Life and works of saint Margaret Mary (1)
Nowhere else does Jesus ask any other but Saint Margaret Mary to unite herself to this prayer, but quickly, Christians had the conviction that the desire of Jesus was spreading to them too. She was encouraged by the Church, and Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptio, would acknowledge that the Holy hour is a response to the desire of Jesus as a practice of love, compassion and reparation :
If the anguish of Jesus in Gethsemane is so strong, it is because He realises that His Sacrifice of love would only meet with indifference and revolt from most of mankind. During this hour, temptation is at its most dreadful, the final attack of the Enemy : making Jesus that His Offering would be in vain. In the bitter solitude of the Garden of Olives, the Lord, crushed by suffering, lives out the words of the psalmist : “ I had hoped for compassion, but in vain, I could not find any comforters” (Ps 69:21).
Comfort the Heart of Jesus It means in a certain way to comfort the Heart of Jesus by sharing the anguish of loneliness experienced at this time, while the drama of His Passion and His Crucifiction are happening. It doesn’t just mean a simple time of personal prayer. What it means is more of a structured prayer around meditation on the mystery of the agony of Christ, so that one is present in one’s heart, exactly where the Apostles, exhausted with fatigue, could not find the strength in them “to watch an hour” with Him : There where the Holy hour is lived as a parish, or where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed within a community. But you may also live it in your home, as an individual or together. One takes a hymn that puts one in the presence of Jesus. One reads one of the Gospels on the Agony of Jesus in Gethsemani. One can split it into three or four passages, in between which one can meditate for fifteen to twenty minutes ; one can also sing at each interval. At the end of the Hour, where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed, one puts It away in the Tabernacle. One can then finish with a hymn in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Jesus to sister Margaret Mary
