Shrine celebrates 350 years since Jesus showed his heart to French nun as symbol of love

PARIS (OSV News) -- Over four days, from June 26 to 29, the French Shrine of the Sacred Heart of Paray-le-Monial was concluding celebrations of the 350th anniversary of the apparitions of Jesus to French Visitation religious sister, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, showing his heart to her.

Begun Dec. 27, 2023, the jubilee has led to a sharp increase in the number of visitors to the shrine, located in the historic region of Burgundy, southeast of Paris. Cardinal François-Xavier Bustillo of Ajaccio, Corsica, is the papal envoy for the celebrations.

The main apparitions of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary took place in Paray-le-Monial, between the end of December 1673 and June 1675. The future saint recounted in her writings how Jesus appeared to her, presenting his heart as a symbol of the love with which he took on human nature and gave himself up for mankind. The Visitation nun made known his request for a feast day to be celebrated in honor of the Sacred Heart, in reparation for the offenses committed against the Blessed Sacrament.

Officially recognized by the pope in 1765, the feast of the Sacred Heart, celebrated on the third Friday after Pentecost, was extended to the universal church by Pope Pius IX in 1856.

"This devotion to the Sacred Heart existed before the apparitions to St. Margaret Mary," Father Etienne Kern, rector of the shrine, told OSV News. "But following the apparitions at Paray-le-Monial, it took on great importance and became deeply popular."

Today, the Sanctuary of Paray-le-Monial is a renowned place of pilgrimage. It has gained notoriety since 1986, when its promotion as a site for apostolic activities was entrusted to the lay-led Emmanuel Community, founded in 1972. It has become the heart of the community.

Tens of thousands of pilgrims come there every year. Summer sessions organized by the Emmanuel Community attract large crowds, especially families.

For Father Kern, who is himself a priest of the Emmanuel Community, the heart of Jesus' message at Paray-le-Monial is "Jesus' request for a response of love to his love."

"Jesus reminded Margaret Mary of his love for mankind at a time when God was often perceived as distant," he noted. "In France, everyone went to Mass at that time, but many people were somewhat indifferent to what went on there. There was something painful in Jesus' message, like a complaint about people's ingratitude and indifference towards the Eucharist."

For Father Kern, this jubilee was closely linked to the late Pope Francis' last encyclical, "Dilexit Nos," subtitled "On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ," published in October 2024.

"This magnificent text is focused on the heart of Christ and deserves to be studied in depth," he said. "It showed how Jesus' love is an intimate experience of unity and inner peace, but with a missionary dimension, because the Lord wants to spread his love throughout the world through us."

For the past year and a half, pilgrimages and celebrations have been taking place in Paray-le-Monial, all focused on the theme "to return love for love." Father Kern highlighted the recent "jubilee for singles," which took place May 16-18 and brought together 700 single people. "This was the first time that the Church in France organized an event of this magnitude especially for them," he said.

"In total, nearly a thousand groups of all kinds came for the occasion, including parishes, religious communities and abbeys, pilgrims from Spain, Latin America, Poland and Africa," Father Kern said. "They were very diverse in their sensibilities," he added, referring to the devotion to the Heart of Jesus of the Jesuit communities as well as that of groups attached to the Tridentine liturgy.

The jubilee was also an opportunity for the Shrine of Paray-le-Monial to strengthen ties with other sanctuaries linked to the Sacred Heart, such as the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Krakow, Poland, and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Valladolid, Spain.

The Burgundy shrine is especially close to the famed Sacré-Coeur of the Parisian Montmartre hill, which this year celebrates the 150th anniversary of the laying of its foundation stone, on June 16, 1875, at the top of Montmartre hill. Since then, perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has taken place there. "In France, the 19th century was marked by the Sacred Heart," he explained. "Paray-le-Monial was its source. But Montmartre is its throne."

As part of the jubilee, the Shrine of Paray-le-Monial also organized an international theological and pastoral conference in Rome May 1-5, 2024. It was focused on how to live today the requests for "reparation" made by Jesus to Margaret Mary in the 17th century, in the context of the abuse crisis in the church in recent years.

"Many of our contemporaries are suffering from pain, wounds of life, and also great confusion in the face of abuse," Father Kern said. "In Paray-le-Monial, Jesus complained to Margaret Mary about the offenses against love committed by those who are consecrated to him. This message is very powerful today. The ancient and somewhat forgotten concept of 'reparation' takes on its full meaning in this context and can give us a new inner drive to move forward."

"In Paray-le-Monial, we can enter into this suffering of the Heart of Jesus, with everything that is going through our hearts about the abuses: shame, anger, discouragement," Father Kern concluded. "It is a place where you can come and lay down your sufferings and wounds, and find peace of heart. There is a grace of rest, healing and consolation here."