Saint Margaret Mary sees the "Heart that so loved mankind"

Margaret Mary Alacoque entered the Visitation convent at Paray-le-Monial in 1671. Her simple life as a nun was punctuated by mystical graces. On June 20, 1675, she had the vision that is the main origin of the feast of the Sacred Heart, a solemnity of the utmost importance for Catholics the world over: ""Behold the Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify Its love". Initially beatified by popular opinion because of the miracles obtained through her intercession, Margaret Mary was not "officially" beatified until 1864, as Jansenist pressure and the Revolution delayed the process. She was canonized in 1920.

Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Paray-le-Monial

Reasons to believe:

All the details of Margaret Mary's life are well known, since, at the request of her confessor Father Rollin, she wrote her autobiography. The 1880 original edition, Vie de la bienheureuse Marguerite-Marie Alacoque tirée textuellement d'un manuscrit écrit par elle-même, is available online.
Her visions have nothing to do with pathological hallucinations: Margaret Mary never abandoned her religious daily duties, or show any social disconnection. She lived a normal community life, under the authority of her superior. Her writings have all the hallmarks of a sound and open personality.
Until her death, Margaret Mary always and immediately confided what she experienced to her confessor, so as to make sure that she was not the plaything of illusions.
It is absurd to think that Margaret Mary could have been manipulated or misled. The attitude of the Paray nuns, including hers, is a sign of their honesty: no one knew the nature of the phenomena Margaret Mary was experiencing, and they all awaited the Church's pronouncement. It was the Jesuit Saint Claude La Colombière, previously unknown to Margaret Mary, who discovered and spread the messages of Jesus, during a stay at Paray.
Likewise, it would be a mistake to write off the saint's visions as being produced by human inspiration or collective hype: the whole of the 17th century was rigorously suspicious of "visionaries".
The characteristics of her visions of the Sacred Heart perfectly match other important medieval visions, a fact that Margaret Mary herself could not have known. The visions are perfectly structured and extremely precise, presenting an unsurpassable degree of coherence with visionary experiences recognized over the last two thousand years.
The scriptural content of the messages, their evangelical tone, and the absence of theological error far exceed Margaret Mary's modest knowledge.
The call to establish a feast of the Sacred Heart is necessarily divine. The idea could not have come from Margaret Mary, as the establishment of a new solemn feast, moreover on the basis of private revelations, is a rare occurrence.
The Paray-le-Monial revelations follow the birth of the French School of Spirituality by a few decades (1600-1670). This timing is inexplicable.
The spiritual fruits of the apparitions of the Sacred Heart to St Margaret Mary are still visible today: Paray-le-Monial attracts 200,000 pilgrims and visitors every year. Several popes have recognized the major importance of Paray's messages.

Summary:

Margaret Mary Alacoque was born in Burgundy's Charolais region on July 22, 1647. She was baptized three days later. Her father, Claude Alacoque, was a judge and royal notary. He married Philiberte Lamyn in 1639. The couple had six children. The family lived quite comfortably until 1659, when Claude died. After that, Philiberte and her children sought refuge with harsh relatives who turned their daily lives into a nightmare of humiliation, pressure, insults, beatings, and so on.

verwhelmed by her suffering and difficulties, Philiberte decided to send Margaret to the Urbanist Sisters - the Poor Clares school - of Charolles. It was in this religious convent that Margaret was allowed to make her first Communion at the age of 9. It was there also that at the age of 11 she was stricken with rheumatic fever and had to come home. The resulting, unexplained paralysis forced her to stay in bed for the next four years: "I was about four years without being able to walk," she says; "the bones pierced my skin on all sides." She was cured in an instant by a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who prompted her to give her life to God by becoming her "daughter". Many witnesses have reported this miracle.

In June 1671, Margaret was admitted as a postulant to the Visitation convent at Paray. On August 25, 1671, the feast of St. Louis King of France, she donned the religious habit. The name Mary was added to that of Margaret. For the next few months, she lived "always lost in God". Her superiors wanted to ascertain that she was guided by the Holy Spirit. Her mystical visions continued, leading to increased uneasiness from the nuns in her community (the Visitation is an order based on a simple, rigorous evangelical life that rejects the miraculous), who were hesitant to let Margaret Mary make her solemn vows.

