From 1673 to 1675 Jesus appeared to a French nun, a member of the Visitation Order that was founded in 1610. We are concluding the 350th anniversary celebrations of those apparitions with the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, a feast that Jesus Himself requested.
St. Margaret Mary, to whom Jesus appeared, said that in the last of Jesus’s appearances He told her of the sorrow He feels because of the way people treated Him in the Blessed Sacrament. He said: “There it is, that Heart so deeply in love with men, it spared no means of proof—wearing itself out until it was utterly spent! This meets with scant appreciation from most of them; all I get back is ingratitude—witness their irreverence, their sacrileges, their coldness and contempt for me in this Sacrament of Love.”
He requested a feast of reparation by which people would make amends for their ingratitude. He said: “That is why I am asking you to have the Friday after … Corpus Christi set apart as a special feast in honor of my Heart—a day on which to receive me in Holy Communion and make a solemn act of reparation for the indignities I have received in the Blessed Sacrament….”
The Church is always careful with “private revelations” like this and so it took a while for the request to be approved and a feast to be celebrated. Initially, individual dioceses celebrated a feast until 1765 when the bishops of Poland requested permission to celebrate it throughout their country. After that, one after another diocese and nation asked for and receive permission until 1856 when Pope Blessed Pius IX placed a feast in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the universal calendar of the Church.
Notice how closely connected this feast is to that of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. This makes total sense. Jesus always appeared to St. Margaret Mary as she was adoring Him in the Blessed Sacrament. It was as though He wanted to emphasize the presence of His Sacred Heart in the Holy Eucharist. We believe that Jesus is present, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the Eucharist, and that includes His Heart. When he announced the Year of the Eucharist in 2004, Pope St. John Paul II wrote the following: “The presence of Jesus in the tabernacle must be a kind of magnetic pole attracting an ever greater number of souls enamored of Him, ready to wait patiently to hear His voice and, as it were, to sense the beating of His Heart.”
When we spend time in Eucharistic Adoration, we have a heart-to-Heart encounter with Jesus. And when we receive Holy Communion, He unites His Heart with ours in order to make our hearts more like His. Jesus, meek and humble of Heart, make my heart like unto Thine!