Rev. Fr. Patrick OConnell - The Life & Work of Mother Louise Margaret Claret: Containing a Message from Our Divine Lord for the Clergy of the World

The Life and Work
of Mother Louise
Margaret Claret
De La Touche

A Message From Our
Divine Lord For the
Clergy of The World

Fr. Patrick O'Connell,
B.D.

Nihil Obstat:	Jacobus Browne
Censor Deputatus
Imprimatur:		Jacobus
Episcopus Fernensis die Ia Martii 1950

Originally published in 1950 by the Irish Members of the Priests' Universal Union of the Friends of the Sacred Heart and printed in the Republic of Ireland by John English & Co., Ltd., Wexford.

ISBN: 0-89555-311-2

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 86-51579

TAN Books
Charlotte, North Carolina
www.TANBooks.com

1987

DECLARATION

When giving these pages to our venerated confreres in the Priesthood and to the public, we have no intention of pronouncing on the mystic communications which they contain; we conform ourselves to the established discipline and declare that we submit filially and entirely to the judgment of our Holy Mother, the Church .

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

Mother Louise Margaret

"I was not born to be a Religious, or to be a Superioress. In the designs of Providence, I was to be both, but that is not my raison d'etre. My raison d'etre is to be a nothing, a feather flying with the wind, a grain of sand heaved up by the sea, but this feather, this grain of sand, are Messengers of Infinite Love . Yes, my role here below is to publish the good news throughout the world, the good news that can never be repeated by enough people, the good news that has been repeated for the last twenty centuries without ceasing to be the news that all men have need to learn: It is that God is Love, and that consequently He loves His creatures . To know this would mean happiness for the individual, happiness for peoples, happiness for humanity: but people refuse to believe it, and thus refuse to be happyfor men's intellects for want of light remain in darkness, and men's hearts for want of this heat remain cold and sad."

From Intimate Notes of Mother Louise Margaret

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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She helps to support the Community by her Paintings Formula of the Act of Consecration and Donation Providential Confirmation of his decision

FOREWORD

In the foreword to The Sacred Heart and the Priesthood , we promised to publish a translation which was made in China of three volumes, under the title of "In the Service of Jesus Priest," containing a detailed account of the life and revelations of Mother Louise Margaret Claret de la Touche. The publication was delayed because the matter contained in these volumes was being rearranged so as to give her life and work, and her writings, in separate volumes. That work is now completed. The new edition consists of two volumes instead of three. Everything dealing with her life and missionwhich was the establishment of the Priests' Universal Union of the Friends of the Sacred Heart and the foundation of a new Monastery of Sisters to serve as a spiritual support for itis found in the first volume; while in the second volume, her writings not included in The Sacred Heart and the Priesthood and The Book of Infinite Love are given in order of subjects.

The materials for this first volume are drawn from The Messenger of Infinite Love , which is a history of the life and work of Mother Louise Margaret written by a Visitation Sister, and from the three volumes of In the Service of Jesus Priest , which is a collection of her letters and writings arranged in chronological order and made to tell the story of her life.

The first part of the present work is a translation of the summary found in The Messenger of Infinite Love , but for the second part, which deals with the important questions of the establishment of the Priests' Universal Union, the foundation of Bethany of the Sacred Heart and the proceedings at Rome, we decided to give the original letters and documents, instead of the summary found in The Messenger of Infinite Love , and to allow the chief actors, Mother Louise Margaret, Monsignor Filipello, Father Charrier, and the Roman Authorities to tell the story in their own words.

In all her writings, and when questioned by her Director, Father Charrier, her Bishop, Monsignor Filipello, and the Cardinals at Rome, Mother Louise Margaret never varied in her statement that neither the establishment of The Priests' Universal Union, nor the foundation of the new monastery, nor her spiritual writings were the expression of her own ideas or the result of study and investigation; but that the establishment of the Priests' Universal Union and the foundation of the new monastery were commanded by Our Lord, and her spiritual writings were communications received from Him to be transmitted to His priests. All her writings of every kind were examined at Rome by the Congregation of the Council and were found to be free from error; the establishment of the Priests' Universal Union of the Friends of the Sacred Heart and its Statutes, which were drawn up by her, were sanctioned by the Congregation of the Council, and she was entrusted with the foundation of the new monastery by the Congregation for Religious.

INTRODUCTION.

Our Divine Lord is the absolute Master of His gifts. If He chooses to bestow special favours on any of His servants whom He selects to carry out His commands, it belongs to Him to mark out the limits of their mission. When St. Gertrude the Great asked St. John the Evangelist, on the occasion when he appeared to her, why he had not published to the world the secrets of the Sacred Heart of Jesus which were revealed to him when he reclined his head on Our Lord's breast at the Last Supper he replied that his mission to the early Church was to speak of the uncreated Word of the Father; that the revelation of the secrets of the Sacred Heart was reserved for later ages, in order that the world, when grown cold in the service of God, might have its love for Him rekindled.

The revelations of the Sacred Heart made to St. Gertrude and many other Saints hundreds of years before the time of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, and in essentials similar to those which she received, were indeed written down and found their way into all the Religious Orders and helped wonderfully to excite and conserve their fervour; but they did not reach the ordinary faithful, because in the designs of Providence, the privilege of publishing them to the world was reserved for St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. When Our Lord selected her to propagate the devotion to His Sacred Heart, He prepared her for the work, not by making her study the lives and revelations of those Saints to whom He had spoken alreadythere is no indication in her life that she even heard of thembut by making her share in His own suffering life. After the lapse of two and a half centuries, when the world had sunk to depths of wickednes hitherto undreamt of, Christ selected a new instrument to deliver a new message of love. He prepared her as He had prepared St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and all His chosen messengers, by a life of suffering, and He marked out the limits of her work when, during the Octave of the Feast of the Sacred Heart in 1902, He said to her: "Margaret Mary has shown my Heart to the world; do you show It to My priests."

Her mission bears a great similarity to that of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, but it is not identical; it does not consist in merely repeating the revelations made to her; for these revelations she referred the clergy to the authorised works on the devotion to the Sacred Heart and urged them to study the devotion deeply in order that they might be able to explain it to the faithful.

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