After some thought, her profession was postponed. A few hours later, Jesus said to her: "Tell your superior that there is nothing to fear in receiving you, that I answer for you, and that, if she finds me solvent, I will be your guarantor!" Mother Marie-Françoise de Saumaise has just taken over the running of Paray. Margaret Mary reported Jesus’s words to her. The new superior demanded proof: she told Margaret Mary to ask Jesus to make the young nun useful to her Visitation sisters by practicing the observances proper to nuns. Shortly afterwards, Jesus said these incredible words: "My daughter, I grant you all this, for I will make you more useful to religion than she [the superior] thinks, but in a way that is still known only to me; from now on, I will adjust my graces to the spirit of your rule [...]. I am happy that you prefer the will of your superiors to mine [...]. Let them do whatever they want with you: I'll find a way to make my plans succeed."

A first incident struck the sisters. Ever since she was a child, Margaret had had an unsurpassable aversion to cheese. Her brother Chrysostom, when he accompanied her to the monastery, had asked that she not be forced to eat cheese, lest she fall ill. One day in 1682, she was accidentally offered a piece of cheese. The Mother Superior asked her to eat it in order to make a sacrifice pleasing to God. As natural repulsion prevailed, the superior allowed her to stop eating it. The next day, the saint prayed for a long time. That evening, as if nothing had happened, she ate cheese heartily for the first time in front of her surprised sisters. She would continue to eat cheese every time it was served to her until the day she died.

A second event also drew some notice. The community owned a donkey and a colt. The novice mistress had asked the young nuns to take care that the animals didn't damage the vegetable garden, and at the same time told them not to tie them up. When it was Margaret Mary's turn to look after the animals, she remembered this order, but the animals "did nothing but run around" and, she said, "I had no rest until the evening Angelus." Then, one day, she had a vision of Jesus watching over the donkeys. He said to her: "Let them be, they will do no harm." The other sisters saw the animals running around the vegetable garden unattended, but later on couldn’t find a single evidence of hoof prints or damage!

A third sign was attested to by the entire community. In the spring of 1673, the saint lost her voice. She redoubled her prayers to be able to sing the services, but nothing worked. On July 1, 1673, during the celebration of a Te Deum, she saw a "little child shining like the sun" near her. Fearing it was a diabolical illusion, she asked the apparition: "If it is you, O my God, let me sing your praises!" And instantly, her voice returned!

The following December 27, Margaret Mary was praying before the Blessed Sacrament when she had a vision of Jesus showing his Heart, in a way that was "so effective and sensitive that it left me in no doubt as to the effects this grace produced in me." Christ told her that day: "My Heart is so consumed with love for mankind [...] that, no longer able to contain within itself the flames of its ardent charity, it needs to spread them through you."

Contrary to a groundless legend, the saint never shouted from the rooftops that she had visions, and for good reason: only her confessor and the Mother Superior knew about them.

At the time, the Church was warning against "visionaries", and St. Francis de Sales, co-founder of the Visitation order, while admitting the existence of mystical experiences, emphasized their secondary place in Christian life.

These visions were in no way hallucinations. They never had the least negative effect on Margaret Mary. She was filled with peace, and mysteriously learned great spiritual lessons from and about the Sacred Heart of Jesus that she had never learned from a teacher or a book. Like St. Teresa of Avila, whom she had also never studied, she declared that her visions were more real than reality. "I could see him [Jesus], feel him close to me, and hear him much better than if it had been with the bodily senses." Another difference between these visions and pathological hallucinations is this: Margaret Mary never abandoned her daily duties at the convent and never withdrew from community life. After looking after the animals, she even became mistress of the "little habit" sisters (the young boarding school students).

