St. Margaret Mary Alacoque: Her Life and Missions (3)

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. This is the third article in this series.

Fr. Claude La Colombière

The figure of Fr. La Colombière is inseparable from that of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. They first met between the second and third great apparitions. Obeying her superior in every way, our saint faithfully reported the apparitions to him. Mother de Saumaise was doubtful and had Margaret questioned by “men of doctrine.”

They misjudged her, mistook her for a visionary, and, to bring her back down to earth, recommended “that she be given soup”! She submitted with deep humility to this advice, but was painfully torn, and tried in vain to escape the solicitations of grace, fearing being the devil's plaything.

Then she received this consoling promise from heaven: “I will send you My faithful servant and true friend, who will teach you to know Me and to abandon yourself to Me.” Shortly afterward, the community was introduced to a new confessor, Claude La Colombière, a young Jesuit recently appointed to Paray-le-Monial. He had been sent there to judge the authenticity of the apparitions.

His competence had been noticed early on by his superiors. His Novice Master had assessed him as follows: “Remarkable talent; rare judgment; complete prudence; fairly extensive experience; he began his studies well [...]; fit for any ministry.” During the interview between Fr. La Colombière and the community, Margaret heard a voice announce to her: “This is the one I am sending you.”

It was indeed he who reassured her and confirmed the divine origin of the apparitions. As he was also trusted by Mother de Saumaise, his opinion convinced her.

Fr. La Colombière did not stay long at Paray: arriving in early 1675, he left for England in October 1676. He came a second time, briefly, on his return between 1678 and 1679. He finally returned and died in 1682, at 41 years old. This fairly short time that he spent with Sister Margaret Mary did not prevent a very close union from developing between the two souls.

As Fr. La Colombière celebrated Mass at the Visitation, Margaret saw the Sacred Heart “like a blazing furnace, and two other hearts [hers and the celebrant’s] that were about to unite to it and be consumed by it”; Jesus then told her: “This is how My pure love unites these three hearts forever.”

Indeed, the Jesuit's role was not only to enlighten the Visitandine, but also to spread the message of the Sacred Heart. For her part, Margaret gave him a number of precious counsels from Our Lord.

For the Salvation of Her Community—First Special Mission

When Margaret arrived at the Visitation Monastery in Paray-le-Monial, the community was far from exemplary, despite the fervor of some nuns. It seems that the mistrust of extraordinary ways handed down to the Visitandines by their holy founders had more or less turned into a mistrust of holiness. If the letter of the constitutions was more or less observed, the spirit was lacking. This short-sightedness about the religious ideal was compounded by pride and a lack of charity.

Did Our Lord want to use Margaret to restore the community to its original fervor? Let us turn to the account of the Contemporaines [Contemporaries], written by some of Margaret Mary's sisters: the following page is particularly rich. We read in it of the need for fraternal charity, the necessity of sacrifice for the salvation of souls, and the importance of devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

“At evening prayer, she asked Him to tell her how she could satisfy her desire to love Him. He showed her that she could not better give proof of her love for Him than by loving her neighbor for love of Him; that she should strive to procure their salvation and that of her sisters, even though she was the most wretched of all; that she should forget her own interests for theirs in everything she could do.

“And, not knowing what this meant, Our Lord made it known to her that it was the restoration of charity in hearts that He was asking for; since by the failings they were making, they had separated themselves from Him, who was Charity itself. And through all these faults, religious and worldly people were not afraid of wounding charity, that divine virtue, which originates in the Heart of God Himself.

“‘Also,’ He said to her, ‘it is these half-rotten members ready to be cut off that cause Me such great pain, and who would already have received their chastisements were it not for the devotion they have to My holy Mother, who appeases My irritated justice, which can only be done by the sacrifice of a victim.’

“I was so deeply moved by this, that I would have accepted any kind of torments, even the pains of purgatory until the day of judgment, to make satisfaction to His goodness. ‘But, my God, let me know,’ she told him, ‘what has irritated Your justice.’ He told her that they were faults hidden from the eyes of creatures and which could not be hidden from His own.

“He then told her that he was very pleased with the care and work the superiors were undertaking for the restoration of charity in their community, which would not go unrewarded. But if they did not correct themselves, that His mercy would withdraw to allow His justice to act. Because it was this virtue that made the character and that was the true spirit of the daughters of St. Francis de Sales. [1]”

The return to the fervor of the monastery of Paray-le-Monial was to come about in three ways: through Sister Alacoque's repeated sacrifices—particularly on one specific occasion—through public remonstrance, and through the establishment of the devotion to the Sacred Heart.

On several occasions, Our Lord showed Margaret the souls in the community whom He was about to reject, so that she could sacrifice herself and pray for them. As in the past for Moses with the Hebrew people, God wanted to arouse in the heart of our saint prayer of intercession that would merit the grace of conversion for lukewarm souls.

The great sacrifice Margaret had to make was a public remonstrance to her sisters. On November 20, 1677, the eve of the feast of the Presentation of Mary, after Margaret had been resisting Christ's request to offer herself as a sacrifice for some time, He asked her, with the agreement of her superior, to declare to all her sisters that she was offering herself as a victim for their salvation.

The reaction of the lukewarm sisters, targeted by the declaration, was swift. They treated Margaret as mad and possessed, and throughout the night trailed her around the monastery, pursuing her with their insults and mockeries. At the same time, her soul felt interiorly a portion of the punishment due to sinners, like Christ in His agony and Passion.

She would say of this ordeal that it was in no way comparable to what she had suffered before and since—which is a quite striking statement. The next morning, the community was still not converted, but Margaret had earned the graces that would bring about the awaited transformation.

