First conference: 
The Great Design of the Sacred Heart

THE first stage of the great design of mercy that Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary were preparing for the end times was revealed at Paray-le-Monial in the 17^th century. Our Lord chose a confidante there whom He led to the summit of holiness, to make her the worthy messenger of an extraordinary revelation: Saint Margaret Mary.

Born on July 22, 1647 to Philiberte and Claude Alacoque, a distinguished notary of Charolais, Margaret enjoyed eight years of a happy childhood, filled with graces of union with the Blessed Virgin and Our Lord, to Whom she had already consecrated her virginity.

In 1655, the sorrowful mysteries began with the death of her father. Trials followed one after another, culminating in the destruction of the family home by fire. Mrs Alacoque was forced to seek refuge with Margaret in the home of her mother-in law and her daughters, jealous and miserly women who persecuted them ignominiously.

In her Autobiography, she recounted, albeit with perfect charity, the vexations, beatings and opprobrium she suffered, by the permission of Our Lord, to prepare her for her vocation: “From the moment I entered the house, the battering began again, more fiercely than ever, because I had not taken care of the household and the children of these dear benefactors of my soul; and without being allowed to say a word, I set to work with the servants.

“After that, I spent my nights as I had spent my days, shedding tears at the foot of my Crucifix, Who showed me, without my understanding anything, that He wanted to become the absolute master of my heart, and that He wanted to make me conform in everything to His suffering life: that was why He wanted to become my Master, by making Himself present to my soul, to make me act as He acted amid His cruel sufferings, which He showed me that He had endured out of love for me.

“And from then on, my soul was so deeply moved that I wished my sufferings would never cease even for a moment. For since then He was always present to me in the form of the crucifix or of an Ecce homo carrying His cross; which impressed upon me such compassion and love for suffering that all my pains became mild in comparison with the desire I felt to suffer in order to conform myself to my suffering Jesus.” (nos. 8-9)

After many other trials, in 1671 she entered the monastery of the Visitation in Paray-le-Monial, where she was again greatly humiliated, not only by her superiors, who wanted to test her virtue, but also by certain nuns of the convent, for the extraordinary virtues of Sister Margaret Mary, her penances, and the hours she spent in prayer at the foot of the Tabernacle stood as a reproach to their lukewarmness. Her absolute submission, her constant obedience and her astonishing humility in the face of these vexations testify to her holiness and to the truth of the revelations she received.

THE REVELATIONS OF THE SACRED HEART

It was on December 27, 1673 that Our Lord first revealed his ‘great design’ to her. She recounts: “On the feast day of Saint John the Evangelist, after receiving from my divine Saviour a grace similar to that received by His beloved disciple on the evening of the Last Supper, after making me rest for a few hours on His divine breast, I received from this lovable Heart graces the memory of which puts me out of myself; and I do not think it is necessary to specify them, although the memory and impression of them will remain with me all my life.

“After this, this divine Heart was presented to me as in a throne of flame, more radiant than a sun and transparent as a crystal, with this adorable wound, and it was surrounded by a crown of thorns, which signified the wounds our sins made in it, and a cross above it which signified that, from the first moments of His Incarnation – that is, from the moment this Sacred Heart was formed – the Cross was planted in it. And it was filled, from those very first moments, with all the bitterness that the humiliations, poverty, pain, and contempt must have caused it, that His sacred humanity had to suffer, over the course of His life and in His holy Passion.

“And He made me see that the ardent desire He had to be loved by men and to draw them back from the path of perdition where Satan is precipitating them in droves had made Him form this design to manifest His Heart to men.”●

Sixteen hundred years after having redeemed humanity by dying on the Cross, after having given to His Church His Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist, Our Lord wants to use a new means to save souls: He shows His Heart to exhort us to respond to so much love.

In 1675, during another apparition, He said to His messenger:

“Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, to the point of exhausting itself and consuming itself to show them its love. And for gratitude I receive nothing but ingratitude from most, through the contempt, irreverence, sacrilege and coldness they have for Me in this Sacrament of Love. But what pains Me most is that these are hearts that are consecrated to Me that treat me thus.”(●)

Yet, in His excessive mercy, Our Lord wants to convert and save ungrateful men, which is why He offers His Heart, “with all the treasures of love, mercy, grace, sanctification and salvation that it contains. Thus, all those who wish to render to Him and procure for Him all the honour, love and glory that are in their power, He will enrich them with the abundance and profusion of these divine treasures of the Heart of God, which is their source and which is to be honoured under the figure of this Heart of flesh.”●

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the source of all the graces He merited on the Cross. In order both to spread them, so that we may save our souls from Hell and to respond to His Love, He asks that we honour Him through very simple and specific small acts: that we venerate His image, that we receive Communion in reparation on the first Friday of the month, that we celebrate a solemn feast, etc. And He associates with these small requests extraordinary promises of “love, mercy, grace, sanctification and salvation.”

THE UNIVERSAL DESIGN OF THE HEART OF JESUS.

“He showed me,” continues our saint, “that this devotion was like a final effort of His love which wanted to favour men in these last centuries with this loving Redemption to withdraw them from the empire of Satan, which He meant to ruin. His aim is to place us under the sweet freedom of the empire of His Love, which He wanted to re-establish in the hearts of those who would embrace this devotion.” (ibid.)●.

