dinary recollection of all my senses and powers. Jesus Christ my sweet Master, presented Himself to me all resplendent with glory. His five wounds shining like five suns. From His sacred Humanity issued flames on all sides, but especially from His adorable Breast, which resembled a furnace, and which was open, and disclosed to me His most amiable Heart, the living source of these flames. He revealed to me, at the same time, the ineffable marvel of His pure love, and excess of His love towards men. He complained of their ingratitude, and said He felt this more sensibly than any other pain in His Passion," &c., &c. To make reparation for the coldness and ingratitude of mankind, our Lord gave her the following command: "You shall receive Me in the Holy Communion as often as obedience shall permit you. And, secondly, you shall communicate on the first Friday of each month." The Saint adds: "At this moment His Heart opened, and there issued from it so burning a flame that I thought I should have been consumed by it."

Twice the holy nun fell dangerously ill with a burning fever. Her superior, Mother de Saumaire, commanded her to ask. her recovery of the Lord Himself as a test and assurance that He Himself was the author of these singular graces; that these visions and revelations came from the Spirit of God, and not the spirit of darkness. She obeyed, and at once her health was restored. On this same year, on the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, Jesus Christ manifested to her more clearly still, that He had designed her as the apostle of His Sacred Heart as also its hidden treasures. At the command of her confessor, Father Rolin, S.J., she thus describes it :

“One day, on the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, 1674, after having received from my Divine Saviour a favour almost similar to that bestowed upon the beloved Disciple on the evening of the Last Supper, His Divine Heart was represented to me as on a throne of fire and flames, shedding rays on every side, brighter than the sun, and transparent as crystal. The wound which he received upon the Cross appeared there visibly; a crown of thorns encircled His Divine Heart, and it was surmounted by a cross. These instruments of His Passion signified, as my Divine Master gave me to understand, that it was the unbounded love He had for men that had been the source of all His sufferings, and that from the first moment of His Incarnation all these torments had been present to Him, and that from the first moment the cross had been, so to say, planted in His Heart; that from that moment He accepted all the pains and humiliations which His Sacred Humanity was to suffer during the course of His mortal life, and even the outrages to which His love for men exposed Him till the end

of the world in the Blessed Sacrament. He gave me to understand that it was the great desire He had to be perfectly loved by men that had made Him form the design of disclosing to them His Heart, and of giving them in these latter times this last effort of His love, by proposing to them an object and a means so calculated to engage them to love Him, and to love Him solidly, opening to them all the treasures of love, mercy, and grace, of sanctification and salvation which It contains, in order that all should wish to pay and procure for Him all the honors and love which they can, and might be enriched in profusion with the Divine treasures of which it is the fruitful and inexhaustible source."

We all love to have in our book, or hanging on the walls in our rooms, a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This devotion, too, had its origin in revelation made by our Divine Lord to His chosen servant, Blessed Margaret Mary:-" The Lord assured me," she says, "that He took a signal pleasure in being honoured under the representation of this Heart of flesh, in order, He added, to touch the insensible hearts of men. And He promised me that He would shed in abundance on all who should honor it, all the treasures of grace with which it is filled. Wherever this image shall be exposed for special veneration, it shall draw down upon the spot every kind of blessing." Let us all, then, have in our houses, in our rooms, pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in order that we may share in these promised blessings, and be constantly reminded of the love of our Blessed Lord.

One revelation more: In the following year, the time 1675, during the Octave of Corpus Christi, our Blessed Lord revealed to our Saint His wish to establish in the Church the Feast of the Sacred Heart. At the command of her confessor, Father de la Colombiere, she committed to writing an account of the signal favor. "As I was before the Blessed Sacrament," she writes, "on a day within the Octave of Corpus Christi, I received from my God excessive graces of His love, feeling myself touched with a desire of making Him some return, and of rendering Him love for love.' Then His wounds were brilliant as the sun, and flame issued on all sides from His Sacred Body, but especially from His Heart, to which He pointed, saying: "See this Heart, which has loved menso much, that it has spared nothing, even to the exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify to them its love; and in return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, contempt, irreverence, sacrilege, and coldness in this Sacrament of love. . . . For this reason, I wish that the first Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi, be consecrated as a Special Feast in honor of my Heart, by communicating on that day,

