Mother Louise Margaret Claret - The Sacred Heart and the Priesthood (with Supplemental Reading: Devotion to the Sacred Heart) [Illustrated]

DECLARATION

We humbly lay each and every one of the following
pages at the feet of the infallible Vicar of Jesus Christ,
and we submit in advance to the judgement of the
Holy Church and of the Sovereign Pontiff,
to whom we offer our most filial, most respectful and
most entire obedience .

Dedicated by the Translator and his Brother to the
memory of their dear Parents .

Imprimi Potest:		JACOBUS EPISCOPUS FERNENSIS
Nihil Obstat:	JACOBUS BROWNE CENSOR DEPUTATUS

Originally published by Fr. Patrick OConnell and the Irish members of The Priests Universal Union of the Friends of the Sacred Heart.

Copyright 1979 by TAN Books, an Imprint of Saint Benedict Press, LLC.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-90487

ISBN: 978-089555-128-3

Cover design by Tony Pro.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

TAN Books
Charlotte, North Carolina
2012

Foreword to the First Edition

The Sacred Heart and the Priesthood was first written in French and published in Italy in 1910 during the reign of Pope Pius X. An Italian translation followed soon after. Subsequently it was translated into German, Polish, Dutch, Spanish, Croatian, Roumanian and Chinese. The present English translation was made in China at the same time as the Chinese translation, for the use of English-speaking priests in China and the Far East. This translation has been carefully revised and compared with the Italian version which was made during the lifetime of the author, and in case of doubt about the meaning, the Italian interpretation has been followed.

Mother Louise Margaret regarded herself as bound to convey the message of love contained in these books as simply as possible without any attempt at style. All translators are requested by those who hold the copyright to follow the original closely.

The first French edition was published anonymously for reasons explained below, but the intention of the author was that the origin of the book and all information that would help to make the message contained in it understood and appreciated should be furnished later on. This the translator has endeavored to do in the account of the author and her Mission which follows. For the full understanding, however, of both The Sacred Heart and the Priesthood and The Book of Infinite Love , the three volumes of the Intimate Notes published in French under the title In the Service of Jesus Priest , should be read. The translator has already prepared a translation of these three volumes and proposes to publish it as soon as circumstances will permit. He is indebted to many friends in China and in Ireland for kind assistance and valuable suggestions; to these he tends his sincerest thanks.

P ATRICK OC ONNELL

1st September, 1947.

His Holiness Pius X sent a letter of introduction through His Cardinal Secretary for State, Merry del Val. The Book of Infinite Love was published in 1928 in the reign of Pius XI who also gave a letter of introduction through his Cardinal Secretary Gasparri. His present Holiness, Pius XII imparted a special blessing to the translator for the publication of these books. An Irish translation will appear as soon as possible.

Foreword to the Second Edition

The First English translation of The Sacred Heart and the Priesthood has found its way to all parts of Ireland, England, Scotland, America, Australia and to far-off India and Africa, and the edition of 5,000 copies is already exhausted. Orders to hand for a further 5,000 copies have made this new edition necessary.

The first English edition was presented to His Holiness, Pope Pius XII and received a gracious letter of approbation, which we give on p. XXV.

This new edition is printed unchanged, except for the addition of a paragraph making clear a few points about the relations between the Priests Universal Union of the Friends of the Sacred Heart and other clerical Unions namely: that the Priests Universal Union is a separate organization with a special object of its own; that other clerical Unions that become affiliated with it do not come under its jurisdiction but only contract a spiritual bond; that members of affiliated Unions do not become thereby members of the Priests Universal Union, but must join in the ordinary way if they wish to become so.

There was unavoidable delay in bringing out the edition in the Irish language which we promised, but we expect that it will be ready by the end of this year.

P ATRICK OC ONNELL
9th June, 1950.

Her Mission and Her Writings

GOD is LOVE. ( John 4:8). His great occupation is to love. He loves from eternity to eternity.

God loves, but He wishes to be loved; Love has need of a return, and if the very bosom of the Divinity, the Father, and the Word and the Holy Ghost give such a perfect return that They love each other with the same love which is Their essence and Their being, in like manner God wishes to find outside Himself a reciprocity, relative indeed and proportioned to the created being, but nevertheless real. The creature has received everything from God and is bound to return everything to God; it is what it is only by God; it should employ its whole being for God. (From Book of Infinite Love by Mother Louise Margaret).

This is the very essence of the devotion to the Sacred Heart and indeed of all religion: to believe that God is Love, to believe that He loves all men, and to love Him in return with our whole heartwhich of course includes that we love our fellowmen for the love of Him.

God is Love and He is immutable; He always acts by Love, the history of His dealings with man can be summed up in one wordLove. On the other hand, the history of man is one long story of ingratitude, of refusal to love, often even of hatred of everything good. Yet even when mans wickedness went to the extreme, God, Who is love, overwhelmed it with love. When our first parents, created by God, endowed with a superabundance of His favors, and even made participators in His own divine nature, rejected God and the whole supernatural order, Gods reply was the Incarnation. The message of the Word Incarnate was a message of love; His life was a life of love; and having enunciated and explained by word and example the great mystery of the Love of God, He displayed His mangled body, nailed to the Cross, with His Sacred Heart pierced by a lance, as the final proof of the greatness of Gods love for men and His divine claim to be loved in return.

Could man ever again doubt of Gods love or refuse to return it? Alas, in the course of centuries mans love for God grew cold, the crucifix lost its significance for him, he scarcely believed even that God loved him, not to speak of striving to love God in return. The reply of Our Saviour was to make a new revelation of love through St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Our divine Saviour made this new revelation of love, not by words alone, but by displaying His Sacred Heart surmounted by a cross, surrounded with a crown of thorns, still showing the wound which was made by the lance, and burning with love for man like a mighty furnace that would consume the world, thus giving a living epitome of His life of love for man, and renewing His divine claim to be loved in return.