It is therefore indeed a sovereign intervention by Our Lord for the end times, as we stated in the introductory sermon. (cf. He is Risen no. 270, October 2025)

“What does He mean?” our Father wondered. He wants to tell France in particular, and the Church in France, of His love for men, His impatience to see the cult to His Sacred Heart develop in order to set it against the various heresies of the time (Calvinism, Jansenism, worldly laxity, Quietism) which harden the human heart. This cult would teach what the burning love of Jesus is and through preaching this, would inspire a similar love in return, without which the world would fall into apostasy, and France in particular into catastrophes. It is a love that Jesus wants to inspire as the last instrument of the world’s salvation.

“In the year 1689, the Sacred Heart revealed to Saint Margaret Mary His design, a comprehensive strategy for the conquest of France, the Church and the world. It was the nuns of the Visitation of Mary, who were charged with living out this devotion and then propagating it by their very example. So, after initially spreading by example, this devotion would then acquire a contagious mystical effect.

“The Jesuit Order, which was extraordinarily active in the 17^th century, had the honour of having been chosen as preacher and doctor of this devotion. As preachers, the Jesuits would teach it from the pulpit, in missions, in retreats, in closed retreats in particular; as doctors they would defend this devotion against the theologians of the opposing side, those who reject it. They were to defend it in particular so that Rome itself would recognise this cult, and this would not be easy.”●

It would not be easy! Indeed, in order to establish this new cult in the world, Our Lord did not address Himself directly to the Pope, the Head of the Church. He rather wanted to pass through the King of France, “the eldest son of His Sacred Heart”. This is indisputable, as surprising as it may seem to those who have a democratic mindset.

Two centuries earlier, Our Lord revealed through Saint Joan of Arc that He is the true King of France, and that the monarch consecrated at Reims is His lieutenant to govern in His Name. Then in 1638, Our Lord asked Louis XIII to consecrate his Kingdom to the Virgin Mary. Now the mission that earned France such privileges is being revealed: France must be the instrument of the reign of the Sacred Heart throughout the world.

THE SACRED HEART’S CHOSEN ONE.

Towards the end of 1636, Louis XIII made a private vow to consecrate His kingdom to the Blessed Virgin, before doing so publicly two years later, as Our Lord had asked him to do, through Sister Anne-Marie of Jesus Crucified,● the spiritual daughter of Father Joseph du Tremblay. One of the first fruits of this vow was the conception by Queen Anne of Austria of an heir to the French crown. It was truly a gift from Heaven, after twenty years of disappointed hopes and anxiety for the future of the Kingdom. Shortly before, Brother Fiacre, a humble lay brother at the Augustinian convent of Our Lady of Victories, had a vision of the Virgin Mary carrying a child, who was not Her Divine Son, but “the child that God wants to give to France”. And the Venerable Marguerite of the Blessed Sacrament, a Carmelite nun from Beaune and confidante of the Child Jesus, was charged by Our Lord with praying for the birth of an heir to the royal throne. At Christmas 1635, the Child Jesus told His confidante that He would grant her “a Dauphin according to His Heart,” before letting her know, on December 15, 1637, that the Queen was pregnant. On August 15, 1638, the King consecrated his kingdom to the Virgin Mary and, on September 5, Anne of Austria gave birth to Louis Dieudonné, the future Louis XIV, the Sacred Heart’s chosen one.

The beginning of his effective reign in 1661, after Mazarin’s death, was splendid. Louis Dieudonné understood France’s privileged vocation and the primacy she was to exercise in Christendom as the eldest daughter of the Church. It was with this goal in mind that he strove to manifest his “glory” and supremacy in all areas, military, political, and artistic, and for the elevation of Christendom as a whole.

The wars he waged were not hegemonic at all, but always reasonable, with no other aim than to establish France’s ‘pré carre’, i.e. to acquire natural, inviolable borders to protect the kingdom from invasion, particularly in the North, in Flanders, and in Franche-Comté. Moreover, France exerted such prestige that Louis XIV, through skilful diplomacy, succeeded in integrating into the kingdom places that were eager to become part of it, such as Strasbourg in 1680.

Amidst the glory he displayed at Versailles, in the successive celebrations held there, it should not be forgotten that Louis XIV wanted to set an example to his people as a ‘Most Christian King’. He recited prayers with his courtiers upon rising and before retiring to bed, attended daily mass, observed fasts and abstinence, attended Holy Week offices, participated in solemn processions, etc. Although he succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, he knew he was a sinner, and this did not deter him from his service to the Church. He had a deep understanding with Bossuet, whom he appointed Grand Preacher of the Court, and who undertook to combat the spread of libertinism, profit-seeking and pleasure.

PROVIDENTIAL TRIALS.

In order to bring Louis XIV to rely solely on Him by entering into His ‘great design’, Our Lord allowed this King to encounter many difficulties. This would show Louis XIV that without Him, man, be he King of France, could do nothing. These were the watershed years of the 1680’s.

First, he discovered with horror the sordid Affair of the Poisons, in which his mistress, Madame de Montespan, was involved, and which finally prompted him to put his moral life in order.

Then came the conflict with Pope Innocent XI over episcopal appointments. Relations soured to such an extent that the bishops of France threatened to break with Rome, and the Pope even went so far as to secretly excommunicate the King of France.

In 1688-1689, the great threat of the League of Augsburg loomed large. The Austrian Emperor Leopold, victor over the Turks, turned against France and was immediately joined by numerous principalities in Germany and Central Europe. At the same time, William III of Orange, the stadtholder of Holland, a fanatical Protestant and personal enemy of Louis XIV, became King of England. Finally, in 1690, Spain joined this League against France. Louis XIV therefore had to face almost the whole of Europe united against him and fight on all the borders of the Kingdom, except those of the Jura.

