Discovering the heart of Jesus in the Eucharist

A few months after King James II and King Wiliam of Orange faced off each other on the banks of the river Boyne in July of 1690, a saintly French nun, St Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), the great apostle of the Sacred Heart, was approaching the end of her earthly pilgrimage. 

For her journey, the Eucharist was the privileged place of encounter with the loving Heart of Christ. It was while she was in prayer before the exposed Blessed Sacrament that she experienced in a special way the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  St Margaret Mary believed that Christ had entrusted her with the mission of spreading devotion to his Sacred Heart throughout the Church. Our Lord also inspired her to promote the practice of the ‘Holy Hour’ -  a period of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in union with Jesus' agony in Gethsemane. This practice remains one of the most important forms of Eucharistic devotion in the Church after the Mass.

Through Eucharistic adoration, Holy Communion, the Holy Hour and the First Friday devotion, she taught that the Eucharist is both the sacrament of Christ's presence and a wonderful and central manifestation of the love revealed in his Sacred Heart.