The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone: this is the work of the Lord, the wonder before our eyes. (Ps 117, 22-23)
[…] making himself a companion of our sufferings so that we become companions of his glory. By this abundant, superabundant, magnificent, excessive redemption he showed us the riches of his goodness. (TLG II, 4) SFDS
Christ is truly resurrected! Alleluia
“Peace be with you!”
Christ is risen! Hallelujah!
From a Sermon by St. Francis de Sales. April 12, 1594. Works VII, 167
There was no doubt great joy in Noah’s ark, when the dove, which had gone out a short time before, as if to spy on the state of the world, returned at last bearing in its beak the olive branch, a sure signal of the cessation of the waters, and that God had restored to the world the happiness of his peace. But, O God, with what joy, with what feast, with what gladness was the company of the Apostles, when they saw the holy humanity of the Redeemer return among themselves after the resurrection, bearing in his mouth the olive of a holy and agreeable peace: Pax vobis, and showing them the unmistakable marks and signs of the reconciliation of men with God: Et ostendit eis manus et pédes.
No doubt their souls were then fully drenched in consolation: Gavisi sunt discipuli viso Domino. But this joy was not the chief fruit of this holy sight; for their wavering faith was strengthened, their frightened hope was secured, and their almost extinguished charity was kindled. This is the discourse which I have undertaken, but which I cannot do well, nor can you, listen well, unless the Holy Spirit assists us. Let us, therefore, invoke Him, and in order to invoke Him better, let us employ the intermediary of the Blessed Virgin. Ave Maria.
Now these three things remain, faith, hope, and charity; but the greatest of these is charity. Cor, 13. Faith for the understanding, hope for memory, charity for the will. Faith honors the Father, because it is based on omnipotence; hope honors the Son, for it is founded on his redemption; charity honors the Holy Spirit, for it embraces and cherishes goodness. Faith shows us happiness, hope makes us aspire to it, charity puts us in possession. They are necessary, but now; for in Heaven there remains only charity. Faith does not enter into it, for it is seen in everything; hope still less, for there is everything in it; but there is only charity to love our God in everything, everywhere, and with everything.
Our Lord does nothing else than teach us these three lessons: how to believe, how to hope, and how to love; but especially in those forty days in which he conversed with his apostles after his resurrection, and more particularly in the apparition recited today.
On December 27 2023 the Visitation Sisters in Brooklyn held a prayer and worship service opening the anniversary year and a half (2023-2025) of the apparitions of the Sacred heart of Jesus to St Margaret Mary.
Mr Michael Zabrocki, composer, musician and organist played his new album of Sacred heart hymns, Consecration, publicly for the first time.
An attendee said ” The Prayer and Worship Service for the Opening of the 350th Anniversary of the Apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with St. Margaret Mary Alacoque on December 27, 2023 was a masterpiece. Truly a work of art which encompassed- Scripture, Direction of Intention, Reflection, Music and Prayer. “
‘My Divine Heart is so passionately in love with men that it can no longer contain within itself the flames of its ardent charity. It must pour them out by thy means, and manifest itself to them to enrich them with its precious treasures, which contain all the graces of which they have need to be saved from perdition.’ He added: ‘I have chosen thee as an abyss of unworthiness and ignorance to accomplish so great a design, so that all may be done by Me.’”
‘Behold, My beloved, a precious proof of My love. I enclose in thy heart a little spark of the most ardent flame of My love, to serve thee as a heart and to consume thee till thy last moment.’ He added: ‘Until now thou hast taken only the name of My slave; henceforth thou shalt be called the well-beloved disciple of My Sacred Heart.’
Reflection on First Apparition
December 27, 1673.
The first of the three revelations took place, no one can doubt, on the feast of St. John the Evangelist, December 27, 1673. It was the same day on which, three hundred and fifty-three years before, St. Gertrude had learned in a vision that if the well-beloved disciple had said nothing of the sacred pulsations of the Sacred Heart, it was because God reserved to Himself to speak of them at a time in which the world would begin to grow cold. The day could not have been better chosen for this revelation. We have the account of it written by Margaret Mary. She gives us the whole scene to the life.
‘Once,” said she, “being before the Blessed Sacrament and having a little more leisure than usual, I felt wholly filled with this Divine Presence, and so powerfully moved by it that I forgot myself and the place in which I was. I abandoned myself to this Divine Spirit, and yielded my heart to the power of His love. He
made me rest for a long time on His divine breast, where He discovered to me the wonders of His love and the inexplicable secrets of His Sacred Heart, which He had hitherto kept hidden from me. Now He opened it to me for the first time, but in a way so real, so sensible, that it left me no room to doubt, though I am always in dread of deceiving myself.” “
We see it was “the first time” that the Lord showed His Heart to Margaret; until then “He had always kept it hidden.” And such is the character of this apparition, and the impression that she receives from it, that the humble virgin, ordinarily so timid, so distrustful of self, “could conceive no doubt of it.”
