Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus dates back to the 17th century, when a French Visitation Sister, Sr. Margaret Mary Alacoque, received three miraculous visions of Our Lord.
As part of a series written for the National Divine Mercy Shrine, director of the John Paul II Institute of Divine Mercy Robert Stackpole wrote about these revelations in his first article, “The Plan of the Heart of Jesus to Drive Back the World's Darkness.”
On the feast of Saint John the Evangelist, Dec. 27, 1673, Saint Margaret Mary was praying in front of the tabernacle, a practice she had begun as a young child when she endured poverty and illness.
The saint related her first encounter with the Sacred Heart in her personal recollections, writing that “Our Lord made me rest for several hours on his sacred breast…”
“After that I saw this divine Heart as on a throne of flames, more brilliant than the sun and transparent as crystal,” she continued. “It had its adorable wound and was encircled with a crown of thorns, which signified the pricks our sins caused Him.
“It was surmounted by a cross which signified that, from the first moment of His Incarnation, that is, from the time this Sacred Heart was formed, the cross was planted in It; that It was filled, from the very first moment, with all the bitterness, humiliations, poverty, sorrow, and contempt His sacred humanity would have to suffer during the whole course of His life and during His holy Passion.”
St. Margaret Mary said Our Lord told her that He chose to manifest His heart because He ardently desired for men and women to love Him and to save them from damnation. The devotion, she continued, was the “last resort of his love.”
“[He] wished to favour men in these last centuries with his loving redemption,” St. Margaret Mary wrote, “in order to withdraw them from the empire of Satan, which He intended to destroy, and in order to put us under the sweet liberty of the empire of His love.”
In Our Lord’s three appearances to the saint, He showed her how He desired to bring the world back to His Sacred Heart.
Stackpole wrote on the Divine Mercy website, “Above all, He wished humanity to return His love with love; to make reparation to His Heart for our many failures to return His love; to place all our trust in His Heart; to honor Him through the sign and symbol of His Heart; and to grow to love His Heavenly Father more and more.”
However, 350 years later, countless men and women are still separated from the love of God, Stackpole continued.
“Instead of the reign of the Sacred Heart, a culture of death and a denial of Divine Love holds sway in society, and our Lord’s own prophecy seems to be coming true: Authentic love in the hearts of many is growing cold (Mt 24:12),” he wrote. “In short, we seem to be light-years away from fulfilling the ardent desires of the Heart of Jesus.”
But hope is not lost, he wrote. The Heart of Jesus has been a “refiner’s fire” for countless saints. Popes have fully embraced the devotion, and even the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the Sacred Heart of Jesus “the chief sign and symbol of that ... love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father and all human beings.”
Stackpole urged Catholics to renew their love and devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, especially as persecution against Christians around the world escalates. He also wrote that Our Lord promised St. Margaret Mary that in the end, He would triumph over evil: “What do you fear? I shall reign in spite of Satan and whatever else stands in the way.”
Catholics can place America in the Sacred Heart of Jesus by praying along with Cardinal Burke’s prayer for the 250th anniversary of American independence. They can also pray the Litany of the Sacred Heart.