Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque

Margaret Alacoque was born near Verosvres, in Burgundy, on July 22, 1647, the daughter of a notary. Her father died when she was eight, and the family fell on hard times: she spent years being humiliated in the house of relatives, and at one point she was bedridden with paralysis for four years. At twenty-three she joined the Visitation nuns of Paray-le-Monial, the order founded by Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal. She wasn’t brilliant, and her fellow sisters never thought much of her. Between 1673 and 1675 she said she had a series of apparitions of Christ showing her his own heart. From them came the feast of the Sacred Heart, the devotion of the Nine First Fridays, and one of the most widespread devotions of the centuries that followed. At first nobody believed her. Her sisters considered her deluded, the theologians consulted gave a negative opinion, and she spent years isolated within her own convent. What changed things was a Jesuit, Claude La Colombière, who was her confessor for eighteen months and the only one who took her seriously: he is a saint too. She died at Paray-le-Monial on October 17, 1690. Benedict XV declared her a saint in 1920, two hundred thirty years later. If your name is Margaret, today is your name day.