| St. Margaret Mary–credited with starting devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus!
A young sister in the Visitation Order, Margaret Mary was born in Vérosvres. From her childhood she wants to devote herself to a pious life. In 1671 she enters the Monastery in Paray le Monial, aged 24 and she receives several apparitions of Christ. With the help of Claude la Colombière, (canonised in 1992), she spreads the cult of the Sacred Heart.
Margaret Alacoque is the fifth child of Claude Alacoque and Philiberte Lamyn, who enjoyed a good social standing. From her early childhood, Margaret showed a particular devotion towards the Blessed Sacrament and she preferred silence and prayer to children’s’ games.
Aged 5, when staying at her godmother’s whose daughter was a nun, she heard them talking about religious vows, and unknown to everyone, she made her first consecration during mass where she pronounced the words : ” Oh my God, I devote to you my purity and make a vow of perpetual chastity “. After her first communion, aged 9, she practices in secret strict bodily mortifications, before paralysis makes her bedridden for four years. At the end of this period, having made a vow to the Virgin Mary to devote herself to religious life, she was cured on the spot. In gratitude on the day of her confirmation, she added the Christian name Mary to her baptismal name.
The most famous of apparition of St. Margaret Mary is the one in June 1675 : Jesus then showed her His Heart saying : “Here is the Heart that loved man so much, […] to the point of exhausting and consuming to show them Its Love and, as an acknowledgement I only receive from most of them ingratitude… “. Henceforth Margaret Mary thought that she had been given a mission to establish the particular devotion towards the Sacred Heart. These apparitions caused hostility with the rest of the members of the community, who treated her as a ” visionary “, to the extent that her superior ordered her to devote herself to the communal life. However, her obedience, her humility and her charity towards those who persecuted her finally got the better of her and her mission was recognized by even those who had shown her the greatest opposition. With the help of Father Claude La Colombière, whom Jesus had introduced to her as her ” true and perfect friend “, Margaret Mary revealed the message which Jesus had given her. It is the beginning of the cult of the Sacred Heart. Inspired by Christ, Margaret Mary established the practice of the Holy Hour, which for her consisted of praying and prostrate with her face against the ground, from 11 in the evening until midnight, the first Thursday of each month, this in order to share the mortal sadness which Christ had suffered when He was abandoned to His agony by His apostles ; then she received the next day Holy Communion. Christ had expressed to her His desire that a Feast in honor of His Sacred Heart should be celebrated on the Friday following the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi ; He called the saint ” beloved disciple of the Sacred Heart “, and heir to all His treasure. During her final illness, she refused any relief constantly repeating : ” what I have in Heaven and what I desire on earth is only you Oh my God “, and she died pronouncing the name of Jesus.
To view the Sacred Heart brochure, click here. |
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The ruins at Cluny Abbey in France was once the scene of a major monastic movement during the middle ages. The largest Christian building was its church until St. Peter’s Basilica was rebuilt in Rome.
After nine centuries of monastic life, the present site includes a Museum of Art and Archaeology housing Romanesque sculpture, a Medieval City rich in Romanesque and Gothic houses, two churches and a hotel.
Controlling over 10,000 monks from Poland to Scotland, the monastery was once the greatest power in Europe, which started by the Benedictine monks in 940AD. So large that buildings had to be erected to house everyone and 40 farms produced the food.
Today the abbey is a ghost of the past and only five percent of the gigantic cathedral remains. One of the architectural tragedies of history was the damage done during the French Revolution with the burning of the Church furnishings and the wracking of the tombs. It was in great part demolished under the First Empire, wherein a road was built through the main nave and the stones of the building were sold off. All that remains is a high octagonal tower, the chapel of Bourbon and the ruins of the apse; the pillar bases from the main basilica also are in evidence.
Around 1750 the abbey buildings were rebuilt and now contain a technical school. The abbot’s palace serves as hotel-de-ville, library and museum. |
