The Sisters Of the Visitation of Tyringham

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MIRACLES FROM THE HEART OF CHRIST

by Sister Judith Clare

November 2007

Dear Friends of the Heart of Christ,

It is the month of November and as you know the Church asks us to remember and to pray for the souls of those who have gone before us. Life passes quickly and so many of our loved ones are now on the other side of eternity. Because the Lord created each of us with an immortal soul, we believe a Catholics and as Christians that when we die, when our earthly life in the flesh is over, our souls will continue to live in the spiritual realm. So we want to remember and assist with our prayers all those souls who are still being purified in purgatory and to honor all those souls who are in heavenly paradise.

As I was ruminating about this, an image came to my mind of our choir (the nuns' portion of the church) in our Wilmington Monastery and a common occurrence that I witnessed there regarding our lay retreatants. On our choir walls were numerous large ornate reliquaries, assembled and crafted by one of our now deceased sisters, containing fragments of bones of saints of the Church. Some of these were quite large, and I recall how retreatants would stand in silent awe before one very big reliquary containing a very large leg bone-femur size-of one of God's holy ones. Living there constantly the sisters took such things almost for granted, but newcomers were invariably moved and I would venture to say "stopped in their tracks" by the rare sight of these holy relics.

We know that throughout generations, the Church has always esteemed the mortal remains of saintly souls. Some of you may have had the privilege of making a pilgrimage to a shrine that has a relic of a saint as the Shrine of Divine Mercy with its relic of St. Faustina or the Basilica of St. Anne de Beaupre in Canada that has a relic of the arm bone of St. Anne given to it by a Pope. Such relics are spiritual treasures and God honors these saints by working miracles of healing and conversion through them, ultimately to bless our faith and hope in God.

Historically, as some of you might know, many churches and monasteries vied with one another for the possession of important relics. This had material as well as spiritual advantages. Securing a relic of a prominent or much revered "saint" meant that the church or monastery became a place of pilgrimage. With the presence of pilgrims, there would be greater importance attached to the place and financial assistance to help in the maintenance of the buildings and the care of the inhabitants. As I was recently reading one of the entries of a medieval saint from Butler's Lives of the Saints (which I read daily), I was struck by this account:

It was of St. Ethelnoth of Canterbury, a monk and later archbishop of Canterbury who lived in the 11th century in England. The English ruler at the time was King Cnut (1016-35) and a close friend of Ethelnoth. Butler's describes in the saint's account how Ethelnoth and King Cnut took part in "some holy-body snatching, a disreputable but common enough practice at the time to enable churches and monasteries to build up their collections of important relics' With the King's full approval, Ethelnoth delegated some accomplice monks to remove the body of St. Alphege, a former archbishop of Canterbury, from St. Paul's in London. Two Canterbury monks broke into the tomb, and using an iron candlestick as a crowbar, pried open the sarcophagus. We are told that the remains were then "carried on a plank covered by a cloth stolen from the high altar." This story was related by one of the monks who was involved so it is considered an authentic account. Ethelnoth eventually talked the King into paying for an elaborate shrine to be built at Canterbury to St. Alphege. Therefore, today I would like to share with you some little known history (at least for the average person) of the relics of the three most significant persons of the Visitation Order-St. Francis de Sales, St. Jane de Chantal and St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. And more emphatically, I would like to concentrate on their holy hearts, which so loved and sacrificed for the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Saint Francis de Sales

Why would anyone want to venerate the mortal remains of a "holy person?" It is because when we pay honor to that person who gave their entire life to the Lord, we pay homage to the Lord through him or her. God desires to share his riches and divine life with us in this way. So it is when we venerate a relic such as the heart of St. Francis de Sales-which is preserved in our monastery of Treviso, Italy-we really honor the Heart of Christ. St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), the bishop of Geneva and founder of the Visitation Order in 1610 was above all a true model of the Christian life. Although he was sometimes overwhelmed by the business of his Episcopal office, he always preferred to engage in the spiritual direction and corporal works of mercy of his flock. Here was a man full of love and compassion for others who was not unwilling to sacrifice his own comfort and prestige when it was a matter of helping his people.