It was in these circumstances that Our Lord intervened to offer the salvation of the Kingdom of France as the first fruits of the Reign of His Sacred Heart throughout the world.

THE OFFER FROM HEAVEN.

On June 17, 1689, He appeared one last time to Saint Margaret Mary to reveal His requests to her. Let us read our Father’s commentary on the testimony of the confidante of the Sacred Heart:

“ ‘It seems to me that He desires to enter with pomp and magnificence into the house of princes and kings, to be honoured there as much as He was outraged, despised and humiliated in His Passion ...’

“All this is extremely profound; in my opinion, it is the sublime moment in the history of France. Jesus was outraged in the palace of Caiaphas, in the palace of Pilate and in the palace of Herod. In this year of 1689, He wants to be honoured in the palaces of kings and high priests.

“ ‘... and He desires to receive as much pleasure at seeing the great ones of the earth bowing down and humiliated before Him as He felt bitterness at seeing Himself annihilated at their feet.’

“Jesus was full of bitterness when He was annihilated, He, the Son of God: bitterness for His glory and also for the good of human beings He had come to save, when He was humiliated before the great ones of the earth. Imagine Herod, Pilate and Caiaphas united against Him! He now wants to be glorified.

“ ‘And here are the words I heard concerning our king: Let the eldest son of My sacred Heart know...’

“No wonder that he is the eldest son, because since Clovis, France has been considered by the popes and bishops – and has been declared by some popes, in a very explicit manner – to be the eldest daughter of the Church. He is the eldest son of My Sacred Heart, because he is the King of France.

“ ‘Make it known to the eldest son of My Sacred Heart that, just as his temporal birth was obtained by devotion to the merits of My Sacred Infancy...’

“This birth was obtained through the prayers of Marguerite of the Blessed Sacrament, of Beaune, to the Holy Child Jesus, so that the kingdom might have a Dauphin. We are in presence of a resounding miracle! There is a plan behind it. Louis XIV would receive the answer to his anguish: ‘Why, after all, have I been so favoured, predestined by God, for what task?’ Here it is:

“ ‘Make it known to the eldest son of My Sacred Heart that, just as his temporal birth was obtained by devotion to the merits of My Sacred Infancy, in the same way he will obtain his birth into grace and eternal glory by the consecration which he will make of himself to My Adorable Heart, which wants to triumph over his own...’

“It is a matter of Heart to heart. It is sublime. It is not an official, public, external matter. Jesus wants the heart of Louis XIV. He wants him to purify himself from his temptations, from his infidelities to God’s law, He wants Louis XIV to consecrate his heart to His own.

“ ‘... and, through his mediation, over the hearts of the mighty of the earth.’

“When Louis XIV becomes devoted to the Sacred Heart, the great ones of the earth, the other kings and princes, and the princes of his own House, would be led to do the same.

“ ‘My Heart wants to reign in his palace, to be painted on his standards and engraved on his arms to make them victorious over his enemies, prostrating their proud and arrogant heads before his feet, to make him triumphant over all the enemies of Holy Church.’

“This is already the coalition of all those Germanic and Anglo-Saxon countries that have fallen into Protestantism, full of hatred for the King of France as much as for the Pope of Rome, who nevertheless became their ally at that time. These are the kingdoms ruled by proud and haughty heads. We think, for example, of William of Orange, we think of the one who would soon unduly declare himself King of Prussia, and all these men are enemies of the Sacred Heart, and the Sacred Heart will use Louis XIV’s armies to humiliate them and, no doubt, convert them.

“ ‘...to make him triumphant over all the enemies of Holy Church,’ who are also the enemies of his Kingdom.

“This is what Margaret Mary heard on June 17, 1689.”(●)

Thus, the King of France is the ‘centrepiece’ of the great design of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was to him, first and foremost, that Our Lord addressed His requests, because he had such influence at the time that he could lead all of Christendom and thus obtain the fulfilment of the promises of the Sacred Heart. Our Father said that we find ourselves dreaming of what could have been yet never came to be. He also added: “We must dream of what could have been, because, thanks to God, what could have been will be!” The Sacred Heart promised that He would reign, despite Satan and his fiends.

SO WHAT WOULD THE REIGN OF THE SACRED HEART HAVE BEEN LIKE IN THE 17^th CENTURY?

Firstly, Our Lord promised a great renewal of fervour and devotion in the Church.

Saint Margaret Mary wrote that the Divine Heart of Jesus “had chosen Louis XIV as His faithful friend to have the Mass authorised in His honour by the Holy See and to obtain all the other privileges that must accompany this devotion to the Sacred Heart.”

Precisely in that year, 1689, Innocent XI gave up his soul to God. His successors, Alexander VIII and then Innocent XII, were much more benevolent towards Louis XIV, who could therefore easily have asked them to authorise the Mass in honour of the Sacred Heart and to encourage this devotion by granting indulgences.

Thus, the cult of the Sacred Heart would have spread rapidly throughout the Church, through the hierarchy, and it would have been the true remedy for the endless, extraordinarily confused debates raised by the Jansenists, Quietists and Humanists, in which theology was exhausting itself. Until 1685, Molinos, the doctor of Quietism, held sway in Rome, with the support of influential figures in the Holy See, despite the dissolute morals that his false mysticism engenders! Although there were great defenders of the faith, such as Bossuet, there was a lack of true and inspiring mysticism to nourish minds and set hearts ablaze.