Thus, according to the conditions of this first revelation, the new devotion was going to be the grand effort of the Heart of Jesus, “passionately in love with men,” and wishing at any cost to draw them from the abyss of perdition. Until then ordinary means had sufficed. But in the sad state in which the world was, Jesus could no longer “contain the flames of this burning charity in His Heart,” which wished to save all men. His pierced side opened, and His Heart longed to come forth. had as yet only shown itself in cloisters and to chosen souls, and in showing it to them had made them faint from love. But now it wished to show itself to the multitude, and thy whether, in revealing the hidden secrets of love, it might succeed in melting the ice that was being heaped up in the midst of Christian people. Such was the sense of the first apparition.
Jesus said nothing else to Margaret Mary, excepting that, for the accomplishment of His design, He made use of her; not in spite of her weakness and ignorance, but rather on account of them, that all should be done by Himself. But when? how? in what manner? The Lord did not say, and Margaret Mary had neither the thought nor the strength to ask Him.
Since, however, there was question of a public ministry, the Lord desired to leave her a living and unquestionable proof of the truth of what had just passed.
Before disappearing, He asked if she desired to give Him her heart. But let her speak for herself:
“He demanded my heart, and I supplicated Him to take it. He did so, and put it into His own Adorable Heart, in which He allowed me to see it as a little atom being consumed in that fiery furnace. Then, drawing it out like a burning flame in the form of a heart, He put it into the place whence He had taken it.
One can easily imagine what effect might be produced by such a favor in a creature already wholly inflamed with divine love. “After so great a grace,” said she,
one that lasted so long and during which I knew not whether I was in heaven or on earth, I remained several days wholly inflamed, wholly inebriated. I was so out of myself that it was only by doing violence to myself could utter a word. I was obliged to make so great an effort to eat and recreate that my strength was exhausted in my endeavor to endure my suffering.”
Again was she led to Mother Saumaise, but she could scarcely pronounce one word. “I experienced,” she said, “so great a plenitude of God that I was not able to express myself to my Superioress as I wished.” As to her Sisters, she experienced only one temptation; namely, to throw herself at their feet and confess to them her sins. “It would have been a great consolation to me,” she says, “to have made my general confession aloud in the refectory, that my Sisters might see the depth of my corruption; for then they would attribute to me none of the graces I received.”
Besides this sentiment of profound humility, the first fruit of the luminous apparition, a sentiment that must necessarily be conceived by one that has rested on the breast of the Saviour (for astonishment, admiration, and love create humility), Margaret preserved a memento, or rather an ineffaceable mark, of divine love. She did not bear it visibly on her breast, like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Catharine of Siena, but all her life she retained an invisible wound in her side. “The pain of this wound,” she said, “is so precious to me, causes me transports so lively, that it burns me alive, it consumes me. This divine memorial did not grow faint with time, for the Lord renewed it every first Friday of the month, and again showed her His Heart. “The Sacred Heart,” she said, “is shown me as a sun brilliant with sparkling light, whose burning rays fall direct on my heart. I then feel myself inflamed with such a fire that it seems about to reduce me to ashes.”
Such was the first act of this triple revelation of the Sacred Heart. One sees as yet only the principle and, as it were, the inspiration of this new devotion; but in what touching beauty! A God forgotten by men, and unable to resign Himself to such forgetfulness; despised by man, and wishing to punish him; hearkening to His anger, endeavoring to silence the voice of His love, and yet not succeeding; unable to contain within Himself the flames of His ardent charity, and yet not able to chastise His ungrateful creatures, He resolved to vanquish them by force of tenderness, and for this end daily inventing new and most divine contrivances of love! After the splendors and benefits of creation came the annihilations of the crib. The crib is followed by the sorrows of the Cross; the Cross, by the Holy Eucharist! Is there anything left? Yes; for we now behold the supreme effort of the Sacred Heart! It is always the same law. Every new evidence of coldness on the part of man causes God to descend a degree in order to touch the heart from which He cannot succeed in detaching Himself.
The day following this lively and ineffaceable apparition, in which Margaret Mary had learned two things,the first, that God could not contain in His Heart the secrets of His love; the second, that He would make use of her to reveal them to the world,-the life of our saint resumed its accustomed course. Very nearly six months were granted her to recover from profound impression just received,—and she had much need of them. Six months of peace, recollection, silence, brilliant progress in humility and the love of God!
