Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we commemorate St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, born in 1647, died in 1690.
She was the saint who received the apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who then contributed to propagating that devotion in what we could call its contemporary, its modern form that we know today.
One of the amazing things that St. Margaret Marie teaches us is that we can actually console the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Pius XI, much after St. Margaret Mary Alacoque died, Pius XI explains in one of his encyclicals how it is that we can actually, and really, not just metaphorically, but actually really console our Lord's Sacred Heart.
He says that because the Sacred Heart of Jesus is hypostatically united to His divinity, the human heart of Jesus is united to His divine nature, our Lord, even during His earthly life, could foresee not only all the offenses of mankind against Him, that's what caused Him great grief, and you see that especially in the Garden of Gethsemane, His grief by the fact that the fruits of the Redemption would be rejected, it seems, by the majority of mankind, but He also saw that some of mankind, at least, would respond and be faithful to grace, and this brought Him great consolation.
And you saw each and every one of those responses, of those faithful responses to grace, throughout His life in the Garden of Gethsemane as well.
So by being faithful to grace, by every single effort to be faithful to the graces we receive from our Lord, by every single effort to overcome sin and to practice virtue, by every single effort to do good and to avoid evil, we actually console the heart of our Lord, even during His earthly life.
And if we look at the Garden of Gethsemane, the angel sent to console our Lord presents to Him exactly that, all of our sincere efforts to love our Lord back, to respond to His love for us.
So everything that we do today, or that we fail to do, but let's focus on the positive, everything that we do today to console the heart of our Lord, He really foresaw during His earthly life, and it really lessened His sufferings, it really brought Him consolation.
Every single thing that we do today can console the sacred heart of our Lord, because He foresaw it all, and His suffering was really lessened by it.
I think that's great motivation, to try to not waste a single grace on this day.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.