The revelation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of His infinite Mercy, would have been the remedy for Jansenism, while the revelation of the demands of the Sanctity of Justice, as well as the simple practices of devotion and religion requested by Our Lord, would have been a bulwark against the Quietist illusion.

Not only that, but this new cult could have given rise to a great surge of conversion and sanctification among all Christian people, according to His promise. In one of her letters, Saint Margaret Mary referred to the “three channels flowing from the source of the Heart of Jesus”:

“First, mercy for sinners, upon whom flows the spirit of contrition and penance.

“The second is charity, which extends to the aid of all the miserable people who are in any need, and especially to those who strive for perfection.” In another letter, Saint Margaret Mary elaborates further on this promise: “Secular persons will find, through this loving devotion, all the help necessary for their state of life, that is, peace in their families, relief in their labours, the blessings of Heaven in all their undertakings, consolation in their miseries; and it is precisely in this Sacred Heart that they will find a place of refuge throughout their lives and especially at the hour of death. Ah! How sweet it is to die after having had a tender and constant devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ!”

Finally, “from the third flows love and light for the perfect friends whom He wants to unite with Him, to communicate His knowledge and His maxims to them, so that they may devote themselves entirely to bringing Him glory, each in his own way; and the Blessed Virgin will be their special protector, to bring them to this perfect life.”

She wrote further: “If only I could tell everything I know about this loving devotion and reveal to the whole world the treasures of grace that Jesus Christ holds in this adorable Heart and which He intends to pour out in abundance on all those who practise it! I beg you, Reverend Father, overlook nothing to inspire everyone with it [...]. The treasures of blessings and graces that this Sacred Heart contains are infinite. I know of no other exercise of devotion in the spiritual life that is more suitable for raising a soul to the highest perfection in a short time and for making it taste the true sweetness that is found in the service of Jesus Christ. Yes, I say with confidence that if we knew how pleasing this devotion is to Jesus Christ, there would not be a Christian, however little love he has for this lovable Saviour, who would not practise it first.”

This new form of worship would therefore have brought about a great renewal of religious life, as the confidante of the Sacred Heart went on to write:

“Make sure, above all, that the religious embrace it, for they will derive so much benefit from it that no other means would be needed to restore the first fervour and the most exact regularity in the least well-regulated communities and to bring to the height of perfection those who live in the greatest regularity.”

She herself had set the example in her monastery at Paray-le-Monial, which had become, so to speak, the domain of the Devil, but where the unfaithful nuns were gradually converted thanks to the Sacred Heart, through her.

Among these religious communities, along with the Visitation, the Society of Jesus received special promises and the task of spreading devotion to the Sacred Heart. Although the Jesuits were then very numerous and influential throughout Christendom, many of them tended towards humanism and moral laxity, some of whose casuistic propositions were even condemned by Rome in 1679 and 1700.

Saint Margaret Mary wrote: “This divine Heart ardently desires to be known, loved and honoured, particularly by these good Fathers [the Jesuits]. In return, He promises, if I am not mistaken, to fill their words with the unction of His love and with such strong and powerful graces that they will be like a two-edged sword, penetrating the most hardened hearts of obdurate sinners, to make of them a source of true penance for the purification and sanctification of souls. But for this, they must try to draw all their wisdom from the source of the Sacred Heart.” Thus they would have to purify themselves of their worldly humanism.

THE CONQUEST OF THE WORLD FOR THE SACRED HEART.

In conjunction with this renewal of fervour in the Church, Our Lord promised a prodigious expansion of Christianity, which should have led to His reign over the whole earth. That is why His Sacred Heart wants “to reign in his palace, to be painted on his standards and engraved on his arms to make them victorious over his enemies, prostrating their proud and arrogant heads before his feet, to make him triumphant over all the enemies of Holy Church.”

In 1689, this referred to the coalition if the League of Augsburg, including William III of Orange, Louis XIV’s most bitter opponent and the worst enemy of the Holy Church. The Sacred Heart would have begun by giving his eldest Son victory over him and the restoration of a Catholic monarchy in England, which Louis XIV had tried in vain to achieve by his own forces until 1692. The coalition also brought together the Protestant German principalities, including Prussia. Under the standard of the Sacred Heart, thanks to Him, the armies of France would have triumphed over these heretics who had been infesting Europe since Luther’s revolt. Following this miracle, it would have been easy for the Church to reconquer these peoples and convert them, in particular through the apostolate of the Jesuits. Thus, the first victory of the Sacred Heart would have been the healing of the Protestant cancer that has been plaguing Christendom since 1517.

The League of Augsburg also included two Catholic sovereigns, Emperor Leopold of Austria and King Charles II of Spain. The former was a great defender of Christianity against the Turks, but he wanted to rival the King of France. The latter had joined the coalition under the influence of the emperor, although he was naturally very close to Louis XIV, whose deceased wife, Queen Marie Thérèse, was Charles II’s sister. The grandson of the ‘Sun King’, Philip V, succeeded him on the Spanish throne. In view of the miraculous victories that the Sacred Heart would have granted France, and through the mediation of the Church, these two sovereigns would have had every reason not only to make peace with Louis XIV, but also to follow him in his devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Then, through this entente of Christian nations, the reign of Christ the King would have spread throughout the earth. Together with the Emperor of Austria, the King of France could have resumed the Crusade against the Ottoman Empire, which was falling apart, instead of supporting the Turks in order to weaken the Austrians! He would have resumed the plans to conquer Algiers that he had undertaken at the beginning of his reign, thus opening the Holy Land and all of Africa to colonisation and evangelisation.