How is it that nearly 400 years after the death of St. Francis de Sales, we can see the very heart of a man who loved the Sacred Heart of Jesus so intensely? It came about like this: The day before Francis died at age 56 of a cerebral thrombosis (a blood clot in his brain), he was at the Visitation Monastery of Bellecour in Lyons, France. Already sick, he had celebrated Mass and heard the confession of Mother Marie Aimee de BIonay, one of his favorite daughters in whom he had perceived great virtues. As he turned to say good-bye he uttered these parting words, "Farewell, my daughter, I leave you my spirit and my heart." How prophetic these words turned out to be! The next day, December 28,1622, Francis died at the little gardener's cottage at this monastery. When the time came to embalm his body. Mother de BIonay recalled the words Francis had spoken to her. For this reason the surgeons removed the holy bishop's heart giving it to the Lyons community as a precious treasure. The annals of the monastery describe how the nuns then processed with Francis' heart on a silver platter to the church where it remained for three days-bright red in color and emitting a supernaturally sweet odor. Afterward the sisters covered the heart with aromatic powders and sewed it into a waterproof cloth bag. This was placed in a small lead casket and put on the altar in their choir. Fearing that the heart would eventually decay, the sisters thought it would be a good thing to try to dry it out a little and on several occasions placed it in the sun.

Although the heart did shrink somewhat, it never lost its sweet smell and color or its liquid secretions. Remember the heart of St. Francis de Sales was never embalmed! God willed that this heart of his faithful servant should be glorified with outstanding miracles. In September 1630, the King of France, Louis XIII who was seriously ill with pleurisy kissed the heart reliquary with faith and veneration and was instantly healed. Chronicles of the Visitation community tell of the various miracles where the sick were healed after drinking a glass of water stored in the reliquary where the heart of St. Francis de Sales was originally kept. Down through the years, veneration of this holy heart has wrought untold miracles of healings and spiritual conversions. Significantly, it was from this Monastery of Lyons that the famous Visitation Monastery in Paray-le-Monial was founded in 1626. It was here at Paray where St. Margaret Mary received her revelations of the Sacred Heart that were to contribute so greatly to our modern devotion of the Heart of Jesus in the Church. One would think that having possession of such a precious relic would exempt the Visitandines of the Lyons Monastery from the many trials that life presents. But alas, this was not so, for to embrace the Sacred Heart is to embrace the cross! Because of the vicissitudes of the times, especially the French Revolution and the oppressive measures and changed perspectives of governments, trials galore descended on the Lyons community. Between 1793 and 1913, nearly 120 years, the community had spent time in France, Italy, Austria, Bohemia and finally and presently in Treviso, Italy. Through it all, the sisters remained faithful, sustained in all their hardships by the heart of St. Francis de Sales and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Saint Jane de Chantal

In December, 1641, in the town of Moulins, France, the foundress of the Visitation Order St. Jane de Chantal died of pneumonia. Jane was not only a religious, but the mother of four children and knew the ups and downs of raising them as well as the human frailties of consecrated souls. When she died, her sisters and the greater lay communities of France and Savoy already revered her as a saint. So it was not surprising that her relics would be enshrined and eventually venerated. Her heart is preserved at our Moulins Monastery in France. It was originally put in a small tabernacle of the altarpiece in the room where she died. For a long time the sisters noticed with dismay that the relic was very dark in color and had started to dry up and become flattened, losing its natural heart shape and decreasing in size. On December 13,1789, the anniversary of her death, the confessor of the nuns suggested that they honor their foundress' relic with special acts of homage for the preservation of their Order and for the Church and their country. It was the eve of t he French Revolution and the reign of terror. The relic was placed on the superior's choir seat and wreathed with garlands with two candles flanking it. There the sisters remained in ardent prayer. One of them, we are told, complained lovingly to our saint that she was not happy with the changes in the relic of her heart. At Mass time, the reliquary was put on the altar and then brought back. Later in the day after vespers the superior noticed that the heart looked different but spoke of it to no one. After evening prayer the relic was returned to its original oratory and the superior invited the nuns to examine it more closely. Not one sister failed to see the difference and all were filled with wonder over the miraculous change. The heart was now enlarged and regularly formed, with fresh color. Physicians attested to these effects that they themselves said could not be explained in a natural way. These endure to this day.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque

Perhaps one of the greatest devotees of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that has ever lived is our Visitation Sister and Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. When she entered the Visitation Monastery at Paray-le-Monial (France) in 1671, at age 24, she had already experienced God's mystical favors and their accompanying crosses that purify his closest friends. Her great revelations, those that contained God's messages to the world and have a bearing on the Church, took place from 1673-5. It is interesting to note that when St. Francis de Sales founded the Visitation Order in 1622.-2'S'years before Margaret Mary was born-he wrote that "the congregation is the work of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary," and he gave the Order the coat-of-arms of a pierced heart topped by a fiery cross, surrounded by a crown of thorns. Speaking to his Visitation daughters he wrote, "How happy I should be, if one day after Holy Communion, I found my weak and wretched heart outside my breast and in its place the precious Heart of My Savior!" How astounding it is to see the realization of this profound desire come true in the life of St. Margaret Mary. We can read in her own autobiography how the Sacred Heart took Margaret Mary's heart and placed it into his own Heart and then put it back again all transformed and shining into the saint's breast.

