St. Margaret Mary Alacoque: Her Life and Missions (1)

As we celebrate the jubilee of the most important of these apparitions (350 years, from December 2023 to June 2025), it seems worthwhile to look back at the little-known figure of this saint, her life, and the missions entrusted to her by Heaven.

Background

We refer you to the “Origins of the Sacred Heart Devotion” articles to show that St. Margaret Mary Alacoque was sent by God at a time when devotion to the Divine Heart was growing rapidly, thanks in particular to St. Francis de Sales and the Order of the Visitation.

And even more so, thanks to St. John Eudes, who was the first to compose an Office and Mass in honor of the Sacred Heart. The events at Paray-le-Monial can thus be compared to a flower bursting into bloom at the end of the plant's entire growth process, and immediately after a strong burst of sap.

These apparitions at the end of the 17th century also came at the height of the Jansenist crisis. Jansenism dried up devotion, presenting only a vengeful, coldly just God. In reaction to this error, a contrary doctrine—also erroneous—had emerged, that of quietism, which denied the effort required for sanctification and salvation under the guise of a false notion of surrender to God's love.

The cult of the Sacred Heart is a providential antidote to these two deviances, reminding us that while God is infinite justice, He is also, and above all, love and mercy. St. Margaret Mary's entire doctrine is a happy medium between the excesses of Jansenism and the shortcomings of quietism.

Childhood and Vocation

Margaret Alacoque (her name is known as Marguerite in French) was born in Verosvres, a village about 15 km east of Charolles and 30 km from Paray-le-Monial, in what is now Saône-et-Loire. This rural background gave her a solid common sense that inspired confidence in the revelations she claimed to have received, even before their official approval.

Before the age of 7, while attending Mass in the small chapel of the Castle of Corcheval, where her godmother lived, she felt an inner urge to give herself completely to God.

Between the two consecrations, she pronounced this formula, without fully understanding it, but seriously: “O my God, I consecrate my purity to You, and I vow perpetual chastity to You.” Clearly, such an act is only conceivable under a special impulse of the Holy Spirit.

Her father died when she was 8 years old. Placed in a boarding school with the Urbanist Sisters at Charolles, she received the Holy Eucharist for the first time the following year, which was quite advanced for the time. Shortly afterward, she fell gravely ill, and for four years was bedridden with rheumatism and a kind of paralysis.

Finally, she promised the Blessed Virgin that she would become one of her daughters if she regained her health: “No sooner had I made this vow,” she later wrote, “than I received healing.” For her, healing did not mean the end of her trials. In fact, she and her mother lived under the same roof as several of her aunts and uncles, who mistreated them without any qualms.

“We therefore had no power in the house and did not dare do anything without permission. It was a constant war, and everything was locked up in such a way that I often could not even find enough to get dressed to go to holy Mass unless I borrowed a cap and clothing. It was then that I began to feel my captivity, to which I sank so deep that I did nothing and did not leave without the approval of three people” [1].

Far from closing her in on herself, this period of persecution opened her up to the mystery of the Cross. She had the image of the Ecce Homo constantly before her eyes, and Our Lord encouraged her to unite her sufferings to His. She was increasingly drawn to prayer—Christ Himself became her prayer Teacher—and to the Eucharist.

Around the age of 18, the domestic climate seemed to calm down a little. This marked the beginning of another inner struggle, that of her vocation. Her mother was looking for a good match for her and hoped to spend a peaceful old age in her daughter’s new home. Charming young people regularly visited the family home, where the lifestyle was quite festive.

Margaret took a liking to it, and found herself torn between the call to religious life, which she had long recognized and to which Our Lord was urging her, and the desire for marriage. It was more than a conflict of preferences; it was a torment of conscience.

Those around her pointed out that her presence was indispensable to her mother, who would die of grief if she entered a religious order. The devil was also at work, exaggerating the difficulties of religious life and presenting seemingly insurmountable obstacles to it. For 6 years she hesitated. She indulged in worldly pleasures, with no objective seriousness, but with the idea of fleeing God's call.

“In vain,” she would later write, ”for in the midst of company and amusements, He would shoot arrows at me so fiercely, that they pierced and consumed my heart on every side. And the pain I felt made me feel all forbidden.

“And that still not being enough, for a heart as ungrateful as mine, to make Him quit, I felt as if bound and drawn by force of ropes, so strongly, that at last I was compelled to follow Him who called me to some secret place, where He gave me stern rebukes. For he was jealous of [my] wretched heart, which suffered dreadful persecutions” [2].

To compensate for her infidelities, she inflicted heavy corporal penances on herself. Little by little, the Lord won her over. Rather than asking Margaret to perform extraordinary penances, He showed her the beauty of virtues and religious vows.

Finally, she made up her mind and obtained—not without difficulty—the agreement of her family, particularly her elder brother, on her vocation and on the monastery she wished to enter [3]: on June 20, 1671, she entered the Visitation Monastery of Paray-le-Monial.

First Steps in Religious Life - Preparation for the Apparitions

During the first years of her religious life, Margaret was filled with inner consolations. She was guided inwardly by Our Lord. My divine Master,” she later wrote, ”made me see that this was the time of betrothal, which gave Him a new empire over me, who also received a double commitment to love Him with a love of preference” [4].

On the outside, however, she was tested; Her novice mistress, full of zeal and good will, nevertheless lacked flexibility. Sister Thouvant—as she is known—intended to verify that Margaret's manifest piety was more than just appearances. Especially since, in the spirit of the Visitation's founding saints, St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane Frances de Chantal, there was a healthy suspicion of anything out of the ordinary.

Both had once begged God, on their knees before the altar, never to send extraordinary graces to their Order (the least we can say is that this wish was not granted on this point!). The novice mistress's motive was therefore commendable and sound; her manner, however, was excessive.