As for America, the victory over the Protestant powers would have put an end to the bitter war waged by the English and Dutch against our colonies, particularly Canada. And the immense territories to the west of the British colonies in North America, which Robert Cavelier de la Salle had taken possession of in the name of the King of France, travelling down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, could have benefited from our colonisation and our missionaries, instead of falling under the control of the Protestants. The same is true of Asia, if the Jesuits sent there had been fervent devotees of the Sacred Heart instead of becoming lost in inculturation and an insane syncretistic missiology.

We can thus see by what means Our Lord wanted to establish His Kingdom: through the Church and through the temporal power of Christian nations, in order to save, if possible, all men, and to engage them to respond to the love of His Divine Heart.

ALAS! THIS GREAT DESIGN WAS THWARTED, HINDERED

What should have been did not come to pass. This is the mystery of divine orthodromy, the course by which God leads man towards the fulfilment of His Will, despite his infidelity. He allowed that.

Louis XIV, whose obedience would have given an impetus to all Christendom, refused. Our Lord said this explicitly to Sister Lucy in 1931, complaining that the Holy Father was refusing Him in the same way: “They [the Popes] did not want to heed My request! Like the King of France they will repent and do it, but it will be late. Make it known to My ministers that since they are following the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My request, they will follow him into misfortune. It will never be too late to have recourse to Jesus and Mary.”(●)

The Jesuits also disregarded the requests of the Sacred Heart, apart from a few holy exceptions such as Saint Claude la Colombière, and Fathers Croiset and de Galliffet, who devoted themselves to spreading this devotion, notably through remarkable writings. Nevertheless, they encountered fierce opposition in Rome itself, even from Pope Benedict XIV (who reigned from 1740 to 1758): he resolutely opposed the cult of the Sacred Heart, arguing that it was unacceptable to have devotion to a muscle, a particular organ of Christ!

Thus, although the cult of the Sacred Heart gradually spread among the people thanks to holy souls and holy preachers such as Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, His great design could not be fulfilled. Our Lord did not attain the universal kingship to which He aspires, over kings and princes as well as over the whole Church, through a truly public devotion. He came to His own domain, and His own people did not receive Him. The refusal of a design of mercy cannot go unpunished: terrible chastisement will be inflicted. Instead of the loving design of the Sacred Heart, which sought to destroy the empire of Satan, it was the victory of the unleashed forces of Hell, to the misfortune of men here below and the eternal damnation of a great number of souls.

SATAN’S ‘GREAT DESIGN’: GIVE HIS ALL TO LEAD SOULS TO HELL

To this end, he strove to destroy the institutions that God uses to save souls, beginning with Catholic nations, and first and foremost, the French monarchy.

This began in the 1690s with Fenelon, an ambitious and charming young bishop, tutor to the Dauphin, and very influential at court. He spread his evil spirit against the absolutism of Louis XIV, as well as his false mysticism. His Telemachus, an allegorical satire of the great King, purports to outline an ideal government based on love and brotherhood, relying on the goodness and virtue of all men and denouncing war as the greatest of evils. He deeply inspired the revolutionary spirit of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’, notably Rousseau, who was his fervent admirer.

Upon his death, the Chevalier de Ramsay, who established Freemasonry in France, continued his work of subversion. Thus, the spirit of protest and liberalism spread throughout the upper classes of society, even to the court. The resurgence of Jansenism and laxism also took root, despite all the efforts of the King and Bossuet.

At the same time, the Protestant powers hostile to France, which the Sacred Heart wanted to defeat, were consolidating their power. Louis XIV, despite all his political genius, failed in his plan to defeat William III on his own soil. In 1692, after our naval defeats at Barfleur and La Hougue, he was definitively and firmly established on the throne of England, which became the focus and support of all subversive activities against the papacy, the Catholic monarchies and, in particular, the French crown.

At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1712, the disastrous Treaty of Utrecht sealed this consolidation of Protestant powers. George of Hanover, a new usurper even more fanatical than William of Orange, was recognised as King of England, while Frederick of Hohenzollern, the Elector of Brandenburg who had proclaimed himself ‘King of Prussia’ in violation of international customs, saw his power strengthened as well. England also forced us to cede Acadia and the Hudson Bay territories, closing off access to our French Canada, then began its forced Protestantisation. This sounded the death knell for French colonisation on the American continent.

The end of this reign was very dark, even though Louis XIV remained a King of great dignity. A smallpox epidemic decimated his entourage and jeopardised the royal succession. When he died in 1715, he was survived only by a three-year-old great-grandson, the future Louis XV, and the Duke of Orleans, his liberal and ambitious grand-nephew, whom he disliked.

A TERRIBLE PREFIGUREMENT: THE REGENCY OF THE DEVIL.

The regency of the Duke of Orleans clearly illustrates the chastisement that befell the French monarchy for refusing to submit to the reign of the Sacred Heart. Shortly after the King’s death, the Regent had his testament annulled by the Parliament of Paris in order to gain full power. It was a veritable usurpation.

