The Life of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

Rt. Rev. Emile Bougaud

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781505102635
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

This is considered to be the best biography of The Saint of the Sacred Heart Devotion. The whole story of the revelations, plus the definitive story of her life. Portrays St. Margaret Mary as a redoubtable soul, ready to give all for Jesus. And what an example she is! It is largely due to St. Margaret Mary that we know what we do about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Impr. 388 pgs,

CHAPTER XX.

ENTHRONEMENT OF THE SACRED HEART—SOME AMERICAN ASSOCIATIONS—THE WORDS OF POPE BENEDICT XV., AND THE DECREE OF CANONIZATION OF SAINT MARGARET MARY ALACOQUE, PROFESSED RELIGIOUS OF THE ORDER OF THE VISITATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY OF THE DIOCESE OF AUTUN.

IN the year 1907, Father Matthew Crawley-Boevey of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, from Chili, though of English birth, was kneeling in the chapel at Paray-le-Monial, the scene of the apparitions of Our Lord to Saint Margaret Mary. This priest was, according to the doctors, suffering from an incurable disease of the heart. While praying before the tabernacle, he suddenly felt his strength return to him, and realized that he was cured. At the same moment, an overpowering desire seized upon him to draw every household in the world to the Sacred Heart, and the conviction took possession of him that for this end was his vigor restored to him. A few days later, he was in Rome, kneeling before Pope Pius X, begging his approbation and blessing for the task he felt impelled to undertake. “I give you no permission for a work as magnificent as this,” the Pope answered him, smiling; “I command you, instead, to devote yourself to it.” Father Crawley-Boevey began his mission without delay. The spread of the devotion was remarkable. Two years afterward, Pope Pius X gave it his special blessing, and to all priests who should become its apostles. Ten years after its conception, Father Crawley-Boevey writes:

“The Enthronement of the Heart of Jesus as King has been made in the palaces of kings and princes, in the homes of thousands of workmen and of the poor; it has been carried out in Parliaments; hearth by hearth, amid Arctic snows and in the centre of Africa; from the archipelagos of Oceania to the distant lands of Tibet and China, and to all the countries of Europe and America. There have been Enthronements of rare beauty, performed in the seclusion of the cloister, in brilliant gatherings held in the halls of Catholic clubs; Enthronements full of divine poetry, carried out in convent schools, homes and orphanages, hospitals—even in prisons; the homages of bishops and priests, of shepherds and their families to the Shepherd-King; the leper settlement of Molokai; it has penetrated into the Congo, Ethiopia, Alaska and the Fiji Islands.”

Mother Mary Philip of the Bar Convent, York, England, says in her interesting Life of Saint Margaret Mary:

“We have seen how the first ceremony of the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart took place in the novitiate of the convent of Paray-le-Monial; this present devotion differs in no way from the devotion practiced by the humble Mistress of the novices and her subjects.” Cardinal Billot writes in 1915 to Father Crawley-Boevey as follows:

“The work is the pure, simple and unalloyed devotion to the Sacred Heart handed down to us in the revelations of Blessed Margaret Mary. It is nothing more, nothing less. To introduce or set up in the place of honor in each household a representation of the Sacred Heart, in recognition of the supreme rights of Jesus Christ over the family as a whole, and over each of its members; to recite family prayers each evening before it, and to renew each night, by the lips of the father or mother, the consecration made on the first day; to be faithful to the practice of Holy Communion, and as far as possible to that of the Holy Hour, on the eve of the First Friday of the month; to meditate upon the lessons and examples given us by the Sacred Heart; to have recourse to this Fount of all graces in the family joys as well as the family sorrows, in good and evil days, in sufferings, in reverses, in partings, amid the tears shed at the grave and the smiles bestowed upon the cradle—in a word, amidst all the events that interrupt the normal and regular course of the family life….. One has but to read in the life of Blessed Margaret Mary the description of the First Enthronement, carried out with closed doors in the novitiate….. if the book of the future had been opened to her at the page entitled the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Home, she would have recognized in it the expansion of the acts so delicately outlined by her little novices.”

In January, 1918, Pope Benedict XV, put the seal of approval on the devotion of the Enthronement in these forcible words:

“If from the canonization of Blessed Margaret Mary there results a more complete diffusion of the worship of the Sacred Heart, who would not by desire and deed thus hasten the spread of so excellent a devotion as that of the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in families and their consecration to It? The dawn gives us an idea of what the midday will be like, and we, who in this praiseworthy consecration of families to the Sacred Heart recognize the dawn of that much-desired day when the sovereignty of Jesus Christ shall be acknowledged on all sid...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Publisher’s Note
• Contents
• Introduction
• I. State of the Church in France at the Birth of Saint Margaret Mary. 1647
• II. Birth of Saint Margaret Mary—First Years—Childhood and Youth. 1647-1662
• III. Margaret’s Vocation—She Enters the Visitation of Paray. 1662-1671
• IV. The Convent of Paray. 1671
• V. Margaret Mary’s Novitiate—God Prepares her for the Great Mission about to be intrusted to her —Her Profession. May 26, 1671-November 6, 1672
• VI. Final Exterior Preparations—Last Finishing Stroke within. November 6, 1672-December 27, 1673
• VII. The Aurora of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart
• VIII. The Visitation Established to be the Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart
• IX. The Revelations of the Sacred Heart. 1673–1675
• X. Almighty God Prepares the Convent of Paray to become the Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart. 1675–1678
• XI. Mother Greyfié submits Margaret’s Extraordinary Ways to a New Examination—Her Severity and her Fearlessness—Father de la Colombière Returns to Paray—His Death. 1678–1684
• XII. The Saintly Sister among her Novices—The Secret of the Sublime Revelations Escapes her in Spite of herself—First Public Adoration of the Sacred Heart. 1684–1685
• XIII. The Apostolate of the Sacred Heart Begun—With what Modesty and Zeal Margaret Mary begins to Spread Devotion to the Sacred Heart. 1686–1689
• XIV. The Last Grand Revelation—The King and France. 1689
• XV. Margaret Mary’s Mission Ended—She is Consumed in the Flames of Divine Love—Her Holy Death. 1690
• XVI. Devotion to the Heart of Jesus Begins in the World—Anger of Some, Enthusiasm of Others
• XVII. The First-fruits of Devotion to the Sacred Heart —The Church of France Vivified in the Rays of the Sacred Heart—Beatification of Saint Margaret Mary
• XVIII. Unexpected and Marvellous Spread of Devotion to the Heart of Jesus amid the Misfortunes of France—The Second Part of the Mission confided to Saint Margaret Mary Approaches its Accomplishment. 1870–1874
• XIX. Montmartre—The Wish of St. Francis de Sales—The Visitation Order and Jansenism—-The Visitandines as Reformers and Founders—The Visitandines in the Revolution—the Scapular of the Sacred Heart in the Reign of Terror —The Guard of Honor of the Sacred Heart—The Consecration of the World to the Sacred Heart
• XX. Enthronement of the Sacred Heart—Some American Associations—The Words of Pope Benedict XV., and the Decree of Canonization of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Professed Religious of the Order of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the diocese of Autun