Rebuke & Blessing
How the Sacred Heart of Jesus Works
Job Suffering – God’s Rebuke
Job Prospering – God’s Blessing
Dear Friends of the Heart of Christ,
From the Life of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647 – 1690), that Visitation Nun who received messages from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we can learn many lessons about how the Sacred Heart works. One of the episodes in her life, one of lesser familiarity, involves a sticky situation. If you recall, St. Margaret Mary had her great revelations from the Sacred Heart between 1673 – 1675. Her superior at the time was Mother de Saumaise (in office from 1672 – 1678). St. Claude la Colombière, the spiritual director of our saint, thought very highly of Mother de Saumaise and kept in contact with her despite his assignment to London and the court of St. James. Mother de Saumaise was succeeded in the office of the superior by Mother Péronne-Rosalie Greyfié. Now the Lord had promised St. Margaret Mary that He would inspire her superiors with what would be for His greater glory and the fulfillment of His designs. However, He did not interfere with their personalities or their free will. Mother Greyfié was known to be quite stern especially when she was dealing with situations that were unfamiliar to her. She just did not understand St. Margaret Mary and this made her exceedingly cautious and even fearful, inflicting on our humble Sister generous humiliations. Later, to her credit, she did accuse herself of being unjust to St. Margaret Mary. From her own pen she gives us these thoughts:
“I do not know whether you are aware that she (St. Margaret Mary) was accustomed before my arrival to spend an hour in meditation during the night between Thursday and Friday.” [This was a direct request from the Sacred Heart to our saint during her great revelations. Jesus requested that she lie face downward for one hour – to allay God’s anger by asking mercy for sinners but also to soothe the heartache He felt when His apostles deserted Him.] Mother Greyfié continues: “When her sufferings were greater than usual, I made her change this posture and kneel with her hands clasped… At first I even wished to make her give up this practice altogether, and she obeyed the order that I gave her; but, during this time when her hour of meditation was interrupted, she used to often come to me in a timid way to tell me that she thought Our Lord was annoyed with me on account of my prohibition, and that she was afraid He might punish me for it in some vexatious and painful manner. I did not, however, at once withdraw it; but seeing Sister Carré die suddenly of dysentery, from which no one else in the convent suffered, and feeling also other troubles connected with the death of so good a Sister, I made haste to restore her hour’s meditation to Sr. Alacoque, for I could not banish the thought that this was the punishment with which she had threatened me on the Savior’s part.” (from Vie Oeuvres)
This scenario from the life of our saint has many things to teach us. We all have to face challenging and conflicting situations. In Margaret Mary’s case, there was a real discrepancy between the clear requests of the Lord and the instructions of her superior. Margaret Mary knew that the Sacred Heart had told her that “Satan is furiously bent on deceiving you. So do not do anything without the approval of those who are guiding you.” She obeyed even though she was convinced that it was not God’s intention that she stop her holy hour. She waited on the Lord. Humanly and humbly, she tried to warn those over her of their mistakes (religious superiors are not infallible), but she, nonetheless, carried out their orders. God then intervened. Fortunately for Mother Greyfié, she was discerning enough to see God’s rebuke in the events around her and readjusted her directives. She actually became a great patron of the Sacred Heart, promoting the devotion in her next assignment as superior of the Visitation Monastery in Semur.
