This year, the Honor Guard celebrates its 160th anniversary. Founded in 1863 by a Visitandine Sister Marie of the Sacré-Coeur, this association offers its members the opportunity to provide a daily Hour of Presence, at a time that suits them without leaving their occupations, at the Heart of Jesus.
The Honor Guard
of the Sacred Heart
The Honor Guard of the Sacred Heart is an international association that offers its members the opportunity to ensure a daily Hour of Presence, at a time that suits them and, without leaving their occupations, to go in spirit to the Tabernacle in order to offer to the Heart of Jesus their thoughts, actions, words, joys and sorrows, and above all their desire to console Him. Thus they render him ” a continual worship of Glory, Love and Reparation for the wound which he visibly received by the spear on the tree of the Cross, and for that which he receives invisibly every day, through forgetfulness, ingratitude and the sins of men” (Art. 1 of the statutes of the Association of the Hour of Presence in the Heart of Jesus) The aim of this association is to obtain that Christians at all hours of the day Let us be attentive to the Lord’s present love for each one of them and for their brothers and sisters.
Marie-Constance Bernaud was born in Besançon in October 1825. Despite her attraction to religious life, she was married at the age of 15 to M. Thieulin, whom she managed to convert before he died a Christian in 1846. Widowed, she took the habit of the Sisters of the Visitation of Bourg-en-Bresse in November 1849 and made her profession in April 1851 under the name of Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart.
A much appreciated teacher of the Visitation boarding school, she fell seriously ill and was completely denied after a novena to the Sacred Heart and to Blessed Margaret Mary. In 1863 the community of the Visitandines of Bourg consecrated itself to the Sacred Heart and the Sister had a vision of a dial whose center was occupied by the Heart of Jesus and the hours by the names of those who committed themselves to devote an hour to the adoration of the Sacred Heart.
A first dial was made with the name of each of the sisters. Many people asked to be inscribed on the dial, including the bishop of Belley, Mgr de Langalerie, who, in 1864, erected this work into the Confraternity of the Guard of Honour of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
This work spread throughout the world, so much so that in 1878 Pope Leo XIII erected it into an archconfraternity with its centre in the monastery of the Visitation in Bourg. Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart was the soul of the Guard of Honour through her letters and her “zealous notes” with which she encouraged the Guards, and which she continued to write until the eve of her death