Q&A: Is devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus found in the Spirituality of Saint Louis de Montfort?

As mentioned in the article Sacred Heart in Jesus Living in Mary: Handbook of the Spirituality of Saint Louis de Montfort, “the silence of his (Montfort’s) biographers on this subject (the Sacred Heart) is surprising, not to say baffling.” One of the treasures of Montfort Spirituality is precisely devotion to the Heart of Christ. The saint dedicated over 900 lines of his Hymns to the topic; they are among the most beautiful of his canticles. Perhaps one of the reasons for this “silence” is that his explicit study on the Sacred Heart is found in his hymnal which sadly was often neglected in times past. The English edition of the Hymns of Saint Louis de Montfort has recently been republished and is available here.

Saint Louis de Montfort was in college at Rennes when Saint Margaret Mary Alocoque – to whom the Sacred Heart appeared – died in 1690. After his ordination he became a close friend of the religious family of Saint Margaret Mary, the Visitation nuns. Through these Sisters, he became acquainted with the revelations of the Sacred Heart given at the Visitation convent of Paray-le-Monial. The encounter with the Visitation nuns coupled with the devotion to the Sacred Heart he imbibed from the French School of spirituality during his seminary days in Paris, made of him an ardent apostle of the divine Heart of Christ. Like Saint John Eudes before him, Saint Louis de Montfort joins the Sacred Heart of Jesus with the Heart of Mary to such an extent that he speaks of the “one heart” of Jesus and Mary:

Heart of my God, Glorious Heart,
It is only You whom I adore,
But in adoring you, I honor
The heart of the Queen of Heaven

From the blood of Mary’s Heart, all aflame,

The Heart of Jesus has been formed;

They have only one heart . . .

(Hymn #40: 44,46)