Jesus makes Maria Droste zu Vischering the messenger of his Divine Heart

In 1896, the superior of the Convent of the Good Shepherd in Porto, Portugal, Mother Mary of the Divine Heart, née Maria Anna Droste, Countess zu Vischering, suffered greatly from a neurodegenerative disease that paralysed her and left her bedridden until her death on 8 June 1899. This expiatory soul, who had been living in mystical union with Christ since 1884 and had received many locutions of the Sacred Heart, had the revelation that "perfidious assaults against the Church were being devised in the shadows". Her role was to warn Pope Leo XIII and bring him an effective remedy: the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart.

Unsplash, Matea Gregg.

Les raisons d'y croire :

Maria had everything she could ever wish in order to have a high social presence and marry well: wealth, nobility, and beauty. But the young girl, born in 1863, had other plans; ready to give up all the advantages of her class, she chose to become a nun and to have no other spouse than Christ. None of the obstacles she encountered shook her vocation, proving that it was genuine.

However, just as she was about to enter the convent, she became ill, forcing her to remain in the world. This ordeal lasted five years. This long period of waiting could have tested her vocation and caused her to renounce it. This was not the case. She spent her days in prayers, religious services, attending Mass and doing charity work.

On 20 June 1884, the day of the celebration of the Sacred Heart that year, Maria was praying after Mass in the chapel of her family's castle in Darfeld when she heard a voice, which she recognised as Jesus', say to her: "You will be the bride of my heart; I will make your heart my dwelling place, my resting place in a world that forgets me". Jesus entered into a mystical marriage with her and gave her the protection and guidance of the saints Teresa of Avila, Gertrude and Catherine of Siena.

This is a classic mystical experience, lived by others in the history of the Church. There was nothing to suggest that Maria was unbalanced or that she had invented this story, which only her spiritual knew about, and then an Austrian Benedictine renowned for his knowledge of mystical states. Together, these people discerned that it was Christ who was speaking to Maria and wanted to make her his instrument for the world and the Church. In keeping with her mission to repair and console, Maria "paid" for these graces with a great deal of physical, moral and spiritual suffering.

In May 1896, Mother Mary of the Divine Heart was paralysed and bedridden. Her requests to be relieved of her duties were rejected, so she continued to devote herself to her work as if she were in good health.

Infirmity and suffering were the price she had to pay for her charisms and revelations. Until then, her conversations with the Sacred Heart had been private, but now Maria was entrusted with a public mission that exposed her to scrutiny and malevolence. She is alerted that the devil was ready to unleash all his forces against the Church in order to destroy it. Jesus asked Maria to warn the Pope through her confessor, and to tell him that the surest weapon is the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart.

At the same time, Jesus told her that the Diana Vaughan affair, which is stirring public opinion, was a deception designed to discredit Catholics, and that this alleged convert from Satanism did not exist. It turned out to be a lucrative hoax masterminded by the journalist Leo Taxil, a notorious anticlerical. The scam was so well put together that it even fooled Thérèse of Lisieux and Leo XIII.

Maria prophetically announced the death of Pope Leo XIII in 1904, Christ having told her that he was granting Leo XIII three more years of life in order to proceed with the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart.

Mother Mary of the Divine Heart died on 8 June 1899, the eve of the consecration. Her body was found incorrupt when her cause for beatification was opened in 1964, and is still on display for public veneration.

Synthèse :

Daughter of Count Droste zu Vischering and a Von Galen daughter, Maria was born on 8 June 1863 into a noble family of exemplary loyalty to the Catholic Church. She belonged to the oldest and highest Germanic nobility who remained faithful to the Catholic faith after Luther broke with Rome. After the proclamation of German unity in 1871, Maria's father, a Westphalian member of the Zentrum, a party that defended the powerful Catholic minority in Parliament against Chancellor Bismarck's anti-Church policy, became one of the leading figures in the resistance to the Kulturkampf. Maria dreamed of a religious life, but her precarious health prevented her from entering a convent at first.

Accompanying her mother to visit the sick in the wards of Münster hospital, she prayed to Christ to show her the person most in need of comfort. She understood that Jesus was asking her to go to a prostitute, because "he would go most tenderly to this lost girl". "Overcoming her repugnance", in spite of her mother's scandalised looks, Maria went towards this fallen woman suffering from venereal disease, took her hand and kissed her. In doing so, she performed an act of absolute charity.