Early in 1675, Jesuit Father Claude La Colombière came to Paray to give a talk to the nuns. Margaret Mary, who had never heard of him, received this announcement from Jesus: "This is the one I am sending you." After his talk, the priest asked Mother de Saumaise to tell him who this young nun was, whom he had seen for the first time, pointing to the place where Margaret Mary was sitting. He then was able to meet her. The Jesuit asked Margaret Mary to continue writing down the messages she received, and to take them immediately to her superior each time

On June 20, 1675, Jesus revealed his Sacred Heart to her: "This is the Heart that has so loved mankind, that it has spared nothing to the point of exhausting itself and consuming itself to show them its love; and in return, I receive from most only ingratitude [...]. For this reason I ask that the first Friday after the octave of the Blessed Sacrament be dedicated to a special feast in honor of my Heart [...] by making reparation of honor [...] to repair the indignities it has received during the time it has been exposed on the altars." The saint replied that, once again, she felt unworthy of such a mission and that, in any case, no one would believe her! Jesus ordered her to speak to Father La Colombière, whom he had sent to Paray for "the accomplishment of this purpose".

In 1678, Mother de Saumaise left Paray for another monastery. Her replacement, Mother Péronne-Rosalie Greyfié, was an exceptional nun. In December 1678, Father La Colombière returned from a long trip abroad. Mother Greyfié obtained from him a report on the saint's experiences: "It wouldn't even matter if they were diabolical illusions [...]. There is no appearance of that, because if it was the devil trying to deceive her, he would be deceiving himself, since humility, simplicity, exact obedience and mortification are not the fruits of the spirit of darkness." The devil was a constant source of bother for Margaret Mary. One day, he pushed her from the top of a staircase in front of several nuns; another time, while she was talking with some sisters in the warming room, they suddenly saw the stepladder on which she was sitting start to move by itself; another time, the seat on which she was sitting slipped away from her three times in a row.

A few months before her his death, on June 17, 1689, Jesus asked Margaret Mary to make his will known to the King of France: that he would consecrate the kingdom to the Sacred Heart and sew its image on the royal banners. Despite the saint sending this plea to the Visitation Convent of Chaillot and to the King's confessor, the Jesuit de La Chaise, King Louis XIV either never heard of this message, or he pretended not to know it... A remarkable coincidence of dates has been noted: 100 years to the day after this message from Jesus was communicated, on June 17, 1789, the Estates-General became the National Assembly, paving the way for the fall of the monarchy.

The spiritual fruits of Paray are countless. The practice of the First Friday devotion, for nine months in a row, has its origins in the twelve "promises" Jesus made to Margaret Mary: "I will give them all the graces necessary for their state of life [...] I will be their sure refuge during life and especially at death. [...] His [the Sacred Heart's] love will grant to all those who take communion on the first Fridays of the month, nine times in a row, the grace of final penance, so that they will not die in my disgrace." This text was inserted in its entirety in the bull of canonization of Saint Margaret Mary (May 13, 1920) by Benedict XV.

In just a few years, this woman who longed "to be buried in eternal oblivion and disregard by creatures" became famous the world over. The Paray monastery became a place of pilgrimage in the 1690s, and the feast of the Sacred Heart was officially instituted on February 6, 1765, by Pope Clement XIII. It was extended to the universal Church on August 23, 1856 by Pius IX. In 1899, Leo XIII consecrated humanity to the Heart of Jesus.

Patrick Sbalchiero

Beyond reasons to believe:

Margaret Mary's immense impact stands in stark contrast to the ordinariness of her life.

Going further:

The Autobiography of Saint Margaret Mary by Margaret Mary Alacoque (Author), The Sisters of the Visitation (Translator) TAN Books (December 13, 2015)

More information:

The Letters of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque: Apostle of the Sacred Heart, by Margaret Mary Alacoque - TAN Books (April 16, 1997)
Article “The Revelation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Paral-le-Monial, France”
Book Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque And the Sacred Heart of Jesus - Emily Beata Marsh and Dani Lachuk - Encounter the Saints Series Book 37 (Pauline Books and Media)
Book Visions of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque by Bob and Penny Lord (Journeys of Faith, July 19, 2011)