From December 27, 2023 to June 2025 we will be celebrating internationally the 350th anniversary of the apparitions to St. Margaret Mary.
In order to prepare, we will post these revelations and in time, reflect upon them. These passages are taken from the Life of the Blessed St Margaret Mary Alacoque, by Bishop Bougaud.
FIRST REVELATION.
December 27, 1673.
The first of the three revelations took place, no one can doubt, on the feast of St. John the Evangelist, December 27, 1673. It was the same day on which, three hundred and fifty-three years before, St. Gertrude had learned in a vision that if the well-beloved disciple had said nothing of the sacred pulsations of the Sacred Heart, it was because God reserved to Himself to speak of them at a time in which the world would begin to grow cold. The day could not have been better chosen for this revelation. We have the account of it written by Margaret Mary. She gives us the whole scene to the life.
‘Once,” said she, “being before the Blessed Sacrament and having a little more leisure than usual, I felt wholly filled with this Divine Presence, and so powerfully moved by it that I forgot myself and the place in which I was. I abandoned myself to this Divine Spirit, and yielded my heart to the power of His love. He
made me rest for a long time on His divine breast, where He discovered to me the wonders of His love and the inexplicable secrets of His Sacred Heart, which He had hitherto kept hidden from me. Now He opened it to me for the first time, but in a way so real, so sensible, that it left me no room to doubt, though I am always in dread of deceiving myself.” “
We see it was “the first time” that the Lord showed His Heart to Margaret; until then “He had always kept it hidden.” And such is the character of this apparition, and the impression that she receives from it, that the humble virgin, ordinarily so timid, so distrustful of self, “could conceive no doubt of it.”
Jesus had then spoken; and “This,” adds Margaret, as it seems to me, is what passed: The Lord said to me, ‘My Divine Heart is so passionately in love with men that it can no longer contain within itself the flames of its ardent charity. It must pour them out by thy means, and manifest itself to them to enrich them with its precious treasures, which contain all the graces of which they have need to be saved from perdition.’ He added: ‘I have chosen thee as an abyss of unworthiness and ignorance to accomplish so great a design, so that all may be done by Me.'”
Thus, according to the conditions of this first revelation, the new devotion was going to be the grand effort of the Heart of Jesus, “passionately in love with men,” and wishing at any cost to draw them from the abyss of perdition. Until then ordinary means had sufficed. But in the sad state in which the world was, Jesus could no longer “contain the flames of this burning charity in His Heart,” which wished to save all men. His pierced side opened, and His Heart longed to come forth. had as yet only shown itself in cloisters and to chosen souls, and in showing it to them had made them faint from love. But now it wished to show itself to the multitude, and thy whether, in revealing the hidden secrets of love, it might succeed in melting the ice that was being heaped up in the midst of Christian people. Such was the sense of the first apparition.
Jesus said nothing else to Margaret Mary, excepting that, for the accomplishment of His design, He made use of her; not in spite of her weakness and ignorance, but rather on account of them, that all should be done by Himself. But when? how? in what manner? The Lord did not say, and Margaret Mary had neither the thought nor the strength to ask Him.
Since, however, there was question of a public ministry, the Lord desired to leave her a living and unquestionable proof of the truth of what had just passed.
Before disappearing, He asked if she desired to give Him her heart. But let her speak for herself:
“He demanded my heart, and I supplicated Him to take it. He did so, and put it into His own Adorable Heart, in which He allowed me to see it as a little atom being consumed in that fiery furnace. Then, drawing it out like a burning flame in the form of a heart, He put it into the place whence He had taken it, saying: ‘Behold, My beloved, a precious proof of My love. I inclose in thy heart a little spark of the most ardent flame of My love, to serve thee as a heart and to consume thee till thy last moment.’ He added: ‘Until now thou hast taken only the name of My slave; henceforth thou shalt be called the well-beloved disciple of My Sacred Heart.’
One can easily imagine what effect might be produced by such a favor in a creature already wholly inflamed with divine love. “After so great a grace,” said she,
one that lasted so long and during which I knew not whether I was in heaven or on earth, I remained several days wholly inflamed, wholly inebriated. I was so out of myself that it was only by doing violence to myself could utter a word. I was obliged to make so great an effort to eat and recreate that my strength was exhausted in my endeavor to endure my suffering.”
Again was she led to Mother Saumaise, but she could scarcely pronounce one word. “I experienced,” she said, “so great a plenitude of God that I was not able to express myself to my Superioress as I wished.” As to her Sisters, she experienced only one temptation; namely, to throw herself at their feet and confess to them her sins. “It would have been a great consolation to me,” she says, “to have made my general confession aloud in the refectory, that my Sisters might see the depth of my corruption; for then they would attribute to me none of the graces I received.”
Besides this sentiment of profound humility, the first fruit of the luminous apparition, a sentiment that must necessarily be conceived by one that has rested on the breast of the Saviour (for astonishment, admiration, and love create humility), Margaret preserved a memento, or rather an ineffaceable mark, of divine love. She did not bear it visibly on her breast, like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Catharine of Siena, but all her life she retained an invisible wound in her side. “The pain of this wound,” she said, “is so precious to me, causes me transports so lively, that it burns me alive, it consumes me. This divine memorial did not grow faint with time, for the Lord renewed it every first Friday of the month, and again showed her His Heart. “The Sacred Heart,” she said, “is shown me as a sun brilliant with sparkling light, whose burning rays fall direct on my heart. I then feel myself inflamed with such a fire that it seems about to reduce me to ashes.”
Such was the first act of this triple revelation of the Sacred Heart. One sees as yet only the principle and, as it were, the inspiration of this new devotion; but in what touching beauty! A God forgotten by men, and unable to resign Himself to such forgetfulness; despised by man, and wishing to punish him; hearkening to His anger, endeavoring to silence the voice of His love, and yet not succeeding; unable to contain within Himself the flames of His ardent charity, and yet not able to chastise His ungrateful creatures, He resolved to vanquish them by force of tenderness, and for this end daily inventing new and most divine contrivances of love! After the splendors and benefits of creation came the annihilations of the crib. The crib is followed by the sorrows of the Cross; the Cross, by the Holy Eucharist! Is there anything left? Yes; for we now behold the supreme effort of the Sacred Heart! It is always the same law. Every new evidence of coldness on the part of man causes God to descend a degree in order to touch the heart from which He cannot succeed in detaching Himself.
The day following this lively and ineffaceable apparition, in which Margaret Mary had learned two things,the first, that God could not contain in His Heart the secrets of His love; the second, that He would make use of her to reveal them to the world,-the life of our saint resumed its accustomed course. Very nearly six months were granted her to recover from profound impression just received,—and she had much need of them. Six months of peace, recollection, silence, brilliant progress in humility and the love of God! And now, at the moment she least expected, comes the second revelation! More penetrating, more luminous than the first, it made a still deeper impression on her soul. She fell ill from the violent emotion it caused; so ill that all thought she must die. (from Bougaud)