From the History of the Guard of Honor – Part 3
It is said that there are providential harmonies between the works of God and the places in which they are born.
The Guard of Honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was a result of a spiritual inspiration of a Visitation nun in the Order’s Monastery in Bourg-en-Bresse, France, in March 1863.
But earlier spiritual yearnings paved the way for this nuanced expression of devotion to the Lord’s Sacred Heart.
Those yearnings led to a Confraternity of the Sacred Heart that was established in the same Visitation Monastery more than 30 years earlier, and even that was later enhanced by even deeper spiritual desires of the Abbot Desseignez.
In 1835, or 28 years before the Guard of Honor was born, the Abbot Desseignez initiated solemn religious exercises during the month of June, the month of the Sacred Heart, in the Visitation Monastery’s Chapel, in Bourg-en-Bresse. This was a veritable innovation! and the first time that the month of the Sacred Heart was celebrated in public. Prior to the actual Feast of the Sacred Heart, a solemn novena was celebrated.
Evidently this was the dawn — the dawn that prepared for and announced the birth of Guard of Honor.
Source: Bulletin of the Guard of Honor of the Sacred Heart, 1892, French edition
To be continued