Paray-le-Monial Shrine

The town and its name

Paray-le-Monial is a small town in Saône-et-Loire, in southern Burgundy, on the banks of the Bourbince, with about nine thousand inhabitants today.^[2] The village of Paray is older than its monks; its name is thought to derive from the late Latin paries, "wall", a medieval place-name often given to an old enclosure or fortified mound.^[3] The nickname "le Monial" — "of the monks" — was only added later, once the Cluniac priory had made the town a place of monks and a retreat for the lords and abbots of Cluny.^[4] Paray was therefore, from the Middle Ages onward, a town shaped by monastic life: a detail not unrelated to its future vocation as a shrine.

The foundation of the priory (973-999)

In 973, Count Lambert of Chalon, with the support of Mayeul, abbot of Cluny, founded a Benedictine monastery on the banks of the Bourbince; the church was consecrated in 977 under the patronage of the Holy Saviour, the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist.^[5] As early as 999, the monastery passed under the authority of the great abbey of Cluny and became a Cluniac priory, which it remained until the Revolution.^[6] Paray thus entered the orbit of the most powerful monastic reform in the medieval West — the very one which, since its foundation in 909, had set out to revive Benedictine life and restore splendour to the liturgy.^[7]

The Romanesque basilica of Saint Hugh

The church visited today — often called "Paray III" by historians, as it follows two earlier buildings — is the work of Hugh of Semur, that is Saint Hugh of Cluny, abbot of Cluny from 1049 to 1109 and one of the great builders of his age.^[8] It was he who in 1088 launched the colossal building site of Cluny III, the largest church in Christendom before St Peter's Basilica. The priory church of Paray was begun in the same impetus, in the last quarter of the 11th century, and a consecration is recorded around 1109, the very year of Abbot Hugh's death.^[9]

A pious formula, too often repeated, must be set aside here: one sometimes reads that Saint Hugh "laid the first stone" of Paray himself. The documentary sources attest that he had the priory church rebuilt and was its patron; the personal gesture of laying the first stone belongs to local tradition rather than established fact.^[10] The essential point remains: Paray is indeed an architectural daughter of Cluny, willed by the most illustrious of its abbots, canonised as early as 1120.

A "reduction" of Cluny III

The abbey church of Cluny III was destroyed after the Revolution; only one transept arm survives. Yet the priory church of Paray, left intact, offers the most faithful reduced image of it in existence. Romanesque art historians readily describe it as a small-scale model of Cluny: the stepped roofing of the chevet, the three-storey elevation and the profile of the vaults of the great abbey church are all found there, but on more modest proportions — three aisles instead of five, a simplified transept and chevet.^[11]

Its dimensions are those of a great Romanesque church, not of a cathedral: 63.5 metres long, 22.35 metres wide, a nave vault rising to 22 metres, for a total height of 56 metres.^[12] Two bell towers frame the facade; an octagonal tower rises over the transept crossing. The light-coloured stone, the spacious choir and the purity of the volumes make it one of the masterpieces of Cluniac Burgundian Romanesque, listed as a historic monument as early as 1846.^[13]

This church was first dedicated to Our Lady. It would only become the basilica of the Sacred Heart in the 19th century, under the pressure of a history which, two centuries earlier, had been played out not beneath its vaults, but in a neighbouring chapel.

From Verosvres to the Visitation cloister

Margaret Alacoque was born on 22 July 1647 at Verosvres, in Burgundy, into a family of rural minor gentry.^[14] Her childhood was marked by her father's early death, a long illness that kept her bedridden for several years, and an intense Eucharistic piety. After long hesitation, she entered the monastery of the Visitation of Holy Mary at Paray-le-Monial on 25 May 1671, where she made her vows in November 1672, taking the name of Margaret Mary.^[15]

An unobtrusive nun, sometimes judged awkward by her community, she led a hidden life, with nothing outwardly to distinguish her. It was in this obscurity that the unexpected occurred.

The Visitation monastery

The Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary had been founded in 1610 by Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Jane de Chantal, for women called to a life of gentleness, prayer and humility rather than spectacular austerities. The monastery of Paray, founded in 1626, has a chapel built around 1633: it was there, before the tabernacle or during the office, that the apparitions would take place.^[16] Salesian spirituality — trusting abandonment, the primacy of love — was the very ground in which the revelation of a Heart was to blossom.

"He honoured me with his conversations sometimes as a friend [...]" — Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Autobiography^[17]

The apparitions of Paray do not form a single narrative but a series, spread over two years, in the chapel of the Visitation. Tradition distinguishes three great moments.

The first great apparition (27 December 1673)

On 27 December 1673, the feast of Saint John the Evangelist — the one who had rested his head on Christ's breast at the Last Supper —, Margaret Mary received the first great manifestation. According to her account, Jesus made her rest at length upon his breast and showed her the wonders of his love, revealing to her his Heart as the source of a burning charity.^[18] The central symbol of the devotion — a flaming heart, crowned with thorns, surmounted by a cross — was already given.

