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St. Margaret Mary Alacoque — Apostle of the Sacred Heart

The hidden nun who saw His Heart.

On October 16 the Church remembers a quiet Visitation sister from a small town in Burgundy. Almost nobody outside her convent knew her name when she died, yet nearly every Catholic parish today has a statue or picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and that devotion runs straight back to her.

Who She Was

Margaret Alacoque was born on July 22, 1647, in Lhautecour, a hamlet in the parish of Verosvres in Burgundy, France. From early childhood she loved the Blessed Sacrament and would rather pray in silence than play. After her First Communion at about nine she fell so ill with paralysis that she was confined to bed for four years. She made a vow to the Blessed Virgin that she would give her life to God in religious life, and she was healed at once.

Holy card of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us

Her father died while she was still a child, and the family fell into poverty. When things recovered and she turned seventeen, her mother wanted her to settle down and marry. Margaret talked herself into believing her childhood vow wasn't binding, and for a while she enjoyed the pleasures of the world. Then one night, coming home from a ball, she saw Christ as He was at the scourging, reproaching her for turning away after He had shown her so much love. For the rest of her life she grieved over the small vanities of those years, like wearing a mask at Carnival to please her brothers. That night was her turning point.

In 1671 she entered the convent of the Visitation of Holy Mary at Paray-le-Monial, taking the name Margaret Mary, and made her final vows in November 1672.

"Behold This Heart"

Between December 1673 and June 1675, in the convent chapel, Jesus appeared to her several times and showed her His Heart, burning with love. She later wrote that He let her see her own heart "like a little atom consumed in the fiery furnace of his own." In June 1675 came the great revelation. Showing His Heart, He said:

"Behold this Heart which has so loved men."
— Jesus to St. Margaret Mary

He asked for a feast in honor of His Heart, for Holy Communion on the First Friday of each month, and for a Holy Hour of prayer on Thursday night in memory of His agony in the garden.

Her community did not believe her. The sisters treated her as a visionary, and her superior ordered her to live the common life like everyone else. Help came in 1675, when a young Jesuit, Fr. Claude La Colombière, became the community's confessor. He recognized that her experiences were genuine and helped carry her message beyond the convent walls.

She died at Paray-le-Monial on October 17, 1690, at forty-three, saying the Holy Name of Jesus.

The Virtues She Is Known For

  • Obedience. When her superior doubted her and told her to live like the other sisters, she obeyed, trusting that if the message was from God, God would see it through.
  • Humility. She never sought attention for the visions. She spent her life hidden in one small convent, and she wanted the glory to go to the Heart of Jesus, not to herself.
  • Charity toward those who hurt her. She met the sisters who mocked and opposed her with steady kindness. In the end that patience won them over, and some of her fiercest critics came to recognize her mission.
  • Love of the Eucharist. From childhood to her death, the Blessed Sacrament was where she found Jesus. It's no accident that the practices she passed on, the First Fridays and the Holy Hour, are centered on the Eucharist.

Saints in Her Story

  • St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane Frances de Chantal founded the Visitation order she joined. Pope Benedict XV called her a "humble daughter" of St. Francis de Sales.
  • St. Claude La Colombière, her Jesuit confessor, was the first priest to believe her. St. John Paul II canonized him in 1992, so the confessor and the visionary are now both saints.
  • St. John Paul II made a pilgrimage to Paray-le-Monial on October 5, 1986, and prayed at her tomb. His own feast comes just six days after hers, on October 22.

The Road to Sainthood

  • Venerable, 1824. On March 30, 1824, more than a century after her death, Pope Leo XII sent her cause to the Congregation of Rites for examination, and she was declared Venerable.
  • Blessed, September 18, 1864, Pope Pius IX. Three healings were approved as miracles:
    • Sr. Marie de Sales Chareault, a nun of her own convent at Paray, cured of stomach cancer in 1828.
    • Sr. Marie Thérèse Petit, cured of a long-standing heart aneurysm on July 21, 1830.
    • Sr. Louise Philippine Bollani, a Visitation nun in Venice, instantly cured of tuberculosis of the lungs, then thought incurable, in 1841.
  • Saint, May 13, 1920, Pope Benedict XV. Two more healings were approved on January 6, 1918:
    • Luigia Agostini Coleschi, instantly and completely cured of chronic transverse meningomyelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord, in the lower back.
    • Countess Antonia Astorri Pavesi, a widow, instantly and completely cured of a tumor of the right breast.

She was canonized in 1920, the same year as St. Joan of Arc and St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows.

What She Left Us

  • The feast of the Sacred Heart. Blessed Pius IX extended it to the whole Church in 1856, and it is now a solemnity, kept on the Friday after the second Sunday after Pentecost.
  • First Fridays. Receiving Holy Communion on the first Friday of the month, in reparation and love.
  • The Holy Hour. An hour of prayer with Jesus in His agony, the night before the First Friday.
  • A living devotion. In 2024 Pope Francis wrote a whole encyclical on the Heart of Jesus, Dilexit nos, drawing directly on her revelations. He also reminds us that, as with any private revelation, we don't have to accept every detail; what matters is the love it points to.

Patron Of

  • Devotees of the Sacred Heart, for the obvious reason.
  • People suffering from polio, because she herself was paralyzed and bedridden for four years as a girl.
  • People who have lost their parents, because her father died when she was young and she knew grief and poverty early.

Living It This Week

  • Go to Mass and receive Communion on a First Friday, starting with the next one.
  • Spend an hour, or even fifteen minutes, with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament on a Thursday evening.
  • Pray the old aspiration: Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You.
  • Read Ephesians 3:14–19, which the prayer for her feast echoes.
"To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God."
— Ephesians 3:19 (Douay-Rheims)

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.

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