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Sacred Scripture often reminds us of God’s tremendous love for us. But this love — not the feel-good-at-all-times variety — means that God desires our eternal salvation so that we can share His glory. Because of free will, we can choose to go astray. It is then that God, out of His eternal concern for our well-being, is willing to afflict us to wake us up. The Book of Revelation tells us this by putting these words in the mouth of the Almighty, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous therefore and repent.” (Rev. 3:19) Or we hear these words of wisdom from the Book of Proverbs: “Do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent His rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those whom He loves.” (Prov. 3:11-12)
Perhaps you or someone you know have experienced this. Our merciful Lord can and does use trials and various predicaments to bring us to our senses and ultimately to bring us back to Himself. And being merciful does not mean that the Lord lets us flounder in our sins. If we are honest, we may find that there have been situations in our lives when we have drifted or deviated from true Christian living or even from God’s good pleasure and then something befalls us to give us a needed wake-up call — sometimes it is an illness, sometimes it is an unexpected shift in our fortunes or maybe a telephone call that takes us in a different direction in life. I have witnessed these things happen and if we look deeper, we may suspect that the hand and heart of the Lord were present in these events, saving us from ourselves and our own poor choices. There is no doubt that the Lord wants each of us, no matter what vocation we have in life, to exhibit holiness. We learn from St. Peter’s writings, “Do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written: “Be holy, for I am holy.’” (1 Peter 1:15-16)
From the lives of the saints we could provide many documented examples of God’s loving rebukes used to startle us out of our complacency and waywardness. St. Faustina’s life is full of such examples. One of her visions concerning Poland’s future was told to her spiritual director Blessed Michael Sopocko. She predicted that very hard times would soon descend upon her country and that Poles would be taken away to the east and to the west. When World War II broke out shortly after she died in 1938, this, of course, actually happened. Faustina further predicted that one of Poland’s most beautiful cities would be destroyed like Sodom for the sins committed there. When Fr. Sopocko questioned her about the sins for which it would be punished, Faustina replied, “For killing unborn children.” Fr. Sopocko later understood that this city was Warsaw which was turned into ruins during the Uprising there.
Now not all misfortunes in life are the result of Divine rebukes. Sometimes they are preludes that open us up to or prepare us for God’s greater graces and blessings. We all know the story of Job and all the calamities that he suffered. But his steadfastness in the midst of them all resulted in blessings far greater than if he did not endure, with fidelity, his trials. This sentence from that biblical book sums it up perfectly: “For He (the Lord) wounds but He also binds up; He injures, but His hands give healing.” (Job 5:18) When we try to live by God’s laws and counsels and respond to His authentic inspirations, — no matter how many obstacles come our way — then God’s blessings will descend upon us. I love this very practical example from the life of St. Faustina. As Faustina’s health began to deteriorate in the early stages of her tubercular condition, her superiors sent her to the convent of Lagiewniki, where conditions were better. Here she began to work in the greenhouse and then in the garden. She could still do this work and had a small tomato and strawberry patch. Sister Klemensa Buczek, one of her Sisters there, relates that Faustina’s garden caused a sensation in the whole convent. Her patch yielded huge crops, several times larger than those of the other nuns. Sr. Buczek recalled that she could pick 80 tomatoes from one of Faustina’s plants and over 300 pounds of strawberries daily were harvested from her relatively small strawberry patch!
Besides these temporal blessings that Faustina received from the Lord, we are well aware of the abundance of spiritual gifts and mystical graces that she received. Christ told the holy nun that her great trust and humility compelled Him to shower graces upon her ceaselessly. One of the very unique gifts given to Faustina by the Lord was an ability to sense other people’s sins. Fr. Sopocko recalls that the saint explained to him that when she was with people who were in a state of sin, she experienced intense pain in the same places where the Lord had wounds — in her head, side, feet and hands. She could even tell the sorts of sins that had been committed! Even though she was permitted to have such intimacy with the Lord in her frequent mystical states, Faustina never became puffed-up or self-satisfied. On the contrary, she was always aware of her unworthiness to be the recipient of such great graces. Trusting in the Lord and knowing our place before Him as humble disciples and servants, opens His heart to bestow on us manifold blessings in our lives.
Whether temporal or spiritual in nature, the Heart of Jesus wants to shower blessings upon each of us. Yet, our own unwillingness to overcome our mediocrity or our faintness of heart, our desire for earthly wealth, power and pleasure, our clinging to our own limited vision, our non-acceptance of God’s laws and precepts can throw up barriers before the Lord, such that He has to knock them down before we can partake of His graces. May we all be open to what the Lord desires to give us and may we all humbly ask Him to change us into the people who desire to walk in His light and do His holy will.†
This talk on Sacred Heart Spirituality was given on October 4th, 2015 by one of the Sisters of the Visitation of Holy Mary at the Visitation Monastery in Tyringham, Massachusetts. The next talk will be held on Sunday, November 1st, 2015 at 4:00 pm. All are invited to attend