The main facts in the life of
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
Margaret Alacoque, the fifth of seven children of Claude
Alacoque and Philiberte Lamyn, was born at Lhautecour in
old Burgandy, now East Central France, on July 22, 1647.
She was baptized Margaret, adding the name Mary only at the
time of her Confirmation in 1669. At the age of four she took a
vow of chastity, though "I did not then understand what I had
done, nor what was meant by the words 'vow' and 'chastity'" From
her earliest years she was tenderly devoted to the Blessed Sacrament
and to the Blessed Virgin.
Her father died when she was eight. When she was eight and a half,
she was sent to the school of the Urbanist Nuns at Charolles,
where she received the only two years of formal education she ever
had.
At the then early age of nine, she made her first Holy Communion.
"This Communion shed such bitterness over all my little pleasures
and amusements that I was no longer able to enjoy any of them,
although I sought them eagerly." Shortly after this she succumbed
to long illness. "But I fell into so pitable a state of ill health
that for about four years I was unable to walk.
My bones pierced
my skin.
Consequently I was removed from the convent at the end
of two years. since no remedy could be found for my illness, I was
consecrated to the Blessed Virgin with the promise that, if she
cured me, I should one day be one of Her daughters. Scarcely
had I made this vow, when I was cured and taken anew under the
protection of Our Lady."
Though her father, a royal notary, had been in good financial
circumstances, Margaret and her mother were after his death subjected
to domestic persecution and captivity in their home by some of
their relatives.
This drew the girl more to mental prayer, and
brought her closer to Christ in His suffering. Eventualy, her
mother again became mistress in her own house and prevailed upon
her now seventeen-year-old daughter to consider marriage.
This
brought about an inner conflict and a struggle began in her soul
between the devil and the world on one hand and Our Lord and her vow
on the other. Satan: "Poor fool, what do you mean by wishing to
be a nun? You will become the laughing stock of the world, for
you will never be able to persevere." Her Savior after the scrouging:
"Would you take this pleasure, whereas I never had any and delivered
Myself up to every kind of bitterness for love of you and to win
your heart? Nevertheless, you would still dispute with Me!"
"I had indeed committed great crimes," she writes, "for once during
the days of Carnival, together with other young girls, I disguised
myself through vain complacency.
This has been to me a cause of bitter
tears and sorrow during my whole life, together with the fault
I committed in adorning myself in worldly attire through the same
motive of complacency towards the persons above mentioned."
She was induced against her better judgement to apply for admission
into the Ursuline Order at Macon, but was suddenly called home
just "as they were ready to open the convent door to me".
On May
25, 1671, she paid her first visit to her "dear Paray,' where as
soon as I entered the parlor, I heard interiorly these words:
'It is here that I would have you be'" She took the habit August 25,
1671, and made her profession November 6, 1672, as the first daughter,
of the new superior, Mother de Saumaise, who was to figure so largely
in her later life.
Christ had carefully prepared His servant for her great mission,
through suffering, prayer and special guidance.
Her sufferings
were to continue to the end, her prayer would become ecstatic,
the Savior Himself would be her personal spiritual director till
death.
In this way she would be able to present to the world the
Devotion to the Sacred Heart in its modern form.
Our Lord made many revelations to Margaret mary-perhaps forty. The
most striking of these began on December 27, 1673; they ended with
the greatest of them all, "Behold this Heart," in June 1675.
It was
during this year that Claude de la Colombiere, a saintly young priest
of the Society of Jesus, was providentially sent to Paray-le-Monail
and appointed extraordinary confessor to the Visitandine community
of which Margaret Mary was a member.
He encouraged and reassured
her, and himself became an apostle of the Devotion of the Sacred
Heart for the few years of life that remained to him. The notes
of His Retreat made in London in 1677, where he was sent after
only eighteen months in Paray, were to be a great instrument in
promoting devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Margaret Mary was mistress of novices from 1685 to 1686. Her death
came on October 17, 1690. Her body still rests at Paray-le-Monial.
The process with a view to her canonization was begun in 1715.
She was declared Venerable in 1824, Blessed in 1864, and became
St. Margaret Mary on May 13, 1920.
This brief sketch of her life is continued and expanded in detail
in the letters here presented.
C.A. Herbst,S.J.
The Letters >>>
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