He immediately broke with the sacred, personal nature of royal power by establishing around him an order of councils. These cells, which were incapable of governing, got lost in a thousand discussions and quarrels. It was the creation of a coterie manipulated by private interests, money and opinion. The Regent’s reckless financial policy, the first to ‘print money’, benefited the most unscrupulous speculators at the expense of honest people.

Morality did not escape the excesses, with the Duke of Orleans himself setting a notorious example. This cancer of immorality and debauchery, embedded in the body of French society, at its aristocratic head, would never be eradicated. And it was through the corruption of the soul and the senses that this aristocracy and the high clergy that sprang from it, ran to their ruin, dragging the sacred crown down with them.

Intellectual depravity, less conspicuous, was no less destructive to the nation. It was the great offensive of rationalist, pantheist or atheist philosophy, coming from abroad, which found emulators in France in Voltaire and Montesquieu.

Their corrosive criticism of French institutions was accompanied by praise for liberal England, with which the Regent committed the crime of forming an alliance, along with the Protestant United Provinces, against Catholic Spain, where Philip V, the grandson of Louis XIV, reigned!

CHASTIESMENT AND ITS REMEDY.

The Sacred Heart, though, did not abandon His design of mercy. In 1720, a plague epidemic struck Marseille, as chastisement for its immorality and the Jansenism that was infecting its clergy. In three months, the city was reduced by half, with forty thousand deaths. With no hospitals, decomposing corpses were strewn throughout the streets of the city. Our Lord then let His confidante, Sister Anne-Madeleine Remuzat, know that He would put an end to the chastisement if the Church of Marseille would appeal to His Sacred Heart.

After much procrastination on the part of the Aldermen, the entire city held a public ceremony of penance behind its holy Ordinary, Bishop de Belsunce, with the result that the epidemic came to a swift and definitive end. This miracle had a great impact throughout the kingdom, contributing to a great expansion of the cult of the Sacred Heart. Throughout the 18^th century, this seemed to holy souls to be the model of what should be done to obtain the salvation of France through the Sacred Heart.

LOUIS XV YIELDS OUT OF WEAKNESS.

Indeed, when this regency of the Devil ended in 1723 with the accession to power of the young Louis XV, everything pointed to a great reign. Courageous, hard-working, truly pious and virtuous, displaying great political wisdom, a great sense of administration and great military courage, he was, for his people, ‘the beloved’. At the beginning of his reign, he loved very much his holy spouse, Mary Leczinska, who had already ardently embraced devotion to the Sacred Heart revealed at Paray-le-Monial.

The Devil, however, was not idle. Louis XV succumbed to temptations of the flesh and gave himself over to his mistresses, who were themselves controlled by Freemasonry. In 1745, he fell madly in love with the woman to whom he gave the title of Marquise de Pompadour. Through her, the Devil regained possession of the King’s heart and, through him, of France, explained our Father. An atheist and close friend of Voltaire, she supported all the evil spirits of the kingdom with the money of Louis XV, who refused her nothing. The royal government was deeply weakened: in the Treaty of Paris in 1763, France lost her entire American colonial empire, the ‘holy land’ of New France, as well as Senegal, in Africa, and the Indies, with the exception of the West Indies, in order to continue trade! Tens of thousands of ardent Catholic and royalist Frenchmen were abandoned to the murderous hands of the Anglo-Protestants. This was the absolute antithesis of the great design of the Sacred Heart.

The following year, the baneful Minister Choiseul, a friend of the Marquise de Pompadour, obtained the expulsion and then the abolition of the Jesuit order. Divine justice thus began to strike those who had refused to respond to the demands of the Sacred Heart, but it was also the last bulwark against growing impiety that was torn down.

“Louis XV!” exclaimed our Father, “If he had been chaste, he would have had God’s gift of being faithful to his spouse and placing himself entirely at the service of the Sacred Heart. He would have been the greatest king, much greater even than Louis XIV.”

LOUIS XVI’S VANITY CAUSED THE REVOLUTION.

“For me,” said our Father, “I ultimately think that Louis XVI was the worst king of his dynasty. He was the one Maurras called ‘Telemachus XVI’. It means that as disciple of both Fenelon, imbued with quietism and romanticism, and Rousseau, this king wanted to be loved by his people. And by declaring his love for them, he did not carry out his job of king, which is not to love, but to govern! Or more precisely, to find in his love, guided by reason and political wisdom, the firmness to govern. For me, he offended the Sacred Heart, because it was his own heart that he gave to his people to love and adore, instead of referring to the Sacred Heart. But that is a mystical view.”

Faced with the growing unrest stirred up by Freemasonry, by Protestants, by Jansenists, by diabolical subversion fuelled by the ideas of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’, he did not want to fight them, as was his duty. He did not turn to the Sacred Heart to be delivered from them.

Thus, our Father said, “The crime of Louis XVI was accomplished in one month, the month of June 1789: Louis XVI bowed out before the National Assembly, or rather before the States General, which he recognised as the National Assembly. It was the Third Estate that constituted itself as the National Assembly on June 17, 1789, one hundred years after the promises of the Sacred Heart, as a kind of chastisement. It became the Constituent Assembly, and it was the king himself, Louis XVI, who, on  June 27, ten days later, recognised the event and stepped aside, relinquishing his royal power in favour of this supposedly sovereign, completely illegal entity, which was a democracy where representatives of the people, illegally convoked, decided to give France a new constitution.

