Saint Teresa of Avila

October 15 is the Feast Day of Saint Teresa of Avila. Born in 1515 during the Protestant Reformation, St. Teresa was a great mystic and reformer of the Church. She established the Reform of the Discalced Carmelite Order with St. John of the Cross, which promoted a more isolated and austere life in the monasteries, freeing Nuns to obtain deeper prayer and union with God. At a time when the Catholic Church was viewed by some as corrupt and deteriorating, this work and her theological writing helped combat the Protestant perspective and religious wars in Europe.

St. Teresa received many supernatural gifts including the famous encounter of the Transverberation. During this mystical experience, an angel pierced Teresa’s heart with a flaming golden spear of God’s love. Bernini was inspired to sculpt his masterpiece, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, around this transcendental experience, in the funerary chapel in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque

Born in 1647 in Burgundy, France, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque was a nun of the Visitation Order and was greatly recognized for her devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. As a child, Margaret Mary was bed-ridden for 4 years with rheumatic fever. Upon promising the Blessed Virgin that she would consecrate herself to religious life, she was restored to perfect health. Later, at age 17, after attending a ball one evening, she had a vision of Jesus, scourged and bloody. He reproached her for forgetting Him, while also expressing His love for her. She remembered her vow and at age 24 entered the Visitation Convent at Paray-le-Monial, France in 1671.

During her time in the monastery, Our Lord Jesus appeared to Margaret Mary on several occasions to impart to her the mission of spreading devotion to His Most Sacred Heart. His instruction included devoting the first Friday of every month to his Sacred Heart and to pray for an hour between 11 p.m. and midnight every Thursday. These two practices, the First Friday and the Holy Hour, as well as the iconic image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Christ’s burning furnace of charity, have since become widely known and utilized among Catholics throughout the world. The Feast of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque is October 17.