and by making a solemn act of reparation for the indignities it has received during the time it has been exposed on my altars. I promise also, that my Heart shall expand itself to shed in abundance the influence of its Divine love upon those who shall pay it this honor, and induce others to do the same." Thus, sister Margaret Mary had her mission from the Divine lips of Jesus Christ Himself-a mission to make known to the world, the love of His Sacred Heart. Well might the timid humble nun tremble all over at the magnitude of her task! When God commanded Moses to bring forth "the children of Israel out of Egypt," Moses complained and said to God: "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? . . . Lo, I am of uncircumcised lips; how will Pharaoh hear me?" (Exodus, chaps iii., vi.) And the Lord said to Moses: "I will be with thee." And when the Almighty commanded Jonas to arise and go to Nineveh, the great city, and preach in it . . . "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be destroyed," Jonas rose up to flee into Tharsis from the face of the Lord."-(Jonas, i., 3). These great saints shrank from the difficult mission imposed upon them by God. No wonder the sensitive sister, thus cried out to her Lord: "To whom, O Lord, dost thou address thyself? to a poor creature, and so wretched a sinner, that her very unworthiness would be even capable of hindering the accomplishment of the design;" and the Lord said to her, as He said to Moses, "Fear not, I will be with thee." Yes, the Saint feared not, trusting in the Sacred Heart. Like all God's servants, she had her trials and contradictions, crosses and humiliations; in these she found her joy and glory; she lived to see the devotion established in her own convent, and in other houses of the Visitation. On the 21st of June, 1686, she made her novices join with her in a solemn Te Deum of thanksgiving, and said, "I shall die happy, I have now nothing more to desire, since the Sacred Heart of My Saviour is known and begins to reign over the hearts of others;" and, doubtlessly, prayed, as holy Simeon: "Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word, in peace. Because my eyes have seen thy salvation."—(Luke, ii., 29). The great Feast of Corpus Christi owes its origin to a private revelation made by God to Blessed Juliana of Liege, in the year 1210; so we are indebted to the revelations made by the same God to Blessed Margaret Mary, in the year 1675, for the Feast of the Sacred Heart. It is true that we are bound to believe, under penalty of shipwreck of Faith, those revelations alone contained in the word of God-the Sacred Scriptures. It is also true that the Church never proposes to our belief-never approves-in fact, expresses no judgment upon these private revelations. In the

many Bulls and decrees by which the Church has sanctioned and approved of the Feast and Devotions of the Sacred Heart, she, in her wise caution, never even alludes to these revelations. At the same time we have evident marks and motives of credibility for these visions, which have been examined, approved, and believed by learned and holy men: hence they are not to be treated with levity or ridicule, as sometimes happens with half educated Catholics, but with respect and reverence.

Thus we evidently see the finger of God, and the interior action of the Holy Spirit, in the origin of the Devotion of the Sacred Heart. The marvellous rapidity with which it spread throughout Christendom shows the working of Divine Providence. We are not to forget that these revelations rest upon the authority of a holy soul who lived and died in the odour of sanctity, and whose heroic virtues God Himself confirmed by great miracles before and after her death. We are also to bear in mind, that the Church has approved, by many Bulls, the Devotion to the Sacred Heart; and, lastly, and, perhaps, the most important of all—that the Church, in the Decree of Beatification of Margaret Mary, says that "God selected this holy nun to establish the Devotion to the Sacred Heart: thereby giving great weight, if not some indirect sanction, to the visions above-named. We shall conclude this paper with the words of the Decree of Beatification pronounced by our Holy Father Pius the Ninth, the 29th of August, 1864 :-"That Jesus might the more enkindle the fire of Divine Charity, He would have the veneration and worship of His most Sacred Heart established and promoted in His Church. For who is there so hard-hearted and unfeeling as not to be moved to make return of love to that most amiable Heart, which was pierced and wounded with a lance, in order that our souls might find therein a hiding place and a secure retreat, to which we might betake ourselves in safety from the attacks and snares of our enemies. Who would not be provoked to show every mark of love and honor to that Sacred Heart, from the wound of which flowed forth water and blood, the source of our life and salvation? In order to establish and spread far and wide amongst mankind this so saving and just Devotion, our Saviour vouchsafed to choose His servant, the venerable Margaret Mary, who by the innocence of her life and constant practice of every virtue, proved herself worthy, with the aid of Divine grace, of this exalted office and charge."

T. H. K.

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DOCUMENTS

I.

THE IRISH HIERARCHY AND CATHOLIC EDUCATION.

THE

HE following resolutions were adopted at a meeting of the Archbishops and Bishops of Ireland, held in the Presbytery, Marlborough-street, Dublin, on Wednesday the 15th, and Thursday the 16th October, 1873

Resolution No. 1.-That, with a view to the improvement of Catholic Education, and in order to make our University a great centre of Catholic education throughout Ireland, we will take immediate steps to affiliate to it the several Colleges, Seminaries, and higher schools of our respective dioceses; that we approve and adopt the scheme proposed to our meeting relative to examinations for Matriculation and Degrees in Arts, Philosophy, and Theology; and that we sanction the arrangements for the creation of Bourses and Exhibitions, and authorize the University Council to complete and carry out this scheme in all its details.

Resolution No. 2.—That we pledge ourselves to have the prescribed collection for the Catholic University made every year on the third Sunday of November, in every parish of our respective dioceses, giving it precedence of all local claims.

Resolution No. 3.-That, whilst earnestly exhorting our flocks to support the Catholic University by their generous contributions, and to sustain by their influence our Catholic Educational Institutions, we renew our most solemn admonitions to Catholic parents to keep their children far away from all condemned colleges and schools.

Resolution No 4-That, whilst we sympathise with our people in every legitimate effort to ameliorate the condition and to promote the temporal welfare of our common country, we, as Bishops, call upon them to use all constitutional means to uphold the cause of Catholic Education, and we pledge ourselves to support, and exhort our people to support, as candidates for Parliamentary honours, only those who will, in Parliament and out of Parliament, strenuously sustain our Educational Rights, which are inseparably bound up with the best interests of religion.

Resolution No. 5.-That the administration, financial and disciplinary, of St. Patrick's House of Residence, Stephen'sgreen, be confided to the Jesuit Fathers.