In 2012, I stepped foot on Paray-le-Monial to visit the remains of Saint Margaret Mary. I also wanted to be in the place where the apparitions of the Sacred Heart took place. The event was recorded from December 1673 and June of 1675.

It definitely was a momentous moment in my faith journey life. I think of this place as I read the passages of Delexit nos today (199-124).

At the center of all these apparitions within the monastic walls is this message:

This is the heart that so loved human beings that it has spared nothing, even to emptying and consuming itself in order to show them its love.

We must consider these devotions in the life of the Church. We have to reflect on them in light of the Gospels and the Church’s tradition.

Margaret Mary spoke of the initial conversation with our loving Jesus. She records:

He asked for my heart, which I asked him to take, which he did and then placed myself in his own adorable heart, from which he made me see mine like a little atom consumed in the fiery furnace of his own.

Jesus asks each of us to give us his heart. It must be a place where he reigns for the heart is the center of our whole person. When we give our heart to Jesus it is consumed and reshaped in the furnace of love.

We meet the glorified and risen Lord in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. His wounds remain forever, yet are transposed in his glory.

While adoring Jesus in the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, she records what she saw:

Once, when the Blessed Sacrament was exposed, Jesus appeared, resplendent in glory, with his five wounds that appeared as so many suns blazing forth from his sacred humanity, but above all from his adorable breast, which seemed a fiery furnace. Opening his robe, he revealed his most loving and lovable heart, which was the living source of those flames. Then it was that I discovered the ineffable wonders of his pure love, with which he loves men to the utmost, yet receives from them only ingratitude and indifference.

In every visit we make with Jesus reserved or exposed in the Blessed Sacrament, he is truly there. All we must do is see with eyes of faith. Let us pray to see his glory as Margaret Mary saw him, radiating from his loving heart.

Let all our loves in life be rooted first in his love.