Mary of the Divine Heart

Maria Droste zu Vischering spent her childhood with her family in the Castle of Darfeld, in Rosendahl near Münster, and was a child full of life. Her mother stated, "She doesn't mind her dress. She is running into the mud, jumping into the wet grass and the bushes until she is so dirty that she has to change every stitch".[3]

Castle of Darfeld, where Maria Droste zu Vischering spent her childhood.

Vischering was taught at home by governesses. On April 25, 1875, Vischering and her brother Max received their First Communion. In April 1879, Vischering continued her education at the boarding school of the Sacré-Coeur Sisters in Riedenburg, in Bavaria. While there, she heard a homily on Psalm 45: "Listen, my daughter,... forget your father's house..., the king will fall in love with your beauty". Vischering decided that she should become a religious. During the spring of 1879, while she was listening to a particular devotion of one of the sisters to the Heart of Christ, Maria Droste zu Vischering reached an important conclusion: "I began to understand that without the spirit of sacrifice the love of the Heart of Jesus is merely an illusion".

Maria Droste zu Vischering at 15 years old in Darfeld Castle (1878) and as novice nun in Münster (1889).

While at school, she contracted pneumonia and, shortly before her 18th birthday, returned home to recover.[3] In 1883, at the chapel of the Castle of Darfeld, Vischering is said to have had an interior locution of Jesus Christ who told her: "Thou shalt be the wife of My Heart". On 5 August of that same year, on the Silver Jubilee of her parents' marriage, Vischering told them of her desire to become a religious.

Painting representing the vision received by Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart Droste zu Vischering. Jesus had revealed her, "By the brightness of this light, peoples and nations will be illumined, and they will be warmed by its ardour".

On June 10, 1898, her confessor at the Good Shepherd monastery wrote to Pope Leo XIII to state that Vischering had received a message from Christ requesting the Pope to consecrate the entire world to the Sacred Heart. The Pope initially did not believe her and took no action. However, on January 6, 1899, she wrote another letter asking that in addition to the consecration, the first Fridays of the month be observed in honour of the Sacred Heart. In the letter, she also referred to the recent illness of the Pope and stated that Christ had assured her that Pope Leo XIII would live until he had performed the consecration to the Sacred Heart. The theologian Laurent Volken states that this had an emotional impact on Leo XIII, despite the theological issues concerning the consecration of non-Christians.[4][5]

Pope Leo XIII commissioned an inquiry on the basis of her revelation and church tradition. In his 1899 encyclical letter Annum sacrum, he decreed that the consecration of the entire human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus should take place on June 11, 1899. In the encyclical, he referred to the illness about which Vischering had written: "There is one further reason that urges us to realize our design: We do not want it to pass by unnoticed. It is personal in nature but just as important: God the author of all Good has saved us by healing us recently from a dangerous disease".[6]

Pope Leo XIII also composed the Prayer of Consecration to the Sacred Heart and included it in the encyclical. Pope Pius X later decreed for the consecration of the human race, performed by Pope Leo XIII, to be renewed each year.[7]

Convent of the Good Shepherd in Porto.

Tomb-reliquary of Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart inside the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Ermesinde).

"Know this, My daughter, that by the charity of My Heart I desire to pour out floods of graces through your heart over the hearts of others. This is why people will get close to you with confidence. ...No one, even the most hardened sinner, will leave your presence without having received, in one way or another, consolation, relief, or a special grace."[10]

The Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Ermesinde, Portugal.

"For a long time, as you know, I have wanted to build a church on the Good Shepherd property. Uncertain as to whom this church should be dedicated, I have prayed and consulted many people without reaching a decision. On the First Friday of this month, I asked Our Lord to enlighten me. After the Holy Communion, He said to me: I desire that the church be consecrated to My Heart. You must erect here a place of reparation; from My part I will make it a place of graces. I will distribute copiously graces to all who live in this house [the Convent], those who live here now, those who will live here after, and even to the people of their relations. Then He told me that He wished this church, above all, to be a place of reparation for sacrileges and to obtain graces for the clergy."[11]