St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque was born in 1647 at Verosvres in Burgundy, France. Her childhood was marked by suffering: her father died when she was eight, a long paralyzing illness confined her for years — healed, she believed, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, in whose honor she added "Mary" to her name — and her family was reduced to harsh dependence on relatives. Through it all she was drawn to prayer, and in 1671 she entered the Visitation Monastery at Paray-le-Monial. Between 1673 and 1675, Margaret Mary received a series of visions of Christ that would reshape Catholic devotion. In them the Lord revealed his Sacred Heart, "which has so loved men," grieving over human indifference and asking for a devotion of love and reparation: frequent Communion, especially on the first Friday of each month, a weekly Holy Hour recalling his agony in Gethsemane, and the establishment of a feast in honor of his Sacred Heart. Her account was met at first with disbelief within her own community, but she found a wise ally in her confessor, St. Claude de la Colombiere, who became convinced of the authenticity of her experiences and helped spread the devotion. Margaret Mary bore misunderstanding with humility and served her monastery faithfully as novice mistress and assistant superior, living to see the devotion privately observed at Paray-le-Monial. She died on October 17, 1690, at the age of forty-three. The devotion she championed spread through the whole Church: in 1856 Pope Pius IX extended the feast of the Sacred Heart to the universal Church, and successive popes commended the devotion in encyclicals. Margaret Mary was beatified in 1864 by Pope Pius IX and canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV. Her relics rest in the Chapel of the Apparitions at Paray-le-Monial, one of France's great pilgrimage destinations, and her feast is celebrated on October 17.