Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque
She was born on 22 July 1647 in Burgundy, France. She was the only daughter of Claude and Philiberte Alacoque, a devout and well-to-do couple. From her childhood her parents noticed her great love for the holy mysteries and her inclination to prayer and silence.
After her First Communion at the age of nine, a secret relationship began between her and her beloved Jesus. Her health weakened and she contracted rheumatic fever, which kept her bedridden for four years. When this ordeal was over, she told the Virgin Mary, her friend and mother, in prayer, that she was determined to consecrate herself to the Lord’s service once her health and strength were restored. She then added Mary to her name, becoming “Margaret Mary Alacoque”; she had already been granted a spiritual vision of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Margaret’s father died when she was eight. The family’s property fell into the hands of a relative who kept their inheritance from them, and Margaret became poor. It was a hard and sad trial for the household, which had lost its father and had no income; but Margaret’s only consolation and help was her frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament.
Her mother recovered the family’s property when Margaret was seventeen, and began to encourage her daughter to go out into society; Margaret began to go to dances with her brothers.
One night, when she was twenty-four, Margaret came back from one of these parties in her fine clothes and had a vision of Jesus Christ, scourged and bleeding heavily. He reproached her for forgetting him, but also reassured her that his Sacred Heart was still full of love for her. He reminded her of the promise to consecrate herself to him that she had made as a child to his Mother, the holy Virgin.
She decided to fulfil her vows to the Lord. On 25 May 1671 she entered the Visitation Sisters at their monastery in Paray-le-Monial, not far from her birthplace.
In the monastery, like all novices, Margaret went through many tests of the genuineness of her vocation, until she received the habit on 25 August 1671. A fellow novice described her as humble, simple and frank, and above all kind and patient. She made her profession on 6 November 1672 as Sister Margaret Mary Alacoque. She was assigned to the infirmary, but she was not skilled at nursing.
In 1673 the Sacred Heart of Jesus appeared to her for the first time. She was granted further apparitions after that.
First apparition: Jesus revealed to her the secrets of his Sacred Heart and his boundless divine love for humanity.
Second apparition: Jesus appeared to her with his Heart shining like the sun, grieving over the ingratitude of people after the sufferings he had endured for them. He asked her to do two things in honour of his divine Heart: to receive Communion on the first Friday of every month, and to spend an hour in adoration every Thursday night, in memory of his agony in Gethsemane.
Third apparition: the same sufferings recalled in the second apparition.
“Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to show them its love; and in return I receive from most of them only ingratitude, through their irreverence and sacrileges, and through the coldness and contempt they show me in this sacrament of love. But what I feel most keenly is that it is hearts consecrated to me that treat me in this way.” So Jesus asked Margaret Mary Alacoque for a feast to be established in honour of his Sacred Heart; Pope Pius IX extended it to the whole Catholic Church in 1856. The purpose of this feast is to make reparation for the offences committed against the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Heart.
Jesus promised many graces to those who would follow his requests: adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, confession and Mass on the first Friday of every month.
She fell asleep in the Lord on 17 October 1690. She was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1864,
and canonized by Pope Benedict XV in 1920.
Among her sayings:
Everything from God, and nothing from me;
everything for God, and nothing for me;
everything for the sake of God, and nothing for my sake.
Prepared by Rita of the Sawt el Rab team
