The encounter at a glance
The Sacred Heart is the Heart of the incarnate Son: a real human heart inseparable from the person of Jesus Christ. The devotion contemplates the love with which he loved the Father and each human being, especially in his Passion and the Eucharist. Its roots are in the Gospel, not only in a seventeenth-century vision.
At the Visitation monastery in Paray-le-Monial, Margaret Mary Alacoque reported encounters with Jesus between 1673 and 1675. They gave a new urgency to an older Christian contemplation of the pierced side of the Saviour: love answering love, Communion, reparation and a feast in honour of his Heart.
The Church’s reception unfolded over time through pastoral discernment, liturgical approval and papal teaching. Pius XII’s Haurietis Aquas explains its doctrinal foundation. The familiar promises are devotional summaries of Margaret Mary’s writings, not a bargain that replaces repentance, charity or the sacraments.