A Novena to the Sacred Heart
Cor Iesu sacratissimum
The Visions at Paray-le-Monial
The Novena Prayer
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” Behold, I knock, I seek, and I ask for the grace of (mention your request here).
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners, and grant us the grace which we ask of You, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your tender Mother and ours.
Between 1673 and 1675, a Visitation nun named Margaret Mary Alacoque received a series of visions of Christ at the convent of Paray-le-Monial, in Burgundy. In them Jesus showed her his heart and asked that it be honored with a devotion of its own.
The Great Revelation
The Novena Prayer
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” Behold, I knock, I seek, and I ask for the grace of (mention your request here).
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners, and grant us the grace which we ask of You, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your tender Mother and ours.
The central vision came in June 1675, during the octave of Corpus Christi. Margaret Mary saw the heart itself, encircled by a crown of thorns and surmounted by a cross, and heard the request that grew into the devotion: a feast on the Friday after that octave, offered in reparation for the coldness with which the heart's love is met.
Claude La Colombiere
The Novena Prayer
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” Behold, I knock, I seek, and I ask for the grace of (mention your request here).
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners, and grant us the grace which we ask of You, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your tender Mother and ours.
Margaret Mary found almost no one willing to credit her visions until she met Claude La Colombiere, a Jesuit sent to Paray-le-Monial as confessor to the convent in 1675. He believed her account, became her spiritual director, and did more than anyone else to carry the devotion beyond the convent walls; the Church beatified him for it in 1929.
The Twelve Promises
The Novena Prayer
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” Behold, I knock, I seek, and I ask for the grace of (mention your request here).
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners, and grant us the grace which we ask of You, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your tender Mother and ours.
A list of twelve promises attached to the devotion, said to have been given to Margaret Mary in the visions themselves, circulated widely from the nineteenth century onward. The best known, sometimes called the great promise, concerns the grace of final repentance for those who receive Communion on nine consecutive First Fridays in the heart's honor.
A Feast for a Few Dioceses
The Novena Prayer
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” Behold, I knock, I seek, and I ask for the grace of (mention your request here).
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners, and grant us the grace which we ask of You, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your tender Mother and ours.
Papal recognition came slowly. In 1765, nearly a century after the visions, Pope Clement XIII granted a feast of the Sacred Heart, but only to the dioceses and religious orders that had specifically petitioned for it, not to the whole Church.
A Feast for the Whole Church
The Novena Prayer
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” Behold, I knock, I seek, and I ask for the grace of (mention your request here).
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners, and grant us the grace which we ask of You, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your tender Mother and ours.
In 1856, Pope Pius IX extended the feast of the Sacred Heart to the universal Church, fixing it on the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi, exactly where Margaret Mary had said it belonged nearly two centuries before.
Leo XIII's Consecration
The Novena Prayer
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” Behold, I knock, I seek, and I ask for the grace of (mention your request here).
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners, and grant us the grace which we ask of You, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your tender Mother and ours.
Pope Leo XIII raised the feast to a higher rank in 1889 and, in 1899, published the encyclical Annum Sacrum, consecrating the entire human race, not only the Catholic faithful, to the Sacred Heart. He signed the papal approval of the twelve promises that same year.
Enthronement in the Home
The Novena Prayer
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” Behold, I knock, I seek, and I ask for the grace of (mention your request here).
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners, and grant us the grace which we ask of You, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your tender Mother and ours.
Beginning in 1907, a priest named Mateo Crawley-Boevey spent forty years travelling the world urging Catholic families to enthrone an image of the Sacred Heart in their own homes, turning a devotion practiced in convents and churches into one practiced at the kitchen table.
A Nun Recognized
The Novena Prayer
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” Behold, I knock, I seek, and I ask for the grace of (mention your request here).
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners, and grant us the grace which we ask of You, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your tender Mother and ours.
Margaret Mary Alacoque was beatified in 1864 by Pius IX, the same pope who gave her devotion to the universal Church, and canonized in 1920 by Benedict XV, closing the distance between a private vision in a French convent and the calendar of the whole Church.
The prayer that opens each day is the well-known Sacred Heart novena prayer — O my Jesus, You have said… — of unknown authorship and long associated with the devotion revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque; it is given here as it is commonly printed, together with its usual aspiration and concluding prayer. Jesus, meek and humble of Heart, make my heart like unto thine is a separate traditional aspiration of the devotion. What follows each day is a fact about the devotion's own history, one per day, from the visions at Paray-le-Monial to the Church's slow recognition of them. The devotion itself is bound up with the Blessed Sacrament — see Benediction and the chaplet of the Sacred Heart.
