Msgr. Roger J. Landry
National Catholic Register
June 16, 2025
Those devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus have been looking forward to this June 16 for a long time.
That’s because it is the 350th anniversary of the most significant of Jesus’ apparitions to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, in which he revealed to her the mysteries of his heart and requested the inauguration of what would become the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
It happened on June 16, 1675. St. Margaret Mary was praying close to the Eucharistic Jesus in the Tabernacle in the monastery of the Visitation nuns in Paray-le-Monial, France. Jesus — she later wrote down at the behest of St. Claude la Colombière, her spiritual director — appeared to her over the altar, pointed to his heart, and said:
“Behold the heart that has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even exhausting and consuming itself to testify to its love. In recognition, I receive from the greater part of men only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrilege, by their coldness and the contempt they have for me in this Sacrament of Love. But what is still more painful to me is that hearts are consecrated to me treat me in this way.”
“Therefore,” Jesus went on, “I ask that the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi be set apart for a special feast to honor my heart, by receiving Communion on that day and making reparation to [my heart] by a solemn act, in order to make amends for the indignities that it has received during the time it has been exposed on the altars. I promise you that my heart will open to pour out in abundance the influence of its divine love upon those who shall honor it, or cause it to be honored, in this way.”
There’s much to unpack.
What Jesus revealed to the young Visitation nun was the culmination of centuries of devotion to the eternal Son of God’s having taken on our humanity and having loved us with both divine and human fire. Over the centuries the devotion had focused first on venerating Jesus’ five sacred wounds — which both revealed his humanity as well the extent to which his love for us led him — and eventually zeroed in on his pierced side, through which on Calvary the centurion’s spear lanced Jesus’ heart and through which flowed blood and water.
Beginning December 27, 1673, Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary, and asked her to lay her head on his heart like St. John did during the Last Supper, revealed that he could no longer contain the fire of his love for her or for the human race, and divulged that he wanted to pour out the treasures of his love through her upon all of us. He had mystically taken her heart from within her, immersed it in his heart, and returned it purified and aflame. Thus it became possible for her to feel the wound that pierced Jesus’ side, especially on the first Friday of each month, a day on which he asked her to console him by receiving him in Holy Communion and prepare for doing so by making a Eucharistic Holy Hour at 11 pm the night before.
About 18 months later, on June 16, Jesus, build on that preparation. He clearly identified the divine and human love beating through his sacred humanity with the mystery of his real presence in the Holy Eucharist, what he called the “Sacrament of Love” — in other words, the efficaciously visible sign of his loving us to the full. That expression, “Sacrament of Love,” was fittingly used by Pope Benedict XVI as the title of his 2006 apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist.
Jesus lamented that his love was unrequited by most. Even though he had totally poured himself out in witness to his love on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and on altars and tabernacles ever since, the majority of people has treated him, he said, with lack of appreciation, respect, love, holiness and praise. Even some of those consecrated to him, by baptism, religious profession, holy orders, he added, neglect him in this way.
What Jesus was speaking about hasn’t ceased. We still see that ingratitude, indifference, irreverence, coldness, sacrilege and scorn in the world and the Church today.
We see it in Hollywood, like recently on AppleTV+’s Friends and Neighbors when characters broke into a Tabernacle and started eating hosts with dip before sinning together in Church pews.
We’ve seen it in the ways that members of the Church of Wells have blasphemed the Eucharist along the Drexel Route of the 2025 National Eucharistic Pilgrimage.
We see it routinely in the way five of six Catholics in the United States prioritize other activities over Sunday Mass or in how many Catholics, when they do come, receive Holy Communion despite not having lived fully according to the commandments since the last time they received sacramental absolution.
We’ve seen it in priests who celebrate Mass with silly irreverent gimmicks.
We’ve seen it in the way that faithful and clergy refer to the Eucharist as “bread” and “wine” after the consecration, even though the Catholic Church unequivocally teaches there’s no bread or wine at all left, or liturgical musicians train us to “look beyond the bread you eat.”
We’ve seen it in the way even some bishops try to eliminate reverential practices by priests and faithful and act with animus toward a valid form of celebrating the Mass by which the Sacrament of Love has for centuries come from heaven to earth.
Jesus revealed to St. Margaret Mary 350 years ago that he’s not indifferent to the way we treat him in the Holy Eucharist. He can, and indeed does, still suffer in his sacred humanity. And he communicated that it’s much more painful to him when those consecrated to him do not treat him with the passion, precedence, piety, praise and purity he deserves.
Jesus wanted the celebration of the Solemnity of his Sacred Heart to take place in connection with the Solemnity of His Body and Blood.
When he appeared to St. Margaret Mary, Corpus Christi was always celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday and, like with most major feasts in the old calendar, was celebrated for an octave, which concluded the Thursday afterward. The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart was set for the day after. We still have the liturgical connection between the two solemnities even when Corpus Christi is translated to the following Sunday.
To understand the Sacred Heart, we must, therefore, link it to Jesus’ Body and Blood. The best way to venerate the Sacred Heart is not by means of a statue, painting, litany, aspiration or prayer card: it’s through the way we treat the Eucharistic Jesus, not just on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, or on First Fridays, or through vigils of reparation on the vigil of First Fridays, but routinely.
To those who treat him as he longs for, Jesus makes an extraordinary promise: to pour out his divine love upon all who love him in the sacrament of his love.
On the 350th anniversary of his making that promise, and revealing his desire, let us commit to making up for widespread ingratitude by our thanksgiving (eucharistein in Greek!), irreverence by our devotion, coldness by our zeal, sacrilege by our holiness, and contempt by our sacrificial love.