The Call of the Heart
🔥 “The Call of the Heart”. A Meditation Inspired by Saint Marguerite-Marie Alacoque
📍Preached in the manner of a reflective homily
“See this Heart which has loved so much, and yet is so little loved…”
(Jesus to Marguerite-Marie, June 1675)
🕊️ Introduction: God Still Speaks Through Hearts
Beloved friends,
In every age, God seeks hearts — not merely minds to understand Him or hands to serve Him, but hearts to love Him, to receive His love, and to mirror it back to the world.
In our fast-paced and distracted age, we too may miss the quiet voice of the divine. But there was a woman in 17th-century France who heard this voice—not in thunder or glory, but in the gentle but burning call of a Heart.
Her name was Marguerite-Marie Alacoque.
❤️ A Heart Wounded and Burning
Imagine a young woman, frail in body, living behind the cloistered walls of Paray-le-Monial. The world outside was changing—wars, kings, revolutions—but she lived a quiet, hidden life of prayer and pain. And it was in that hiddenness that the Heart of Christ revealed itself.
What Marguerite saw was not merely a symbol—it was a living, beating truth: Jesus’s heart is a fire of divine love, wounded by human forgetfulness.
And He said to her: “Behold this Heart which has so loved men, and yet is so little loved in return.”
🙏 The Call to Reparation
What was she to do with such a vision? She did not write a book of theology or start a movement. She prayed. She offered herself. She loved.
But her life teaches us that every wound in the world is healed first by love, and that spiritual reparation begins in silence, prayer, and acts of mercy.
We too are called—not to spectacular visions—but to return love for love. That is the essence of her message: not guilt, not fear, but reciprocal love.
Can we pause today, and ask:
Have I returned love for love?
Have I responded to Christ’s Heart with my own?
🪔 Belgian Spiritual Roots & Resonance
Belgium, and especially the Flemish soul, understands the silent depths of devotion. From the Beguines to Jan van Ruusbroec, from the Sacred Heart confraternities in Antwerp to the many chapels in the fields of Flanders, there has always been a quiet mysticism that listens with the heart.
Marguerite-Marie speaks our language — not the language of noise or acclaim, but of the hidden fire, the contemplative flame that purifies from within.
🧎 Practices to Enter the Heart
Marguerite-Marie’s spiritual practices are not burdensome. They invite us into rhythms of love:
- A Holy Hour: one hour a week before the Blessed Sacrament (or in quiet prayer at home), simply to be with Jesus.
- The First Friday Communion: an invitation to deepen our Eucharistic love (or to renew our covenant with God in whatever way we can).
- A Daily Act of Reparation: even a small one — an extra kindness, a moment of intercession, a word of consolation.
- A prayer: “Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like Yours.”
🔔 Legacy and Relevance Today
In a world numb with distraction and digital noise, Marguerite-Marie teaches us the value of depth over noise, love over performance, presence over pressure.
She reminds us that Christ’s Heart still calls today: not to the extraordinary few, but to each of us. To mothers, workers, artists, students.
He calls us to be hearts within the Heart — to live love quietly, truly, fully.
✨ Closing Prayer
Sacred Heart of Jesus,
Burning furnace of charity,
Teach us to love as You have loved.
In our smallness, use us.
In our pain, purify us.
In our joy, sanctify us.
And may the fire You lit in Marguerite-Marie
Burn again in us today.
Amen.
Daily Saints Chronicle GPT
Adapts daily to celebrate saints and virtuous individuals.
