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Who was Saint Claude La Colombière? Like his friend St Margaret Mary Alacoque, whose Sacred Heart visions appear in stained glass, statuary and paintings in practically every Catholic Church in Ireland, Claude had no other desire than to direct people to the Heart of Christ. The spiritual friendship of these two people led to the foundation of more than 280 religious orders, male and female, featuring “Sacred Heart” in their title. She was canonised by Pope Benedict XV in 1920, he by Pope John Paul II in 1992. Unlike Margaret Mary, Claude never seems to have had a single vision of any kind but it was to him that she looked for guidance in dealing with her extraordinary revelations. When the recently ordained Claude arrived at her Visitation Monastery in 1675, an interior voice told her that this was the “man after his own heart” the Lord had promised to send her. In later revelations Jesus again referred to him as “my faithful servant and perfect friend”. Margaret Mary herself said that “Fr La Colombière's talent is to lead people to God”. We hope that from heaven he will exercise this gift for those who venerate his relics during their stay this summer in Ireland. Shortly after authenticating the visions of Margaret Mary, Claude was sent to England as chaplain to Mary of Modena, then Duchess of York and subsequently Queen of England for a short period, as wife of James II. It was in the Palace of St James, in the heart of the then virulently anti-Catholic London , that devotion to the Sacred Heart as we know it today was first publicly preached. Claude carefully avoided any reference to his confidential dealings with Margaret Mary but felt that he could communicate the substance of her message of love in his sermons. However, it was only after his death in 1682 at 41 of tuberculosis (caused largely by his imprisonment before deportation from England ) that the depth of his own spirituality was discovered in his personal retreat notes and reflections. They ran into endless reprints in the decades after his death, almost an anticipation of what would happen to the writings of another French saint, Therese of Lisieux, who herself looked to him for inspiration. Claude was well aware of the sufferings of the Irish during his London period and mentioned the travails of the “Archbishop of Armagh” in his correspondence home. He died in Paray-le-Monial on February 15th, 1682, less than a year after the martyrdom at Tyburn of St Oliver Plunkett. See a fuller account of the lives of the two saints
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