Life of Saint Margaret Mary

The First Friday Communions, the Holy Hour, the Feast of the Sacred Heart: all of them go back to a humble nun in a small French convent, and to what Our Lord asked of her there.

Margaret Mary Alacoque was born in Burgundy in 1647. As a little girl, kneeling on her bare knees at Mass, she vowed her purity to God at the Consecration. Then came four years of illness, and years of harsh treatment from the relatives who had taken over her family’s home. She went through a season of company, fine dress and amusements that she later counted among her great sins. At night, after she had laid aside her worldly clothes, she would see Our Lord covered with blood as after His scourging, and hear Him tell her that her vanities had brought Him to that state.

At twenty-three she entered the Visitation convent at Paray-le-Monial. There, between 1673 and 1675, Our Lord showed her His Sacred Heart. He asked for Communion on the First Friday of every month, an hour of prayer every Thursday night in atonement, and a feast in honour of His Heart. Many of her own sisters thought she was deceived by the devil. Some even threw holy water on her to drive the evil spirit away. Years later, the same community knelt around her as a saint.

Fr. Barry lets the Saint speak for herself, quoting her own Memoir and letters on nearly every page. You read, in her words, how she struggled for three days to obey her novice mistress over eating cheese, which she could not bear, until she said, “I must either conquer or die.” Small, hidden victories like that one are where her great graces were won. The book follows her through her holy death in 1690 and the spread of the devotion, and closes with two prayers she composed herself.

Pope Pius IX, quoted in the book’s preface, said: “The only hope of the Church and of society is in the Sacred Heart, for there we shall find a remedy for all our afflictions. Spread this devotion everywhere; it will save the world.” If you make the First Fridays, keep a Holy Hour, or have the Sacred Heart in your home, this is the story behind it all.

“My Lord, if I had a thousand bodies, a thousand loves, a thousand lives, I would willingly sacrifice them all in Thy service.”
— St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fr. Albert Barry, C.SS.R., was an Irish Redemptorist, a son of St. Alphonsus Liguori, whose congregation was founded to preach to the poorest and most abandoned souls. Besides this life, he wrote Lives of Irish Saints, on the holy men and women of his own country. He wrote this book in 1889, when the Church still called her Blessed Margaret Mary. Ten years later, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the whole human race to the Sacred Heart, and in 1920 Pope Benedict XV raised Margaret Mary to the altars as a saint.

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A paperback of 145 pages, 5½ × 8½ inches,
newly typeset from the 1889 Burns & Oates edition.