The feast day of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque is celebrated on October 16.
On December 27, 1673, after another day of prayer and work was finished in the convent, St. Margaret Mary was praying alone in the chapel when the Sacred Heart appeared to her. Jesus’ body was filled with light and His Heart was on fire, bleeding and crowned with thorns.
The Lord said to her, “Behold this Heart which has loved men so much! My Divine Heart is so inflamed with love for mankind . . . that it can no longer contain within itself the flames of its burning charity and must spread them abroad by your means.”
Jesus spoke powerfully to St. Margaret Mary about His overflowing love for every human person created by His Father and the intense pain He felt because often that love was not returned.
Revealing His Sacred Heart
I often think about how little I actually love the Lord and my need to grow in my devotion and gratitude to Jesus.
I don’t often think about how my lack of love affects Jesus, or that He cares so much about my response to Him.
Like any relationship between friends, one often feels deeply the pain that occurs if the other has turned away from the friendship or no longer wants to spend time with that friend.
The Lord puts Himself in such a place of vulnerability that He desires and longs for our love, and like the Good Shepherd, comes in search of us when we have strayed away from Him.
The heart represents the deepest part of ourselves, the core of our being where we love, desire, rejoice, and grieve.
The heart is the place of decision where we will our actions, both good and bad.
No wonder the Lord cares about our hearts, wanting them for Him alone, not wanting our hearts to be cold, indifferent, or broken.
The deepest and best part of being human and of being children of God is to love and be loved, to love God and others, and to allow the divine fire to fill and transform us.
Jesus revealed His Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary at a time when many people viewed the Lord as a harsh and distant figure, one who was more occupied with counting our sins than with forgiving us.
Many people only received the Eucharist several times in their lives because of a deep sense of unworthiness and fear.
Could we not say that Jesus showed His Heart, aflame with divine love, to correct some of those misperceptions?
That Jesus wanted to remind us that His love is stronger than our sins and unworthiness, stronger than even death itself?
When I was a child, a beautiful picture of the Sacred Heart hung above our television.
Even when I was too little to truly understand who Jesus was, I instinctively understood two things: This smiling man with a fiery heart loved me and He somehow lived in our house, even though I could never see Him.
My parents consecrated our family to the Sacred Heart. Every First Friday, we renewed the consecration and went to Mass that day.
Because they invited Jesus into our home and family, my parents built a spiritual environment where it was natural for me to think about the priesthood.
Encountering His humanity
In the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we encounter the beauty and perfection of the Lord’s humanity, perfectly united with His divinity.
Becoming human in all things but sin, the Lord embraced our nature in order to redeem, sanctify, and transform us.
He humbled Himself to share in our humanity so that we could share in His divinity.
In the Sacred Heart, we come to understand that Jesus is approachable, available, and present to us.
We see this nearness most beautifully in the Holy Eucharist. We can go to Mass every day, receive the Body of Christ, and Adore Him in our churches. He is as fully with us as He was with Mary and Joseph in Nazareth or with His apostles at the Last Supper.
How does a sinless person act? What does a perfectly integrated humanity look like?
Our only two and shining examples are the Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ Himself.
Because they had no shadow or taint of selfishness, sin, or moral imperfection, how spiritually attractive must they have been?
We know from the Scriptures that the crowds were drawn to Jesus, like a magnet, wanting to hear, touch, and experience Him.
Holiness is always attractive because we all long for wholeness, integration, and joy.
Christ was filled with light, peace, love, and generosity.
Everyone wants those gifts in their lives.
The humanity of Jesus consoles us because we know God understands, even through direct experience, what it is like to be one of us.
Our temptations, failures, sufferings, and limitations all find a compassionate response in the Heart of Christ because He took up our cause and knows the glory and burden of being human, even though He never sinned Himself.
This thought should deeply console us because we can bring all of our “stuff” to the Lord and lay it into His Heart.
As Hebrews reminds us, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet never sinned.” (Hebrews 4:15)
So bring all of your problems, anxieties, failings, and sins to Jesus. Put them into His Heart. Surrender to His love. Let Him console, bless, and forgive you.
This grace is most clearly and fully offered to us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Go often! It will change your life.
Ponder for a moment with me the compelling fact that the Sacred Heart was formed and began to beat within the womb of the Virgin Mary.
Jesus’ Heart grew, and it was this Heart that beat with divine love for every person he met.
This heart drew the Master to heal, forgive, bless, preach, and feed, pouring Himself out to put back together the broken pieces of humanity.
This same Heart was pierced on the Cross and ceased to beat on that dark Friday afternoon which we call Good, good for us.
But then, think about this: As He lay in death in the tomb, there was a specific moment in history when the Sacred Heart took its first resurrected beat when the Lord emerged in triumph over the destructive power of sin and death.
And now that Heart beats forever — this mystical divine heart, pumping mercy and life to the whole Body of the Church, loving us with the perfection of God’s desire for us to be in relationship with Him forever.