, cannot withstand God’s purposes. He wished that human hearts should he led to love, and therefore worship, the Sacred Heart of their Redeemer. And He inspired His Church to receive the devotion which would save so many souls, though the world might not take Heaven’s view. The Apostolic See had witnessed all this and, at last, gave its formal sanction. Rome had frequently granted Indulgences in favour of the devotions privately practised towards the Sacred Heart. She had published innumerable Briefs for the establishment of local Confraternities under that title. And, in 1765, in accordance with the request made by the Bishops of Poland and the Arch-Confraternity of the Sacred Heart at Rome, Pope Clement XIII issued the first pontifical decree in favour of the Feast of the Heart of Jesus, and approved of a Mass and Office which had been drawn up for that Feast. The same favour was gradually accorded to other Churches until, at length, on the 23rd of August, 1856, Pope Pius IX of glorious memory, at the instance of all the Bishops of France, issued the Decree for the inserting the Feast of the Sacred Heart on the Calendar, and making obligatory its celebration by the universal Church.
The glorification of the Heart of Jesus called for that of its humble handmaid. On the 18th of September 1864, the Beatification of Margaret-Mary was solemnly proclaimed by the same Sovereign Pontiff who had put the last finish to the work she had begun, and given it the definitive sanction of the Apostolic See. From that time forward, the knowledge and love of the Sacred Heart have made greater progress, than they had done during the whole two previous centuries. In every quarter of the globe we have heard of Communities, Religious Orders and whole Dioceses consecrating themselves to this source of every grace, this sole refuge of the Church in these sad times. There have been pilgrimages made of thousands from every country to the favoured sanctuary of Paray-le-Monial, where it pleased the Divine Heart to first manifest Itself in its visible form to us mortals.