“Louis XVI is thus the creator of the Republic, truly the indispensable man without whom the Republic would never have seen the light of day in France. He did so in violation of his coronation oath and in violation of his family’s entire tradition. Louis XVI is a criminal!”

He thus recognised the ‘sovereignty of the people’, which was the very foundation of the Revolution. Does power come from God or from men? Louis XVI accepted that his subjects should emancipate themselves from divine authority in order to govern themselves. He who was supposed to be the lieutenant of the Sacred Heart accepted that his kingdom should thus flout the sovereignty of Christ the King.

Immediately, Louis XVI’s cousin, the Duke of Orleans took advantage of this weakness and aberration of the king, to stir up terror with a view to reigning in his place. It was he who was at the helm of the revolutionary riots, paying agitators out of his own pocket, such as Robespierre, to whom he ultimately fell victim.●

THE TRIUMPH OF SATAN

When Louis XVI, the lieutenant of Christ consecrated in Reims, was guillotined on January 21, 1793, and the Reign of Terror caused rivers of innocent blood to flow, it became clear that it was now the Devil who ruled France, in the person of the Jacobin deputies led by Robespierre.

The Church of France was torn by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Priests who wanted to remain faithful to their faith and refused to swear allegiance to revolutionary ideas were persecuted and guillotined. A great number of souls, deprived of the sacraments and the preaching of the truth, were thrown onto the path of impiety. The religious orders, already dissolved in 1790, offered up many holy victims, such as the Carmelites of Compiegne, who went to the scaffold on July 17, 1794 for the ‘crime’ of devotion to the Sacred Heart. The revolutionaries had found among their belonging a counter-revolutionary hymn singing of the liberation of the King and the happiness of the people at the hour of the triumph of the Sacred Heart. This clearly illustrates the struggle waged by the empire of Satan against the great design of the Heart of Jesus.

The massacres of the Terror could not last indefinitely. There were 1,500 people guillotined in Paris alone in June and July 1794! When the most furious of the diabolical figures had killed each other off, the ‘hard core’ of the Revolution established the Directory and then the Empire to perpetuate the advantages and fortune it had gained. The resumption of worship was authorised in 1795. Exiled priests returned, and faith flourished everywhere, more ardently than ever. Had the Republic, weary of so many crimes, loosened its grip? No, but it had become more subtle, more pernicious.

Under the Directory, any hint of royalist reaction was crushed in bloodshed. Priests who refused to swear an oath of “hatred for the monarchy and attachment to the Republic” were deported or executed.

To save the Republic, which was on its last legs, the revolutionaries handed over power to Napoleon Bonaparte who understood that the Church could no longer be reduced through persecution, but she had to be won over and enslaved. In 1799, he instituted freedom of worship, abolished oaths to the Republic, and worked to establish a concordat with the Holy See, which was signed on July 15, 1801.

THROUGH THIS CONCORDAT, THE CHURCH WAS BOUND HAND AND FOOD TO THE REVOLUTION.

By accepting this concordat, despite strong opposition from his cardinals, Pope Pius VII first gave in on principles. For the Catholic religion was no longer recognised as the only true religion, but only as the religion professed by the majority of French people. Napoleon’s State remained secular, and the Pope accepted this secularisation of politics, thus effectively renouncing Christ’s reign over France. This was the absolute antithesis of what the Sacred Heart wanted to do with His “eldest son”, the anointed King. Religion was thus confined to the sphere of ‘conscience’, on a par with any other personal belief.

Secondly, this Concordat marked an alienation of the Church from the revolutionary government, which now took charge of appointing bishops and remunerating the clergy, in exchange for a promise of loyalty from all clerics. The Church thus became the servant of the State, which obviously favoured appointing bishops who were likely to support it, that is to say, those who were open to the revolutionary principles of 1789, to human Rights: ‘liberty, equality, fraternity... or death’!

Satan, after having overthrown the monarchy, thus began imperceptibly to instil into the Church the poison of the Revolution, the cause of our present ruin.

Nevertheless, the Divine Heart of Jesus, compassionate towards the misery and distress of His people of France, once again offered His mercy.

THE RESTORATION

Indeed, through his long passion in the infamous republican prisons, little Louis XVII expiated for the infidelity of his fathers to Christ the King. The blood shed by so many holy victims of the revolutionary fury, as well as the tears and supplications of so many souls devoted to the Divine Heart of Jesus, brought about the end of the chastisement and the return of the King. In 1815, the princes of Europe, united in coalition and exasperated by Napoleon’s mad wars, came to defeat him all the way to France and imposed the return of the legitimate Bourbon dynasty.

Louis XVIII, although he immediately accepted a parliamentary constitution for the Kingdom, had a deep sense of his legitimacy. He was aware that he held his authority from On High, and that he governed in the Name of God, to Whom he would have to render account. When his brother succeeded him in 1824 under the name Charles X, he insisted on being anointed in Reims, braving the mockery of the godless but to the acclaim of his people, in order to clearly demonstrate that the grace of the “royal religion” had been restored to the Kingdom of France.

Thus, in a short time, from 1815 onwards, the liberated country regained its peace, joy of life and prosperity. The Church was freed from republican control and once again supported by royal power. As early as 1816, a project to revise Napoleon’s concordat was launched, notably so that the Church could recover the property plundered during the Revolution, and above all so that the Catholic religion could once again reign over society.