The request for reparatory communion (1674)

During 1674, before the Blessed Sacrament exposed, a further apparition joined to the Heart of Jesus a precise request: a reparatory communion, and the practice of turning to this Heart to console his scorned love.^[19] It is to this period that later tradition attaches the devotion of the nine First Fridays, although its numbered formulation came later.

The "great apparition" of June 1675

The most famous — the one called the "great apparition" — took place in June 1675, during the octave of the Blessed Sacrament (Corpus Christi).^[20] It was then that Christ spoke, according to the visionary, the words which devotion would remember above all:

"Behold this Heart which has so loved men, that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify its love to them; and in return I receive from most only ingratitude, by their irreverences and their sacrileges, and by the coldness and contempt they have for me in this Sacrament of love. [...]" — Words reported by Saint Margaret Mary, Autobiography^[21]

Christ then asked that a feast be instituted in honour of his Heart, fixed on the Friday following the octave of Corpus Christi, with reparatory communion and solemn reparation to make amends for the outrages done to his love, particularly in the Eucharist.^[22] This request — a new liturgical feast, demanded by an unknown nun — seemed extravagant at the time. It would take nearly two centuries for it to be fully granted.

The twelve promises: a late codification

Popular devotion to the Sacred Heart has fixed twelve promises attached to the practice of this devotion — from peace in families to the famous "Great Promise" of final perseverance for whoever receives communion on nine consecutive First Fridays. Historical honesty, however, requires a qualification which many pious images pass over in silence: these twelve promises do not form a single text dictated in 1675.

The Jesuit theologian Bertrand de Margerie showed that most of these favours are scattered through the saint's letters written after 1685, and that the "Great Promise" itself comes from a letter dated 1688 or 1689 — well after the apparitions.^[23] The fixed numbered list as we know it is a codification from the end of the 19th century, whose worldwide spread owes much to an American businessman who, from 1882 onward, had millions of Sacred Heart pictures printed with them.^[24] Recognising this history in no way disqualifies the promises: they faithfully condense the trust which the saint drew from the Heart of Jesus. But a shrine that wants to carry authority must not present as an oracle of 1675 what is a faithful, and late, synthesis of her whole experience.

A solitary mystic, however sincere, would not have sufficed to found a universal devotion. An ecclesial discernment was needed, and it came through one man: the Jesuit Claude la Colombiere.

Born in 1641 at Saint-Symphorien-d'Ozon, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1659, made his solemn profession in 1674, and was appointed in 1675 superior of the Jesuit residence at Paray and confessor of the Visitation monastery.^[25] A rigorous theologian and renowned preacher, he had no reason to let himself be deceived by an excitable nun. Yet, after examination, he recognised the authenticity of the graces received by Margaret Mary, ordered her to put her experiences in writing — hence the Autobiography we read — and consecrated himself first to the Sacred Heart.^[26] His spiritual authority gave the visionary the assurance she lacked, and gave the devotion its first theologian.

Sent to England in 1676 as preacher to the Duchess of York, he was imprisoned then banished during a wave of anti-Catholic persecution, and returned to die exhausted at Paray-le-Monial in 1682, at forty-one years of age.^[27] Beatified by Pius XI in 1929, he would be canonised by Saint John Paul II on 31 May 1992.^[28] Margaret Mary and Claude la Colombiere rest today in the same town: the confidante and the witness, united in the shrine they unknowingly founded.

Margaret Mary died at Paray on 17 October 1690, at forty-three, without having seen the feast she called for.^[29] Her cause progressed slowly, even as the devotion gained ground, sustained by the Jesuits and the Visitation. Recognition came in stages, over nearly two and a half centuries.

Rome's recognition of the feast of the Sacred Heart

The liturgical journey was long. In 1765, Pope Clement XIII finally granted a first official authorisation, at the request of the bishops of Poland and the Roman archconfraternity of the Sacred Heart.^[36] Nearly a century later, in 1856, Pius IX extended the feast to the universal Church.^[37] The request made to an unknown Visitandine nun in 1675 had become the law of the whole Latin Church.

Annum Sacrum and the consecration of the human race (1899)

The summit of this recognition was reached under Leo XIII. By the encyclical Annum Sacrum of 25 May 1899, the pope ordered the consecration of the whole human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a solemn act accomplished in every church in the world on 11 June 1899.^[38] Never had a devotion born in the secrecy of a cloister known such universal consecration.