Such spectacular favors to Margaret Mary cost her dearly, however. During the nineteen years she spent at the Visitation of Paray, she experienced "an uninterrupted series of physical and moral trials" that were to purify her and to act as expiation for the luke-warmness of her sisters in community and for the souls in purgatory.

When St. Margaret Mary died in 1690, her great revelations of love from the Sacred Heart were little known. Although there was an instinctive response by the town's people that a saint had died, Margaret Mary was buried intact under the choir floor of the Visitation church, near the spot where she was kneeling when the Sacred Heart of Jesus appeared to her. Although her process of beatification was begun in 1715 (25 years after her death), the acts of the process were sleeping in the Episcopal archives of Autun and not sent to Rome until 1820. Since there was no approbation by the Vatican, Margaret Mary's name could not be used in public prayers, and her body rested, without other glory than the faithful remembrance of her Sisters, under the choir slab. One hundred years had flown since her death and nothing was changed in her regard. The French Revolution drove the nuns from their monastery in 1792 and their building was sold as national property. Finally in 1823, the bishop raised enough money to buy back the Visitation Monastery of Raray and gave it again to the nuns. What a miracle to be back in their old abode! With renewed vigor, the sisters turned to resume the cause of beatification of their dear Sister Margaret Mary Alacoque. Official examination of her earthly remains revealed that despite the decomposition of most of her body, her head and heart had stayed amazingly preserved. After nearly 150 years, these relics are reserved in a magnificent reliquary in our monastery of Paray.

These are the stories of three miraculous hearts that have survived the passing of time and still speak to us today. For a large portion of our world which has become so rationalistic and which does not believe anymore in the Divine, that no longer believes in miracles or even that God exists- such stories are meaningless. But for those who "see," the divine preservation of these hearts is a supernatural gift from the Sacred Heart to us, teaching us how to be humble before God and kind to our neighbors.

In venerating the relics of these hearts (whether we do it physically by actually being there or if we do it spiritually in our own minds and hearts), we can contemplate the love of Christ's Heart. This has some surprising repercussions.

One: It makes it possible to regenerate Christian life in families. When we begin to set our sights on really loving God, we must come closer to Him. We must look at Him and listen to Him say to each of us, "Come to Me." We do not do this by being all stiff before God, keeping a safe distance in case God asks something we do not want to give. But we try to be open and supple before God, having a simple heart, a pure heart, not one that has malicious, suspicious thoughts. The Sacred Heart wants our total surrender to Him then God will bless your children and give you the joy of knowing he is with you in all that befalls you.

Moreover, God knows that we are not all alike. So do not get discouraged thinking that you cannot give as much as others because of your work, your children and your family commitments. The secret is being at peace and doing whatever you can. As long as you do sincerely what you have to do, then you can leave the rest to Jesus. This means the maximum of your self-giving.

Second: New religious fervor and vocations will be generated. During her annual retreat of October 27-November 6, 1672, St. Margaret Mary received new understanding about the meaning of her vocation-her love of the Sacred Heart was to be closely associated with Christ's suffering in his Passion. He said to her, "Remember, that you want to espouse a crucified Lord. Here is the wound in my side, make your temporal and eternal dwelling place therein."

To progress spiritually, to be more responsive and faithful in following Jesus, we must learn to leave God free to shatter all the impurities and imperfections that he finds within us. Under the action of His Divine Fire, becoming like other Margaret Mary's, every little impurity inside us will be singed by God's purity and annihilated so that His Light will glow within us and His Spirit will flow in our spirit like a river. If one really wants to become a vessel for God to work in, one must prepare oneself to go through the Divine Fire. This is purification and it makes one transparent with God's love. Witnessing this spirit in one who is filled with God, inspires others to give themselves more completely too. Reflecting on all that has been said, we can begin to sense the larger dimension of our individual lives. Within our reach there is a world totally unlike that which we usually occupy. It beckons to each of us. It is the heaven of the present moment that contains the seeds of our eternal existence. God, who is always waiting for a chance to get our attention, is hidden in these pockets of time. Relics of God's friends remind us of that and point us to places beyond our mundane activities, to spend a little bit more time concentrating on where we are really going. When the saintly Bishop and Blessed Andrea Giacinto Longhin invited the Visitation Sisters to come to the Treviso diocese, he wrote to say, "I hope that the blessed heart of St. Francis de Sales brings us that spirit of charity and of true piety that we sadly have such need of today." To all of us these same sentiments can be addressed. When we have cultivated hearts that love like the hearts of St. Francis de Sales or St. Jane de Chantal or St. Margaret Mary-we become vessels of charity filled with the vivifying liquid of love from Christ's Heart. This is what the world, whether inside or outside the cloister, desperately needs. May our holy friends, the saints, obtain for us some of this spirit.