This new concordat proposal drawn up by the King was approved by Rome in 1817. The obstacle, however, came from the Chamber of Deputies, which, according to the Charter of the Restoration, had to ratify diplomatic conventions. Although it was absurd, Louis XVIII agreed to submit the bill to a vote by the deputies, who were mostly liberals, Freemasons and followers of Voltaire. They imposed such amendments that this concordat could not become law. Louis XVIII accepted this, as did the Holy See! Thus Napoleon’s disastrous concordat remained in force.

Parliamentarianism was the scourge, the cancer of the Restoration. The deputies, even when they were royalists, ‘more royalist than the king!’ claimed to represent the sovereign people and therefore did not hesitate to oppose royal policy. This so-called popular sovereignty, which is the pernicious legacy of the Revolution, is opposed to the full sovereignty of Christ, Whose absolute power must be recognised in His ‘lieutenant’, the anointed King. On the other hand, politically, this coexistence of royal power and a parliamentary assembly inevitably leads to division within the State and opens the door to all kinds of disputes. This was all the more so because Louis XVIII, in his desire for national reconciliation, had largely granted amnesty to the criminals of the Revolution and the Empire, including the regicides! He even maintained officials of the republican regime in positions of authority. Thus, an influential ‘legal country’ remained in place, secretly hostile to the King and the Church.

This monarchical Restoration was therefore poorly established. God allowed this so that it would be the Divine Heart of His Son, and He alone, Who could save France from chastisement and give her lasting peace, security and order.

THE SACRED HEART WAS READY TO RESTORE EVERYTHING.

In fact, the Heart of Jesus renewed His request to the King of France in 1822-1823, through Sister Mary of Jesus, a nun of the Congregation of Our Lady at the Couvent des Oiseaux in Paris:

“France is still very dear to My divine Heart,” He said to her, “and she will be consecrated to It. But it must be the King himself who consecrates his person, his family and his entire kingdom to My Divine Heart, and who, as I have already told you, has an altar erected in My honour, as one has been erected in the name of France, in honour of the Blessed Virgin. I am preparing a flood of graces for France when she is consecrated to My Divine Heart [...]. I am preparing all things: France will be consecrated to My Divine Heart and the whole earth will feel the blessings that I will pour out upon her. Faith and religion will flourish again in France through devotion to My Divine Heart.”●

Thus, everything was still possible. After the humiliation and trial of the Revolution, the triumph of the Sacred Heart would have been magnificent. Through the counter-revolutionary expedition to Spain (1820) and the capture of the Algiers of the Barbary pirates (1830), France regained her missionary and colonial influence, which was to serve the great design of the Sacred Heart. For this to be accomplished, however, the King would have had to make a great act of faith and have the courage to face the mockery of the impious, thus publicly affirming the submission of the monarchy to Christ the King, and not to the so-called sovereignty of the people.

Word of this request soon spread throughout the capital. To verify its authenticity, the Duchesses of Angouleme and Berry visited Sister Mary of Jesus. Louis XVIII, however, was reluctant to fulfil this request publicly, for fear of the controversy it was already arousing in the liberal and Gallican press. Charles X, his brother, felt the same way. Seven years later, in 1830, the Revolution overthrew their throne. Between the Sacred Heart and Satan, ‘there is no middle ground.’

Charles X, though, was much loved by his people of France. The revolution of 1830 was not at all a spontaneous uprising, rather it was a sedition remotely controlled by the ‘hard core’ of the Revolution, bourgeois and financiers devotees of Voltaire, for the benefit of Louis-Philippe d’Orleans, an ambitious prince committed to the principles of 1789. This revolution was also the result of the ill will that was brewing in the Chamber of Deputies against the Church, the King and his ministers. And Charles X, having sworn allegiance to the Charter, refused to take the necessary action for the salvation of France, for the good of his people, in the name of God! He allowed himself to be overthrown in three days, accepting an abdication to which nothing bound him.

What this Restoration lacked in order to bear lasting fruit, our Father concluded, were kings who wanted to reign as true ‘lieutenants of Christ,’ accountable to Him and Him alone, and placing all their trust in His Divine Heart.

EPILOGUE

Was the great design of the Sacred Heart definitively compromised?

A young novice of the Sisters of Charity of Paris, Sister Catherine Labouré, had a supernatural revelation of the tragedy that was unfolding. On June 6, 1830, she recounts, “Our Lord appeared to me as a King with the Cross on His breast, in the Blessed Sacrament, during Holy Mass. It seemed as though the Cross were slipping down under the feet of Our Lord and that He was being stripped of all His regalia: everything had slipped to the ground. It was then that I had the most dismal and sad thoughts, thoughts about the King of this earth being dethroned and stripped of all his royal regalia, thoughts about the significant loss that we were going to suffer and which, moreover, I am unable to explain.”

In the person of Charles X, it was the reign of Christ that the revolution of 1830 overthrew.

With the legitimate King in exile, there was no longer a monarch to obey the demands of the Sacred Heart. The Kingdom was delivered into the hands of the impious and corrupting powers of money. This new French revolution once again set Europe ablaze, especially Poland and Italy. Under the vast influence of Felicité de Lamennais, the Church saw the cancer of liberalism, of openness to revolutionary ideas develop within her. Satan, unleashed, spread his empire everywhere, and apostasy prevailed throughout Christendom, leading to the loss of souls.

Are unfaithful, ungrateful men definitively abandoned by Heaven to their chastisement? Who could obtain salvation for us, save us from the infernal Serpent?

The answer is in the following article!●

Brother Joseph-Sarto of Christ the King.