Reflection on Today’s Feast

By Fr. Sean Hagerty, SJ

I have no doubt that you have heard the oft used idiom, “That’s too good to be true.” It is an expression used when we encounter something so fantastic that it immediately inspires skepticism. Most of the time, the skepticism is healthy and keeps us from making a foolish mistake. Yet too often that skepticism becomes the first and only response which closes us off from things that are truly wonderful. It is something that can keep us from seeing God in our everyday life.

Today we celebrate the memorial of Claude La Colombière, a 17th century French Jesuit. What he is best known for was helping to cultivate and popularize the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. After he finished tertianship, the last stage of Jesuit formation, he was assigned as superior of a small community in Paray-le-Monial where he also served as spiritual director and confessor to a group of Visitation Sisters. In this role, he would become acquainted with Sr. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a member of the Visitation community who was experiencing visions of the Sacred Heart. Unfortunately, Margaret Mary’s visions were ill received, why would Jesus be communicating a message of mercy to a French nun in a tiny, rural, French village? Put another way, Margaret Mary’s visions were received with skepticism.

While it easy to look back and see that skepticism as foolish, it made a lot of sense given the context. The Church, and the Society of Jesus in particular, was in the midst of combating Jansenism, a movement which called into question humanity’s innate goodness and the efficaciousness of grace in daily life. Many tried to adopt Jansenist ideas into mainstream Catholicism, emphasizing human sinfulness, divine judgement, and a belief that only an “elect” few would be saved. Margaret Mary’s visions were in direct opposition, they presented a vision of a merciful and loving God. It portrayed Jesus’s love as overflowing; it was a love which sought to engage with all people. The Sacred Heart was a message of radical inclusion which opened the possibility of salvation to all. For many of Margaret Mary’s superiors, such a vision of Christ was simply too good to be true. Yet, Claude believed that Margaret Mary’s visions were authentic. He did not place limits on God’s goodness, nor did he think Jesus was stingy with his love. Rather, his own experience of Christ in the Spiritual Exercises affirmed what he heard from Margaret Mary – he knew that he was a sinner loved by God. On the advice of Claude la Colombière, Margaret Mary’s visions were affirmed by the Church. Claude, along with his Jesuit brothers, would become the earliest proponents of the Sacred Heart. It would become a hallmark of Jesuit spirituality and touch every work of the Society around the world. 

Claude would then be missioned as personal chaplain to the Duchess of York in the Court of St. James. He was granted special permission to celebrate Mass, but the presence of a Jesuit in a protestant court made many uneasy. Claude was falsely accused and imprisoned in a dark, cold, cell which took a significant toll on his health. The charges were dropped, and he was sent to France where he spent his last days as a spiritual father to young Jesuits. His devotion to Jesus was never diminished and his example would inspire generations of Jesuits. Claude believed that when it came to Jesus nothing was too good to be true, can we say the same?   

St. Claude La Colombière, pray for us!

Fr. Sean Hagerty, SJ, is theAssistant Director & Promoter of Vocations for the USA East Province of the Society of Jesus.

Previous Reflections

February 15, 2022 – By Fr. Thomas McCoog, SJ

The possibility that forty English Jesuits had convened in a provincial congregation in April 1678 at St. James’s Palace, London, amazed me. As I investigated this further, I encountered Saint Claude residing in the palace as chaplain to Mary of Modena, Duchess of York. Who was this Claude La Colombière? If I ever thought of him, it was as patron of the curia (headquarters) of the former Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus.

Claude La Colombière was born in a small town in southern France not far from Lyon in 1641. He entered the Jesuit novitiate in Avignon, still a papal enclave in southern France, in 1658. Ordained in Paris in 1669, he returned to Lyon to teach rhetoric and to preach. After tertianship and final vows in February 1675, he departed for Paray-le-Monial as superior of the Jesuit residence.

During his approximately two-year sojourn, he befriended Margaret Mary Alacoque, a Visitation nun. Her visions of the Sacred Heart began in December 1673. In one vision she saw the union of her heart with those of La Colombière and Jesus. Jesus also asked that a feast be established after the octave of Corpus Christi to honor his heart and to make reparations for offenses that he had suffered. Claude obviously found the visions convincing, but they had not been authenticated by ecclesiastical authorities.

In the autumn of 1676, for reasons not exactly known, he was selected as chaplain to the Duchess of York and sent to London where simmering anti-Catholicism was coming to a boil because of suspicions that James, Duke of York and heir to the English throne, had become a Roman Catholic. The Anglican Church and the general public feared that James as king would repudiate Protestantism and restore Roman Catholicism. The appearance of a renegade Catholic Titus Oates in September, 1678 unleashed a moral panic with his wild tales of a “Popish Plot,” instigated, of course, by Jesuits, the traditional villains of English anti-Catholicism, to assassinate King Charles II in favor of his brother James. Many were imprisoned; some were martyred. La Colombière was arrested in November and imprisoned in the King’s Bench Prison. Although imprisoned only for a few months—he was exiled to France in January 1679—the conditions aggravated his tuberculosis and weakened his health. He returned to Lyon as spiritual director to Jesuit scholastics. He died of pulmonary tuberculosis in Paray-le-Monial on February 15, 1682. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI on June 16, 1929 and canonized by Pope John Paul II on May 31, 1992. James, Duke of York, did in fact become a Catholic and ascended the English throne upon Charles’s death in 1685, but was overthrown in the so-called “Glorious Revolution” in 1688.

St. Claude intrigued me. The Queen’s Chapel, where La Colombière most likely preached, is rarely open to the public, but I secured permission to visit. There I prayed. I made a pilgrimage to the site of the King’s Bench Prison, which had been torn down in the nineteenth century. Finally, decades later, I prayed at Claude’s tomb at Paray-le-Monial. What attracted me? His gentleness. His subtle touch. His understanding. Devotion to the Sacred Heart is not mentioned in his extant sermons. He did however preach on mercy. Claude begins an undated sermon cautiously: it is a common assertion that one should always qualify God’s mercy lest sinners take advantage of it and not reform. Should fear of such possible abuses silence us on the subject? Should we say nothing about the “mercy of which the whole world is full”? Claude reminds his hearers of Jesus’s invitation to those who labor, who are burdened, who are sinners to find rest in him. Should we refuse to preach on God’s love, on mercy? “No, Christian company,” La Colombière continues, “I cannot stop myself from telling you my thoughts on this subject.” He did not stop nor should we.

St. Claude La Colombière remains the patron of the Jesuit residence on Roland Avenue in Baltimore, no longer the provincial curia but a Jesuit retirement community, of which I am the superior. We may not move as quickly as we once did. Our voices may not hold up for a series of sermons or lectures. But we have not stopped giving witness to God’s mercy.