Sacred Heart

While devotions to the wounded heart of Jesus began as early as the eleventh century, it was Sister Margaret Mary in the 1670’s who began to have apparitions of Jesus. Through the apparitions, Jesus told Margaret Mary that she had been chosen to make His love and His goodness known all. In 1674, Margaret Mary reported that Jesus requested to be honored under the figure of His Heart of Flesh and asked that the faithful receive Him in the Eucharist frequently. In her final reported apparition, known as the “great apparition” in 1675, Jesus asked that the Feast of Sacred Heart be celebrated each year on the Friday following Corpus Christi.

On May 8, 1873, after careful review of the private apparitions, the devotion to the Sacred Heart was approved by Pope Pi us IX.