‘This is,’ He said, ‘much more painful to Me than all I suffered in My Passion. If men rendered Me some return of love, I should esteem little all I have done for them, and should wish, if such could be, to suffer it over again; but they meet My eager love with coldness and rebuffs. Do you, at least,’ said He in conclusion, ‘console and rejoice Me, by supplying as much as you can for their ingratitude.’”
“Fear not,” said Jesus; “behold, here is wherewith to furnish all that is wanting to thee.” “
“I shall be thy strength. Listen only to what I desire of thee to prepare thee for the accomplishment of My designs.““Have patience, and await My servant.”
Reflection:
This second revelation is the only one of which we know not the exact date. It certainly took place in
1674, before the arrival at Paray of Father de la Colombière, who came in the autumn of this year. As the Blessed Sacrament was exposed, it could not be, according to the custom of the times, other than the feast of the Visitation, or during the octave of Corpus Christi. On the other hand, it seems to follow from Margaret’s account that it was on Friday, and the first Friday of the month. We think, therefore, that it was in the beginning of June, and the Friday in the octave of Cor. pus Christi.
Let us hear the Sister’s recital: “Once when the Blessed Sacrament was exposed, my soul being ab sorbed in extraordinary recollection, Jesus Christ, my sweet Master, presented Himself to me. He was brilliant with glory; His five wounds shone like five suns、 Flames darted forth from all parts of His sacred humanity, but especially from His adorable breast, which resembled a furnace, and which, opening, displayed to me His loving and amiable Heart, the living source of these flames.’
In recounting the first apparition, Margaret Mary had not described the adorable person of the Lord, because, probably, it had not the same glorious character as this one. It was a less royal, perhaps a more intimate, communication. “He made me,” she says in speaking of the first, “rest a long time on His breast,” which it might seem would agree not well with the splendors, the flames that enveloped Jesus in the second apparition. However, this difference in form corresponds to the difference of spirit in which they were made. Till that hour Jesus was the Friend, the Father, making a tender effort to save His children. Now He is the outraged Spouse, the unacknowledged King about to demand reparation. Whilst Margaret, trembling with emotion, was contemplating Him, “He unfolded to me,” she says, “the inexplicable wonders of His pure love, 1 Mémoire, p. 327.
and to what an excess He had carried it for the love of men, from whom He had received only ingratitude
conclusion, ‘console and rejoice Me, by supplying as much as you can for their ingratitude.’”
After having shown in the first revelation the true principle of the new devotion, namely, a love whose flames He could no longer confine in His Heart, Jesus now revealed its character. This devotion would be an amende honorable and an expiation for all the crimes of the world, a consolation for His forsaken Heart. He appealed to some chosen souls to come and supply at the foot of the altars for those that do not love Him; and, by their love and adoration, to render the homage He no longer receives from the multitude grown cold and indifferent Thoroughly penetrated with this burning flame, and unable longer to endure the fire, Margaret implored our Saviour to have pity on her weakness.
the Lord asked two things of her: the first, to communicate every first Friday of each month to make Him the amende honorable; the second, to rise between eleven o’clock and midnight on the night between Thursday and Friday of every week, and to prostrate for an hour with her face to the ground, in expiation of the sins of men, and to console His Heart for that general desertion, to which the weakness of the apostles in the Garden of Olives had been only a slight prelude.
“During all this time,” says Margaret Mary, “I was unconscious, I knew not where I was. Some of the Sisters came to take me away, and, seeing that I could neither reply nor support myself on my feet, they led me to our Mother, who found me quite out of myself, trembling and as if on fire.” When Margaret Mary told her what had just taken place, whether she believed or not, or whether she feigned not to believe it, Mother de Saumaise humbled her as deeply as she could-” which gave me extreme pleasure, caused me inconceivable joy,” says Margaret Mary; “for I felt myself such a criminal, I was filled with such confusion, that, however rigorous might be the treatment bestowed upon me, it would still have seemed to me too lenient.”
“The fire that devoured me,” continues Margaret Mary in a style that grows eloquent with the subject, “brought on continual fever; but I rejoiced too much in suffering to complain of it. I never spoke of it but when my strength was completely gone. Never have I felt so much consolation. My whole body was racked by extreme pain, and this relieved a little the parching thirst I felt to suffer. This devouring fire could neither be fed nor satisfied but with the wood of the cross; namely, with contempt of all kinds, humiliations,&pains. Never was my bodily suffering equal to what I experienced from not suffering enough. The Sisters thought I would surely die.”
