From: trudie.Miller@cox.net   
      
   October 17th - St. Margaret-Mary Alacoque   
      
   Born July 22, 1647, at L'Hautecourt, Burgundy; died at Paray-le- Monial, 1690;   
   canonized 1920.   
      
   "Love triumphs, love enjoys, the love of the Sacred Heart rejoices!"   
      
   Saint Margaret Mary is nearly the antithesis of yesterday's saint, Teresa of   
   Ávila. As joyful as Teresa was; Margaret Mary was dour and humorless. Teresa   
   was   
   gregarious; Margaret Mary self-contained. Both were sickly, but dealt with it   
   differently. Both were visionaries. This proves once again that no personality   
   precludes sanctity.   
      
   Margaret Mary was the daughter of the respected notary Claude Alacoque and   
   Philiberte Lamyn. Her father died when she was around eight, leaving her family   
   in a precarious financial situation, so that for several years they were at the   
   mercy of some domineering and rapacious relatives. She was sent to school with   
   the Poor Clares at Charolles. She fell ill with a painful rheumatic condition   
   at   
   12 and was bedridden until she was 15. The family home had been taken over by   
   her sister, and her mother and she were treated with undeserved severity and   
   almost like servants. Her sister often refused her permission to attend church.   
   "At that time," she wrote later, "all my desire was to seek happiness and   
   comfort in the Blessed Sacrament.   
      
   At 20, she was pressed to marry but after a long struggle with herself decided   
   to fulfill the vow she had made earlier to the Virgin and entered the Order of   
   the Visitation. She was confirmed at 22 and took the name Mary. Her brother   
   furnished her dowry and she joined the convent at Paray-le-Monial. During her   
   retreat before her profession, which she made on November 6, 1672, she had a   
   vision of Jesus in which he said, "Behold the wound in my side, wherein you are   
   to make your abode, now and forever." She worked in the infirmary, and the   
   slow-moving, awkward Margaret Mary suffered much under the active and efficient   
   infirmarian, Sister Catherine Marest.   
      
   On December 27, 1673, the feast of Saint John the Evangelist, as she knelt at   
   the grill before the exposed Blessed Sacrament, she experienced a vision in   
   which the Lord told her to take the place that Saint John had occupied at the   
   Last Supper, and that she would act as His instrument. Jesus revealed His   
   Sacred   
   Heart as a symbol of His love for mankind, saying:   
      
   "My divine Heart is so inflamed with love for mankind . . . that it can no   
   longer contain within itself the flames of its burning charity and must spread   
   them abroad by your means."   
      
   Then it was as if He took her heart and placed it next to his own, and then   
   returned it burning with divine love into her breast.   
      
   She had three more visions over the next year and a half in which he instructed   
   her in a devotion that was to become known as the Nine Fridays and the Holy   
   Hour, and in the final revelation, the Lord asked that a feast of reparation be   
   instituted for the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi. The Wisdom of God   
   also told her, "Do nothing without the approval of those who guide you, so   
   that,   
   having the authority of obedience, you may not be misled by Satan, who has no   
   power over those who are obedient."   
      
   She told her superior, Mother de Saumaise, about the visions, was treated   
   contemptuously and was forbidden to carry out any of the religious devotions   
   that had been requested of her in her visions. She became ill from the strain,   
   and the superior, searching for a divine sign of what to do, vowed to believe   
   the visions if Margaret Mary was cured. Margaret Mary prayed and recovered, and   
   her superior kept her promise.   
      
   A group within the convent remained skeptical of her experiences, especially   
   when, in 1677, she told them that Jesus had twice asked her to be a willing   
   victim to expiate their shortcomings. The superior ordered Margaret Mary to   
   present her experiences to theologians. They were judged to be delusions, and   
   it   
   was recommended that Margaret Mary eat more.   
      
   Blessed Claude La Colombière, a holy and experienced Jesuit, arrived as   
   confessor to the nuns, and in him Margaret Mary recognized the understanding   
   guide that had been promised to her in the visions. He became convinced that   
   her   
   experiences were genuine and adopted the teaching of the Sacred Heart the   
   visions had communicated to her. He departed not long after for England.   
      
   During the next years, Margaret Mary experienced periods of both despair and   
   vanity, and she was ill a great deal. In 1681 Claude returned; in 1682 he died.   
   In 1684 Mother Melin became superior and elected Margaret Mary her assistant,   
   silencing any further opposition.   
      
   Her revelations were made known to the community when they were read aloud in   
   the refectory in the course of a book written by Blessed Claude. Margaret Mary   
   became novice mistress and was very successful. Her revelations in the open   
   now,   
   she encouraged devotion to the Sacred Heart, especially among her novices, who   
   observed the feast in 1685. The family of an expelled novice accused her of   
   being unorthodox, and bad feelings were revived, but this passed and the entire   
   house celebrated the feast that year.   
      
   A chapel was built in 1687 at Paray in honor of the Sacred Heart, and devotion   
   began to spread in the other convents of the Visitidines, as well as throughout   
   France.   
      
   Margaret Mary became ill while serving a second term as assistant to the   
   superior and died during the fourth anointing step of the last rites. As she   
   received the Last Sacrament, she said, "I need nothing but God, and to lose   
   myself in the heart of Jesus." (She actually died on October 17, but the Church   
   celebrates her today.) She, Saint John Eudes, and Blessed Claude are called   
   "saints of the Sacred Heart."   
      
   Margaret Mary's patience and trust during her trials within the convent   
   contributed to her canonization in 1920. The devotion was officially recognized   
   and approved by Pope Clement XIII in 1765, 75 years after her death. Her   
   visions   
   and teachings have had considerable influence on the devotional life of   
   Catholics, especially since the inauguration of the Feast of the Sacred Heart   
   of   
   Jesus on the Roman calendar in 1856 (Attwater, Delaney, Kerns, White).   
      
   Depicted as a nun in the Visitation habit holding a flaming heart; or kneeling   
   before Jesus, who exposed his heart to her (White). In art, Saint Margaret Mary   
   is portrayed as a nun to whom Christ offers His Sacred Heart (Roeder).   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   He has great tranquillity of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the   
   fault-finding of men.  He will easily be content and pacified, whose conscience   
   is pure.  You are not holier if you are praised, nor the more worthless if you   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)