“This night was spent in the torments that God knows and without rest, until about holy Mass, when it seemed to me that I heard these words: ‘At last peace is made, and My holiness of justice is satisfied by the sacrifice you have made to Me [2].’”

The actual conversion of the community would take place when devotion to the Sacred Heart was officially adopted at the monastery in 1686—we will see under what circumstances. From then on, the nuns were fervent, faithful to their rule, and united by fraternal charity.

And so the promise of the Sacred Heart saw its first fulfillment, according to which “it would spread this sweet unction of its charity in all the religious communities where it would be honored, and which would place themselves under its particular protection; that it would hold all hearts united, so as to make them one with it, and that it would divert the strokes of divine justice, restoring them to grace when they fell from it. [3]”

Helping the Souls in Purgatory—Second Special Mission

St. Margaret Mary was also often called upon from the beyond to relieve the suffering souls. She frequently had revelations about the state of the souls of the departed (whether they were in Heaven or Purgatory, but not about the damned).

After Fr. La Colombière's death, she told her superior that there was no need to pray for him, because, she said, “he is in a position to pray to God for us, being well placed in heaven, by the goodness and mercy of the Sacred Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ. Only, to satisfy some negligence that had remained in him in the exercise of divine love, his soul was deprived of seeing God from the moment he left his body until the moment he was laid in the tomb. [4]”

Souls in Purgatory regularly asked her for certain prayers, practices, or penances for a specific period of time, to obtain their deliverance, like this nun requesting Masses and the offering of Margaret's deeds for six months.

Sometimes, the saint would pass on these messages to others, inviting them to join in her intercession. One day, a deceased woman asked that her husband be informed of her state so that he might pray for her, and to warn her of two secret things concerning justice and her salvation.

These visions manifest the terrible sufferings of souls in Purgatory, and the infidelities that cause them. One day, a deceased Benedictine monk from the monastery of Paray appeared to her all ablaze and asked of her the offering of all her deeds for three months. Why was he in this situation?

Because of an excessive attachment to his reputation that led him to neglect God's interests, a lack of charity toward his brothers, and an excessive attachment to certain people that manifested itself during spiritual conversations.

As for the aforementioned nun, she was lying on a bed of flames as punishment for her laziness and negligence in the service of God. Iron combs tore at her heart to atone for her insubordination. Her mouth was ulcerated, her tongue devoured by vermin, to punish her for words against charity and breaches of silence.

Messenger to the King—Third Special Mission

Before turning to the question of the message of the Sacred Heart to the King of France, let us recall an episode in St. Margaret Mary’s life connected with the sovereign Louis XIV. One day, she was sent by her superior, who at that time was Mother Greyfié, to “hold the king's place” before the Blessed Sacrament—that is to say, to pray on his behalf.

Although Margaret had never been tempted against purity, for several hours she found herself assailed by despicable thoughts. The ordeal ended when the superior called her back. This was obviously linked to the king's morals, and it is safe to assume that one of the reasons for his conversion at the end of his life was the attack suffered by the confidante of the Sacred Heart.

In several of her letters, Margaret Mary speaks of express requests for the King of France. In June 1689, she reported to Mother de Saumaise the words of Our Lord:

“Let the eldest son of My Sacred Heart know that, as his temporal birth was obtained through devotion to the merits of My Holy Childhood, so he will obtain his birth of grace and eternal glory through the consecration he will make of himself to My adorable Heart, which wishes to triumph over his own, and, through his mediation, over that of the great of the earth.

“It wants to reign in his palace, to be painted in his standards and engraved on his weapons, to make them victorious over all his enemies, by bringing down at his feet these proud and superb heads, to make him triumphant over all the enemies of the holy Church. [5]”

Two months later, she wrote again: “The Eternal Father, wishing to repair the bitterness and anguish which the adorable Heart of His divine Son has felt in the house of the princes of the earth, amid the humiliations and outrages of His Passion, wishes to establish His empire in the Court of our great monarch, whom he wishes to use for the execution of this design which He desires to be accomplished in this way:

“Which is to have a building made where the picture of this divine Heart would be to receive the consecration and homage of the king and the whole Court. [...]

“Happy, then, will he be, if he comes to like this devotion, which will establish for him an eternal reign of honor and glory in this Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who will take care to elevate him and make him great in heaven before God His Father, as much as this monarch will take care to raise up before men the opprobrium and annihilation that this divine Heart has suffered there, which will be by restoring and procuring for it the honors, love, and glory He expects from them. [6]”

We will not quote other texts where Margaret says, in substance, the same thing. It therefore appears that the Sacred Heart had asked of Louis XIV public worship in its honor, by the consecration of his person and his Court, by the construction of a Church dedicated to it, and by its representation on the royal coat of arms [7]. None of these requests were ever acted upon. Were they relayed to him? Did the king not listen to them? These questions cannot be answered.

What seems important to note—beyond the materiality of these requests, which should perhaps not be made universal—is the social and even political (in the noble sense of the term) aspect of devotion to the Sacred Heart. Christ is King, and His Kingship must be honored all the more for having been scorned.

In this sense, it is not only a matter of a message from little Sister Alacoque to King Louis XIV but from the Heart of Jesus to all rulers; the mission in question is not only particular but takes on a universal dimension.

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[1] Contemporaines [Contemporaries], no. 68.
[2] Autobiographie [Autobiography], no. 74.
[3] Lettre 131, au Père Croiset [Letter 131, to Father Croiset].
[4] Contemporaines [Contemporaries], no. 162.
[5] Lettre 100, à la mère de Saumaise [Letter 100, to Mother de Saumaise]—June 1689.
[6] Lettre 107, à la mère de Saumaise [Letter 107, to Mother de Saumaise]—August 1689.
[7] Which was not the national flag, for the simple reason that it did not exist at the time.