Dr. Billiet, the attendant physician, declared that Blessed Margaret Mary had sixty consecutive fevers that resisted every remedy employed to moderate their ardor. Mother de Saumaise, very much perplexed, at last resorted to the following expedient. She approached the bed of the apparently dying Sister, and commanded her in the name of obedience to ask her restoration of God, adding that she would recognize it as a sign of the supernatural character of all that had taken place in her regard. She would then, she said, permit her to make the Communion of the first Friday of every month, and the hour’s prayer during the night between Thursday and Friday. Margaret experienced strong repugnance to asking a termination of her sufferings, fearing, she said, “to be heard.” But at the word obedience, she no longer hesitated. Scarcely had she uttered a short prayer before her fever fell, her pulse beat less rapidly, and the astonished physician pronounced her cured. There was, however, little need for the doctor to make this assertion, for the saint arose; and from that day the Sisters remarked a total change in her health. Mother de Saumaise did not resist the voice of God. She granted Margaret Mary the permission to communicate the first Friday of the month, and for the future to rise on the night between Thursday and Friday.
“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 sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this sacrament of love. And what is most painful to Me,is that they are hearts consecrated to Me.” “It is for this reason I ask thee that the first Friday after the octave of the Blessed Sacrament be appropriated to a special feast, to honor My Heart by communicating on that day, and making reparation for the indignity that it has received. And I promise that My Heart shall dilate to pour out abundantly the influences of its love on all that will render it this honor or procure its being rendered.”
Reflection:
It was on June 16, 1675, that the last of the grand revelations relative to the Sacred Heart took place. It was to close the cycle of those solemn disclosures. Until then the humble virgin had received from the Lord only personal favors, very like those with which other holy souls had already been favored. He had only demanded of her some individual practices of devotion. Now, however, the hour was come for Him to invest her with her grand, public mission.
During the octave of the feast of the Blessed Sacrament, June 16, 1675, Margaret Mary was on her knees before the choir-grate, her eyes fixed on the tabernacle. She had just received “some of the unmeasured graces of His love.” We have no particulars of these graces. Suddenly the Lord appeared on the altar and discovered to her His Heart.
This was the last major revelation, and the most celebrated of all. Justly the most celebrated, for all that regards the Divine Heart of Jesus is contained in it. Its principle is no other than the overflowing love of God, love making a grand effort to overcome evil; its end, to become a public devotion, having been so long a private one; and, lastly, its effects, a new effusion of divine love on the Church, and more particularly on the pious souls that become its apostles and propagators. He commanded her to have established in the Church a particular feast to honor His Sacred Heart.
Although astonished at such a mission, (for who was she to establish a feast in the Church, she who could not succeed in convincing her Superiors?) but one word escaped her: “Lord, how can I?” To which the Lord answered by telling her to address herself to that servant of God who had been sent to her “expressly for the accomplishment of this design.”
Margaret Mary did, indeed, recur to Father de la Colombière, and confide to him this third revelation. The venerable priest asked for a written account of it, that he might be able to study it at leisure. We shall see later on with what religious respect he preserved the document. He examined the revelation attentively before God, and, enlightened from on high, declared to Margaret that she could rely on it, for without doubt it came from Heaven. Thus reassured, Margaret Mary no longer hesitated. She knelt before the Divine Heart of Jesus, solemnly consecrated herself to it, and thus rendered it the first and one of the purest acts of homage that it was ever to receive on earth or in heaven. Father de la Colombière, wishing to unite with her, also consecrated himself to the Heart of Jesus. It was Friday, June 21st, the day after the octave of the Blessed Sacrament; the day that had been designated by the Lord to be forever the feast-day of His Adorable Heart. Thus He received, in the person of a holy priest and of an humble virgin, the first-fruits of those acts of adoration soon to be rendered Him by all mankind.
Thus ended this glorious drama, at the same time three and one, of the revelations of the Sacred Heart. Thus was successively developed, in profound and mysterious order, that incomparable vision vouchsafed to one of the most humble of virgins. And that which in silence and ecstasy she had three times consecutively beheld in that chapel, through that grate, on that altar, the Church also was going to see. She examined this testimony, this recital, forced by obedience from the saint’s touching modesty; she declared them true and authentic; and, following the example of the humble virgin, she prostrated before the Sacred Heart.
What the Lord asked has been done. The faithful flock from all quarters on the first Friday of every month to kneel before the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and to make reparation for the incomprehensible ingratitude of creatures whom He has passionately loved. In every region, also, are found Christians-wives, mothers, young girls, priests and virgins consecrated to God-who rise in the night between Thursday and Friday, who come to watch with Him, to weep with Him, and sometimes even to impress on their flesh the sacred marks of His Passion. Everywhere, in fine, throughout the Catholic Church, the Friday following the octave of the Blessed Sacrament is a solemnity consecrated to the contemplation of the tenderness, the devotedness of the best of all hearts.
