Today is Oct. 16, optional memorial of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, virgin.
In the Gospel for today’s Mass, Jesus exclaims: “Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint and of rue and of every garden herb, but you pay no attention to judgment and to love for God. These you should have done, without overlooking the others.”
In a special issue of Our Sunday Visitor magazine, prepared for the National Eucharistic Congress, my friend Paula Umaña tells a story of going to visit a traveling relic of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Paula wasn’t especially enthusiastic about her husband’s idea to go venerate the relic, but she went anyway.
It was a good thing she did. She received a special message from the priest accompanying the saint’s relics. He told her, “You are very important to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.” The message, Paula says, “was very much in the style of this little visionary of the Sacred
Heart, who was shy, quiet and obedient, but direct when doing God’s will.”
What could transform St. Margaret Mary to make her such a saint? What was the secret of her holiness?
When Jesus revealed the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary in a dream, he took her heart from her side, and put it into his fiery heart, which blazed like a furnace. Then he placed her heart back in her side, saying: “There, My well-beloved, is a pledge of My love. I have shut into your side a little spark from the living flames of My love.”
Love for God was the center and depth of St. Margaret Mary’s devotion. She would convert souls through this exchange of love. Only love for God could do the impossible. Only the Lord’s boundless love for humanity could win over the hearts of men.
Prayer invoking the intercession of St. Margaret Mary:
Pour out on us, we pray, O lord, the spirit with which you so remarkably endowed Saint Margaret Mary, so that we may come to know that love of Christ which surpasses all understanding and be utterly filled with your fullness. Through our lord Jesus Christ, your son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
My Daily Visitor spiritual reflections are a dose of daily Catholic inspiration from Our Sunday Visitor magazine.
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