She received the answer she had been waiting for to her questions about the congregation she was to join. She knew with certainty that God was calling her to the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, which delinquents and prostitutes change their life, and assisted young girls exposed to moral danger. Countess Droste zu Vischering's social status was in no way suited to this educational task, which was reviled and despised. By accepting it despite her family's misgivings, Mary showed herself to be perfectly obedient to God's will. She says: "It was for the conversion of these unfortunate women that I had to sacrifice myself". The choice of this term proves that it was not her wish but God's. On 21 November 1888, Maria entered the Good Shepherd in Münster, where she made her vows in January 1891, and took the religious name of Mother Mary of the Divine Heart.

Jesus had revealed to Maria that he wanted to make her mystically his bride, and that she would have to love and suffer to make reparation for the offences inflicted on him. With each communion, Maria experienced this mystical marriage a little more and drew closer to her Beloved. Christ told her that, having asked for public worship of his Divine Heart, he now wanted to spread a more intense private devotion. He promised to give her the help she needed to achieve this: she "would never meet anyone without that person's soul being, in one way or another, relieved, consoled, sanctified, and having received some grace". This promise extended even "to the most hardened sinners". Maria received this charism, which enabled her to play the role of counsellor and consoler, and to ease tensions.

She thought she would spend the rest of her life at the monastery in Münster, but in 1894, the superiors asked her to leave Germany to run the community house in Porto, Portugal. It was "a cruel sacrifice" for her to accept, because Christ told her to "save this house of the Good Shepherd in great peril" which was true. As soon as the new superior arrived, she consecrated the community to the Sacred Heart, because "he is the master of the house who must reign there and only he can restore it to its former fervour". The situation soon improved, despite the fact that the refuge, located in an anti-clerical red-light district, was the daily target of attacks on the nuns, including stone-throwing and threats.

Having become infirm and bedridden in 1896, the young superior - who used to say: "My hands are full of work, my head is full of worries, but my heart is full of love for Our Lord" - saw her suffering increase considerably. She was entrusted with a public mission: to warn the Pope of the attacks against the Church with the aim of destroying it, and to ask him to consecrate mankind to the Sacred Heart in order to counter them. Jesus said to her: "Perfidious assaults are being devised in the shadows against the Church." She had a vision of "furious wolves" representing the members of Freemasonry who would pass themselves off as "militant Catholics" in order to take over the Church from within and subvert it. Jesus wanted her to warn the Pope and added that there was no need to worry, because the Church is "built on the Rock and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it", as he had promised St Peter.

Mother Mary of the Divine Heart spoke to her confessor, who refused to pass on this warning, "because he did not want to be taken for a visionary". Added to this was the fear of interfering in the political quarrels in Portugal, where revolutionary factions had gained the upper hand, by promoting devotion to the Sacred Heart, associated with the legitimist supporters of the House of Braganza. Faced with this opposition, Maria replied: "I have orders from Our Lord to communicate these things; whether they are fulfilled or not is none of my business."

The situation was resolved when Maria was informed that Christ had granted Leo XIII three more years of life in order to carry out this consecration. After that, "the Pope will have to prepare himself to give an account to God"; in the Sacred Heart, he will find "consolation for the negligence of his pontificate, reparation for his faults, refuge at the hour of death and judgement". This prophecy came true: Leo XIII died in 1904.

At the end of 1898, Leo XIII announced that the following year he would proceed with the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart, but he would never allude to the role of Mother Mary, refusing to imply that he might have been influenced by a private revelation. The 1899 encyclical Annum sacrum was based solely on theological principles, so Maria wondered whether the consecration would be in line with Heaven's expectations and bear fruit. She herself saw nothing of it; she died on 8 June 1899, the day before the consecration, having accomplished her mission. She was buried in the Portuguese shrine of Ermesinde, dedicated to the Sacred Heart, where her body was found incorrupt when her cause for beatification was opened. It was completed in 1975, recognising her role as messenger of the Divine Heart.

Anne Bernet is a Church history specialist, postulator of a cause for beatification and journalist for a number of Catholic media. She has written over forty books, most of them on the topic of holiness.

Aller plus loin :

Mère Marie du Divin Cœur, Autobiographie, Éditions Notre-Dame de Charité Bon-Pasteur, 1993.

En savoir plus :

Abbé Louis Chasle, Sœur Marie du Divin Cœur, née Droste zu Vischering, religieuse du Bon-Pasteur, Beauchesne, 1905.
Michel de Kerdreux, Comme une flamme ; Maria Droste zu Vischering, mère Marie du Divin Cœur, Salvator, 1968.
Sœur Muriel du Divin Cœur, Le secret de la bienheureuse Marie du Divin Cœur, Éditions de la contre-réforme catholique, 2014.
Alexandra Eisenkratzer, Biography of Maria Droste zu Vischering, the Religious Woman, Editions Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, 2020.
The Missionaries of Divine Mercy video: Mother Mary of the Divine Heart and the consecration of the world to the Sacred Heart.