Feast day: February 15
St. Claude de la Colombière
A French Jesuit and gifted preacher who became the spiritual director of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and a great promoter of devotion to the Sacred Heart.
Claude de la Colombière was born in 1641 near Lyons and entered the Society of Jesus, becoming known as a gifted and cultured preacher. In 1675 he was made superior of the small Jesuit house at Paray-le-Monial — an assignment that placed him, providentially, as confessor to a Visitation nun named Margaret Mary Alacoque.
Margaret Mary was then receiving the revelations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and meeting widespread disbelief, even from her own community. Claude, after careful discernment, recognized them as authentic, became their first great champion, and consecrated himself to the Sacred Heart, lending the young devotion the weight of his learning and sober judgement.
Soon afterward he was sent to London as preacher to the Catholic Duchess of York, in an England bitterly hostile to Catholicism. Caught up in the hysteria of the fabricated 'Popish Plot,' he was arrested, imprisoned, and expelled from the country, his health broken by the ordeal.
He returned to Paray-le-Monial and died there in 1682, only forty-one. The journal of his retreats, published after his death, helped carry the devotion to the Sacred Heart around the world. He was canonized in 1992.
When no one believed Margaret Mary's visions of the Sacred Heart, this Jesuit confessor believed her — and helped spread the devotion worldwide.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/16026b.htm
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