Our Lady of the Sacred Heart

Our Lady of the Sacred Heart
The image of Madonna and Child crowned by Pope Pius IX on 25 February 1869.
Location	Issoudun, France
Date	May 31
Witness	Jules Chevalier
Type	Marian apparition
Approval	Pope Pius IX
Shrine	Basilica of Issoudun
Patronage	Difficult and desperate causes
Attributes	Madonna and Child Jesus, Serpentine

Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (Spanish: Nuestra Señora del Sagrado Corazón French: Notre Dame du Sacré Coeur Italian: Nostra Signora del Sacro Cuore) is a Roman Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary designed by Father Jules Chevalier in 1857 based on an alleged Marian apparition.

Pope Pius IX granted a formal decree of Canonical coronation to the image on 25 February 1869. The same Pontiff raised the sanctuary to the status of Minor Basilica on 17 July 1874. Pope Benedict XV granted a second decree of Pontifical coronation on 15 August 1919 towards the image, signed and notarized for the Archbishop of Bourges, Monsigneur Martin Jerome Izart.

In later years, modern artistic renditions of the same Marian title was romanticized and popularized. Pope Pius X granted a Pontifical decree of coronation towards one of these revised images on 21 August 1910 for the “Archconfraternity of the Our Lady of Sacred Heart” enshrined in Averbode Abbey, Belgium.

History[]

In 1854, in Issoudun (France), during a Novena of the Immaculate Conception, Father Jules Chevalier promises that if his dream of forming a missionary congregation in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus becomes a reality, he will teach the faithful to love the Virgin Mary of a special way.^[1]

Article III - In testimony of gratitude to Mary, they will consider her as their Founder and Sovereign, they will associate her with all her works and they will make her love in a peculiar way

— Chevalier's promise with Virgin Mary

During various novena prayers made to the Virgin Mary, Chevalier obtained several economic donations that allow him to build the Basilica of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in Issoudun, France and in 1857 he consolidated a confraternity and gave Mary the new name:^[2]

...When pronouncing this name, we thank and glorify God, because he has chosen Mary among all creatures to form in his virginal womb the adorable Heart of Jesus. We recognize through this special title, a summary in a certain way of the other titles of Mary, the ineffable power that the sweetest Savior has granted her over him adorable Heart. We beseech this compassionate Mother leads us to the heart of her Son... As the power of Mary surpasses what our weak reason can conceive, and Jesus always listens to the humble supplications and prayers of his Mother, we will entrust her with the success of difficult and desperate causes ...

— Jules Chevalier 1857

Iconography[]

The depiction of the Marian image as canonically crowned by Pope Pius IX in 25 February 1869.

Julio Chevalier created in 1861 a stained-glass window where Mary and Jesus of feet appear, the boy touches his heart with the left hand and with his right he points to his mother in high, with a serpentine Satan on the heel of Mary.

According to the notarized Pontifical letters from the Vatican Secret Archives, Pope Pius IX granted a decree of Canonical coronation to a statue image, coinciding the erection of the Congregation as a Catholic Archconfraternity on 25 February 1869.

Revised iconography[]

At the end of the 19th century, the Vatican decided to make changes to the image, and begins the representation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus while still a child and in the arms of his mother, while Mary shows the heart of his son, as ^[3] the case of Averbode Abbey in Belgium that was Pontifically crowned in 1910, or the one displayed in Piazza Navona in Rome, and on the high altar of the Myeongdong Cathedral in South Korea.

References[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.