O Sacred Heart!

St Claude de la Colombiere and the Sacred Heart

Today is the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, celebrated in the Universal Church, 19 days after Pentecost, since 1856 although devotion to Our Lord's Heart goes back much further than that.  The Feast speaks to us of the boundless love, compassion and long-suffering of Christ's heart towards God's people.

In its present form, the devotion dates to the visions of St Marguerite Marie Alacoque, which took place between 1673-75 in the convent of the Visitation sisters in Paray-le-Monial in the centre of France.  The great apparition took place during the Octave of Corpus Christi in 1675 when our Lord said to Sr Margaret-Mary, "Behold the Heart that has so loved men... instead of gratitude I receive from the greater part only ingratitude"  He asked her for a Feast to be instituted on this day and told her to consult her confessor about it.

That Confessor was Claude de la Colombiere, a Jesuit.  Having had the vision reported to him he became one of the first to consecrate himself to the Sacred Heart and the task of spreading the devotion fell to the Visitation Sisters and to the Jesuits.

Margaret-Mary was herself canonised by Pope Benedict XV on 13 May 1902 and Fr Claude, her confessor, by Pope John Paul II on 31 May 1992.

Ss Margaret Mary and her Confessor, St Claude de la Colombiere

In 1676, Claude was sent to Great Britain to be Chaplain to the Duchess of York (Mary of Modena) and lived the life of a religious in St James's Palace - he continued as an active missionary in these lands as he had been in France and was a zealous apostle of the devotion to the Sacred Heart.

St Claude - Pray for us!

St Margaret Mary - pray for us!

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus - Make our hearts like unto Thine Heart!

Relic of St Claude