Dedication of June to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.This dedication has its origin in the appearances of Christ made to St. Mary Margaret Alacoque, a French religious sister.
After joining the Visitation Convent at Paray-le-Monial in 1671, she began in 1673 to receive visions revealing the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She was rebuffed by her superior and by theologians for a time, about the validity of the visions, but remained humble, obedient, and charitable to those who persecuted her until the truth of the mission given to her by Our Lord convinced those who opposed her.The task given her by Christ, who called her the Beloved Disciple of the Sacred Heart, was to teach and encourage devotion to His Sacred Heart. It was based on this Christly inspiration that St. Margaret Mary was moved to establish the Holy Hour and Sacred Heart Devotion in the modern form. Prior to this time, there was a devotion to the love of Jesus and to the wounded Heart of Christ, but not established as the devotion is today. The practice encouraged by the saintly woman, at the guidance of Christ, included the Holy Hour on Thursdays, to share in the mortal sadness He endured when abandoned by His Apostles in His Agony, and to receive Holy Communion on the first Friday of every month. Additionally, He appointed through St. Margaret Mary for the Friday after the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi to be the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart.Margaret Mary was canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV and then in 1928, Pope Pius X reiterated in his encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor the value of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart.
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