"When the Church, in the days immediately succeeding her institution, was oppressed beneath the yoke of the Caesars, a young Emperor saw a cross miraculously appearing in the heavens... Today another blessed and heavenly token is offered to our sight — the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus." — Leo XIII, encyclical Annum Sacrum, 1899^[39]

The great national pilgrimages (1873)

Even before this consecration, Paray had already become a centre of fervour once more. In 1873, in a France wounded by the defeat of 1870 and the Commune, great national pilgrimages converged on the city of the Sacred Heart, organised notably by the Jesuit Victor Drevon; pilgrims came by the thousand from all over France and abroad.^[40] This was the era of the national vow which would give birth to the basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre: Paray is its spiritual source.

Pius IX, the basilica and the shrine

It was in this movement that Pius IX, after beatifying Margaret Mary on 18 September 1864^[41], raised in 1875 the former Notre-Dame priory church to the rank of minor basilica and authorised it to change its patronage to become the basilica of the Sacred Heart.^[42] Saint Hugh's Romanesque church thus became, two centuries after the apparitions, the monumental setting of the devotion born next door. The canonisation of the saint would come from Benedict XV, on 13 May 1920.^[43]

The Chapel of the Apparitions

The heart of the shrine is not the great basilica, but the modest chapel of the Visitation, known as the Chapel of the Apparitions: it is there, on the very spot where Margaret Mary received the visions, that the pilgrim stops.^[44] There one venerates the saint's shrine: her relics rest in a gilt-silver reliquary, covered by a wax effigy reproducing her face, in a side chapel opened at the time of her 1864 beatification.^[45] A fresco painted between 1966 and 1973 depicts Christ showing the wounds of his Passion, and a Door of Mercy was opened there during the 2015-2016 Jubilee.^[46] The disproportion between the smallness of the place and the magnitude of what came out of it is part of the message: God chose, here too, what is humble.

The basilica of the Sacred Heart

A few steps away, the basilica unfolds all the majesty of Cluniac art. The pilgrim naturally goes there after the chapel: from the intimacy of the confidence to solemn liturgical praise. It is in this Romanesque vessel that the great offices of pilgrimages and summer sessions are celebrated.

The Emmanuel Community and the summer sessions

Since 1975 — the year of the third centenary of the great apparition —, the Emmanuel Community has organised its summer sessions at Paray, gathering each year thousands of pilgrims, families, young people and priests from all over the world.^[47] In 1985, the bishop of Autun officially entrusted the responsibility for the shrine and the pilgrimage to priests of this community.^[48] Paray has thus become a living place once more, where the devotion inherited from the 17th century meets the impetus of the Charismatic Renewal.

John Paul II at Paray (5 October 1986)

On 5 October 1986, Saint John Paul II came as a pilgrim to Paray-le-Monial and celebrated the Eucharist there before a considerable crowd.^[49] His presence consecrated the shrine's place in the contemporary Church and confirmed the relevance of devotion to the Heart of Christ. It was at Paray, before the Chapel of the Apparitions, that the pope recalled that the Heart of Jesus remains the answer to the indifference of the world.

Reparation and solemn reparation

The message of Paray cannot be reduced to a tender symbol. At its centre lies a complaint: God's love is so given and so little recognised. The answer requested is reparation — solemn reparation, that is, the act by which the Christian consoles and compensates, to the measure of his strength, for the outrages done to divine love.^[50] Far from sentimentality, devotion to the Sacred Heart is a theology of wounded love: it takes seriously that God can be loved in return — or scorned.

The Eucharistic devotion of the First Fridays

This spirituality is profoundly Eucharistic. Several apparitions took place before the Blessed Sacrament exposed; the requested feast is linked to the octave of Corpus Christi; the principal practice is reparatory communion on the First Friday of the month, extended by the Holy Hour and adoration.^[51] The Heart venerated at Paray is not a distant heart: it is the one who gives himself as food, unrecognised "in this sacrament of love". Devotion to the Sacred Heart thus leads back unceasingly to the Eucharist — and makes the small oratory of Paray-le-Monial one of the great schools of Eucharistic love in the Church.

"[...] if until now you have taken only the name of my slave, I give you that of the beloved disciple of my Sacred Heart." — Words reported by Saint Margaret Mary, Autobiography^[52]

• Primary sources: Vie et Oeuvres de la bienheureuse Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, ed. F. Gauthey, Paris, Poussielgue, 1915, 3 vols. (vol. 2: Autobiographie, cited here no. 46 p. 63, no. 54 p. 70, no. 92 p. 102; digitised on archive.org); Leo XIII, encyclical Annum Sacrum (1899) on vatican.va; Pius XII, encyclical Haurietis Aquas (1956) on the worship of the Sacred Heart, on vatican.va; Francis, encyclical Dilexit nos (2024) on vatican.va, which quotes the Autobiography from this edition.
• Related Ignispedia articles: The Cluniac reform for the monastic origins of the priory church; the basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre, fruit of the national vow contemporary with the Paray pilgrimages.
• To visit: the shrine of the Sacred Heart of Paray-le-Monial (sacrecoeur-paray.org) brings together the Chapel of the Apparitions, the Romanesque basilica and the Chapelains park.