Life of Sister Marie du Sacré Cœur Bernaud (continued)
To prepare for the international meeting of the Guards of Honor in Bourg-en-Bresse, the cradle of the work, which is also part of the Jubilee of the 350th anniversary of the Apparitions of Jesus to Saint Marguerite-Marie, we invite you to discover the life of our foundress: Sister Marie du Sacré Cœur Bernaud, a discreet figure who lived in the shadow of her work and who, however, was its tireless linchpin throughout her life.
1863, foundation of the Guard of Honor
On January 5, 1863, the monastery received a magnificent statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. On the feast of the Epiphany, as is customary in the communities, the sisters decided to choose the Sacred Heart as King of the year. A few weeks later, on March 12, as Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart climbed the stairs of the monastery, she received the intellectual vision of the Dial. That same evening, she reproduced it and felt urgent to add the words “Glory, Love, Reparation” and Guard of Honor of the Sacred Heart. She had a sister paint the Heart of Jesus in the center. The very next day, the third Friday of the month and the feast of the Five Wounds of Our Lord, she presented it to the Superior who saw in it the intervention of Heaven. She blessed the dial and invited each nun to choose an hour to offer it to the Heart of Jesus. The Guard of Honor had just been founded!
A few days later, on Holy Wednesday, Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart was seized with spitting blood. She could not participate in the holy offices to which she would have so much liked to lend her beautiful voice. She offered this sacrifice for the work.
At the Palm Sunday Mass, Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart was overwhelmed when she read the offertory: “My heart awaits nothing but insults and pain; I have desired, but in vain, someone who sympathizes with my ills, I have sought a Consoler and have not found one.” She firmly feels in her being that this is the reason for the existence of the Guard of Honor, whose main goal is to console the Heart of Jesus through reparation and love! Held in the infirmary, she took advantage of the recollection of the Holy Days to write the program of the work, its goal and its organization.
On Good Friday, she composed the prayer of the offering of the hour of guard. She senses that thousands of souls would adopt the formula to consecrate their devotion and love to the Heart of Jesus during the chosen hour.
In April, the month then dedicated to the holy Angels, our Sister chose the nine choirs of Angels with the Righteous of the earth, to be, following the most holy Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph, the twelve Protectors, in union with whom the associates would fulfill, at each hour, their commitment.
In May 1863, the Guard of Honor crossed the doors of the monastery of the Visitation in Annecy, where a few minutes were enough to collect all the names. “What gives us great pleasure in this devotion,” wrote Mother Anne-Marie Babin, Superior, is that it does not impose any singularity, any prayer; in essence, it is only a more exact observation of the Rule during one hour of the day; that is why we accepted it without hesitation. Oh my dear Sister, I bless Our Lord for having given you this pious idea”.
In Paray-le-Monial, what a surprise when one receives the dial of the Guard of Honor: an identical dial had been revealed to a sister and they were only just beginning to make it! But the enterprise being more advanced in Bourg already, with the making of the zealot tickets and the prayer of offering of the hour of guard, not to mention the numerous inscriptions, the Sisters of Paray left to those of Bourg the responsibility of continuing the development of the work.
On June 13, 1863, during the Solemn Mass of the Sacred Heart, Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart reported her impressions: “I felt, better than ever, what the Heart of Jesus is: an abyss of love misunderstood, rejected, driven back to its source; how much this very sweet Heart has suffered and suffers every day from our immense ingratitude! I implored Him to grant me this grace of making Him a little known and loved…”
The following Sunday, June 14, the words “cujus latus perforatum” (whose side was pierced) were deeply imprinted on her soul. The Guard of Honor seemed to her to be the providential means of giving special worship to the wound that the Heart of Jesus received on the Cross. Alas, Mgr de Langalerie, Bishop of Belley, firmly opposed the lance appearing on the pierced heart in the center of the dial. Sister Marie du Sacré Cœur showed no disappointment but suffered deeply, offering this sacrifice permitted by heaven, for the growth of the work. In fact, at the end of 1863, if 112 monasteries of the Visitation had registered with the Guard of Honor, it had already crossed the borders, extending to England and Italy. It would take 15 years for the lance to finally be authorized, thanks to the intervention of Pius IX.
Sacrifices and expansion
From year to year, the work spread throughout the world almost miraculously and one could only rejoice. However, it was not without the sufferings constantly offered by its founder. Despite deplorable health that left her exhausted, painful, sometimes dying, she worked tirelessly. She wrote the cartels, monthly advice that she intended for the guards of honor to nourish them spiritually, responded to the countless letters, to requests of all kinds coming from different countries, composed the Manual, an essential notice to explain the ins and outs of the work…. All this work took a physical toll on her. At each new convalescence, she liked to say: “I feel that life has been given back to me only to work for the glory of my Jesus, to extend the reign of his Sacred Heart. To love Him, to make Him loved or to die: let that be our motto!”
Without leaving the infirmary located upstairs, where she froze in the winter and burned with heat in the summer, she resumed her work without ever complaining. At no time did she ask to change premises despite the temperature there. Her thoughts were so absorbed by her mission to make Jesus loved that the sisters had to watch over the most basic material things in her daily life. (To be continued)