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Margaret Alacoque was born in 1647 in France, the only daughter of Claude and Philiberte Lamyn Alacoque. Margaret always showed an intense love for the Blessed Sacrament and preferred silence over typical childhood play. She began practicing severe corporal mortification after her First Communion at age nine.

On December 27, 1673, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque was praying alone in the chapel of her convent when the Sacred Heart appeared to her. Jesus’ body was filled with light, and His Heart was on fire, bleeding and crowned with thorns. Our Lord said to her, “Behold this Heart which has loved men so much! My Divine Heart is so inflamed with love for mankind . . . that it can no longer contain within itself the flames of its burning charity and must spread them abroad by your means.”

Bishop Donald J. Hying of Madison is inviting everyone to a special celebration on Friday, June 12. The bishop will consecrate the Diocese of Madison to the Sacred Heart of Jesus during a 7 p.m. Mass at Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Church, part of Epiphany of the Lord Parish, 221 Columbus St., Sun Prairie.

For Elowen, the “New World” had a sharp, metallic taste. It was the taste of the soot in the Chicago kitchens where she had scrubbed floors, and the bitter copper of the coins she saved to buy her passage to the Wisconsin woods.

The Sunday sky over Philadelphia in October 1774 was a flat, discouraging gray. Inside the taverns, the air was thick with tobacco and the heavy talk of treason. The First Continental Congress was deadlocked, and for men like John Adams, the pressure of a looming revolution was a physical weight.

The first sound was not a voice, but a vibration. A bronze bell, pitted by salt air, struck a single, clear note that rippled across the coastline of present-day Georgia. For a moment, the ancient choir of frogs and cicadas fell silent, as if the wilderness itself were holding its breath.

Holy Cross Parish invites all in the Diocese of Madison to a multimedia exhibit that will be visiting St. Bernard Church in Middleton from May 26 through June 2!