Shortly before the date set for Margaret's vows, a new superior of the highest class arrived, Mother de Saumaise. She would later become one of the first to support and spread devotion to the Sacred Heart. At the time, she was doubtful about Sister Alacoque's dispositions.

To ensure the novice's humility, she delayed her profession, and asked, as a pledge of the authenticity of the locutions she claimed to receive, that they never lead her out of obedience and the spirit of the Order. Our Lord made this admirable response: “From now on, I will adjust My graces to the spirit of your rule, to the will of your superiors, and to your weakness.

“To ensure that you are suspicious of all that will take you away from the exact practice of your rule, which I want you to prefer above all else. Moreover, I am pleased that you prefer the will of your superiors to Mine, when they forbid you from doing what I have ordered you to do. Let them do whatever they want with you: I know how to find a way to make my plans succeed” [5]. Margaret passed on the message to her superiors, who were reassured by it.

She was finally able to pronounce her vows a few months later (on November 6, 1672), but the opposition of her sisters was not over yet. Sister Thouvant, under whose care she remained for some time, tasked herself seriously with verifying that Sister Margaret Mary was indeed practicing what Our Lord had told her about obedience!

It was during this period—shortly before her vows—that, tormented exteriorly and greatly consoled interiorly by the almost constant sense of God's presence, she received the grace of a great love of the Cross. She was reflecting in the monastery garden, near a hazel tree that has since become famous.

It was there,” she says, ”that I received such great graces, such as I had never experienced before; especially what He made known to me about the mystery of His holy death and passion; but it is an abyss to write, and the length makes me omit everything. But only that this is what has given me such love for the Cross, that I cannot live a moment without suffering.

“But to suffer in silence, without consolation, relief, nor compassion; and to die with the Sovereign of my soul, burdened under the Cross with all kinds of opprobrium, humiliations, forgetfulness, and contempt” [6]. Thereafter, she received fewer perceptible consolations, and these were always accompanied by great interior suffering.

St. Margaret Mary and Suffering

On this topic, and before turning to the great apparitions, it is worth addressing the question of Margaret Mary's astonishing desire to suffer, and the no less astonishing actions she was sometimes led to perform.

St. Margaret Mary positively desired to suffer, to the point that suffering was a joy for her and the absence of a cross deeply distressed her. This is undoubtedly why, if devotion to the Sacred Heart is popular, the saint who propagated this devotion is less so.

This desire to suffer is the fruit of an ardent love of Our Lord that drove her to share in His passion. Just as Christ was, throughout His earthly existence, entirely turned toward “His hour,” so Margaret's life was entirely turned toward the Cross, to find Christ there and to take her part in the work for the salvation of souls.

For example, she went 50 days without drinking, “to honor the ardent thirst that His Sacred Heart had always endured for the salvation of sinners, and that he had suffered on the tree of the Cross,” [7] which is clearly a miracle.

On the other hand, the closer saints come to God, the more they understand the horror of sin and keenly perceive the need to be purified, and the more they desire to be purified; thus our saint writes: “I looked upon them (His pains) as a just punishment for my sins, which seemed to me so great that any torment imaginable would have been sweet to me to suffer to expiate them and satisfy divine justice for them” [8].

She also sought out suffering in order to overcome herself and all her repugnances, so as to become a perfectly docile instrument in the hands of the divine Master; it is with this aim that one day she performed the gesture that shocks us—it must be said—of cleaning up a sick person's vomit with her tongue. 

That said, this attitude remains a mystery, and one would have to be a saint himself to talk about it properly. Moreover, we should not try to demystify this desire for the Cross by blaming it on a personal imbalance [9], or simply on an outdated, dolorous way of seeing things.

This does not mean, however, that the saint of Paray is in every way imitable, and that sanctification can only be achieved through extraordinary penances. What remains true always and everywhere is that sanctity is inseparable from the Cross, and that the good Lord makes His friends pass through paths strewn with thorns.

The spirit of penance without which sanctification is impossible is that which makes us accept, offer, then gradually desire all the trials God is pleased to send. This spirit of interior penance presupposes a certain exterior mortification. It is on this last point that prudence has its part to play, and the intensity and number of these penances can vary—sometimes greatly—according to person, place, and time period [10].

Extraordinary penances remain, by definition, extraordinary, and must not be undertaken without a special motion from the Holy Spirit, and without the approval of the superior, confessor, or director of conscience.

Let us illustrate this assertion with an anecdote taken from the life of our saint: one day, as she was performing a penance of rule by giving herself discipline, Our Lord said to her: “Here is My share.” And as she continued beyond what the rule required, Jesus continued: “Here is the devil's.”

 

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[1] St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, Autobiographie [Autobiography], no. 7.
[2] Ibid. no. 16.
[3] More precisely, where the good Lord wanted her. During a preliminary visit to the monastery visiting room, she heard a voice say to her: “This is where I want you.”
[4] Autobiographie [Autobiography], no. 38.
[5] Ibid. no. 43.
[6] Ibid. no. 50.
[7] Ibid. no. 87.
[8] Ibid. no. 43.
[9] St. Margaret Mary was often called mad, first by Jansenists, then by 19th century rationalists. We shall not go into this question, and refer our readers to chapter IV of Fr. Ladame’s Les Faits de Paray-le-Monial [The Events of Paray]. Suffice it to say that, alongside some astonishing facts, her life, her writings, and the testimony of her Sisters demonstrate a profound balance and common sense worthy of a Charollais country girl!
[10] It is striking that the children of Fatima, who were to the Heart of Mary what St. Margaret Mary was to the Heart of Jesus, also practiced extraordinary penances. This shows that reparation cannot ignore suffering.