News Item: : St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Monday 17 October 2016 - 13:54:40

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Early Life

The Traditional Calendar today celebrates St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. From her childhood, St. Margaret Mary had intense love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Having made her Holy Communion at the age of nine years, she began to practice severe mortifications in secret.

She then suffered an illness which left her bed-ridden for a period of four years. St. Margaret Mary was restored to health after making a vow to Our Blessed Lady to enter the religious life.

When St. Margaret's father died, the family were thrown into poverty by the unjust treatment of one of their relatives. Our Blessed Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar was her consolation and strength. In fact, He even appeared to her a number of times. In her innocence, St. Margaret thought that everyone could see Him in this way.

This has been the experience of other mystics in the Church who, having been blessed with extraordinary graces from their earliest years, believed that all people could see the supernatural realities that they could. It could sometimes come as a great shock and source of confusion for them to realize, as they were growing up, that others did not have access to the same levels of reality and being that they did! We see this, for example, in the life and times of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich. 

One night, St. Margaret went to a ball in fancy clothes and a mask to please members of her family. When she returned home, she received a vision of Our Lord with the wounds of the scourging. He reproached her for this unfaithfulness to Him. St. Margaret was full of remorse for this fault for the rest of her life. It is quite a lesson for these times, which are so dominated by vanity, worldliness and sin.

Entry into Religious Life

In 1671, St. Margaret Mary entered the Visitation Convent at Paray-le-Monial. It was in the chapel there that Our Blessed Lord would subsequently appear to her and ask her to help Him to establish the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
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We were blessed to make a pilgrimage to the Chapel of Apparitions in Paray-le-Monial just before Christmas in 2011. The construction of the nun's enclosure keeps the chapel's interior draped in a tranquil, candelit dusk; it is one of those places where the very atmosphere seems tangibly ''soaked'' in the grace and love of Christ.

The Coldness of the Hearts of Men

One of the most moving aspects of Our Lord's visitations to St. Margaret Mary at Paray-le-Monial must be His lament about the coldness of the hearts of men. Showing His Sacred Heart, aflame and wounded for love of His creatures, Our Lord confided to St. Margaret: ''Behold the Heart that has so loved men, to the point of consuming and exhausting itself to witness to its love, and in return I receive ingratitude from most.''
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We have a copy of this particular image in our living room at home. I sometimes remark to Angie, that when you look at Our Lord and think of all that He has done for us, you cannot understand why more people do not love Him.

It is indeed a mystery.

Let us endeavour to love Him more.

A Very Important Devotion

St. Margaret suffered much when her community were unsure of the authenticity of her apparitions. The Sacred Heart of Jesus consoled her and promised to send along His own ''faithful servant and perfect friend'' to assist her.  A short time later, St. Claude le Colombiere arrived to become her spiritual director. He was a humble priest with great trust in the Merciful Love of God. Even before meeting St. Margaret Mary, he had devoted himself to the Heart of Christ. Whilst directing St. Margaret, St. Claude became convinced that God wanted the devotion to the Sacred Heart to be made known to the whole world.

St. Margaret Mary herself made known the importance of Our Lord's message: ''This devotion was the last effort of His love that He would grant to men in these latter ages, in order to withdraw them from the empire of Satan which He desired to destroy, and thus to introduce them into the sweet liberty of the rule of His love, which He wished to restore in the hearts of all those who should embrace this devotion.''

Some Other Key Quotes

Here are a couple of other quotes from St. Margaret Mary:-

This Divine Heart is an abyss filled with all blessings, and into which the poor should submerge all their needs. It is an abyss of joy in which all of us can immerse our sorrows. It is an abyss of lowliness to counteract our foolishness, it is an abyss of mercy for the wretched, an abyss of love to meet our every need.

We can tell Him all the secrets of our heart, disclosing our want and misery to Him Who alone can remedy them, and saying: O Friend of my heart, she whom Thou lovest is sick. Visit and heal me, for I well know that Thou canst not love me and yet leave me alone in my distress.

Prayer Intentions
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St. Margaret Mary is buried beneath the side altar in the Chapel of Apparitions in the Visitation Convent. The figure is actually a wax effigy, as the great saint is buried beneath the stone.

During our visit in 2011, we prayed before St. Margaret Mary's shrine for the peace of the world in these troubled times; and for a restoration of authentic catechesis, according to the true mind and heart of the Church, in order to help overcome the vast religious ignorance which has hindered the spread of the True Faith for several decades.

We renew those prayers today with a sense of great urgency!

Sacred Heart of Jesus - Have mercy on us!

St. Margaret Mary - Pray for us!



This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.1438 )