From Forums of the Virgin Mary [translation; views are those of Forums]:
The power of the revelations of Jesus himself that guides the Church.
In recent times, the laity has heard more and more from the mouths of many priests who say, with enormous lightness, prejudice, and lack of information, “I do not believe in apparitions.”
They even go so far as to treat the laymen as credulous and fanciful, not very serious and immature, when they refer to apparitions.
In their excessive clericalism, they assume that the decrees of the Church are absolutely independent of the apparitions.
However, many emblematic devotions of the Church arose from apparitions, were developed by devotions, and sustained and justified by them.
God was leading the Church by appearances, as he did to the Jews in the Old Testament.
Most of the devotions originate from apparitions, such as the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
And they were developed and enriched by them, such as the appearance of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.
Here we want to talk about how the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus arose and especially how it developed and enriched, linked to the Holy Eucharist, in the devotion to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.
The apparitions of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus are part of the development of the apparitions of the Sacred Heart, which began with the 12th-century Benedictine mystic Saint Gertrude, to whom Jesus showed His Heart full of love.
They continued with the apparitions of the Sacred Heart to Saint Margaret Mary of Alacoque in Paray-le-Monial, France, in the 17th century, to whom Jesus showed His Heart, and tells her that He is saddened because so few love him and many treat Him with ingratitude, irreverence, contempt, and coldness, especially the consecrated.
And they developed with the Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart, from the 19th century, who was asked by the Sacred Heart to manage the consecration of the world to His Heart before the Pope, a Consecration made by Leo XIII in 1899.
At the same time that the Sacred Heart inspired Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart, it also inspired the laywoman Sophie Prouvier to develop devotion to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.
She received an apparition from Jesus on January 22, 1854, in the Oratory of the Sisters of the Refuge, of the Hospital Santiago de Besançon, France.
She said she was driven by a mysterious force to enter the chapel where the Blessed Sacrament was.
And she saw Jesus showing her His Heart from the bottom of the tabernacle, Who with a tone of lamentation said to her,
“I am the Eucharistic Heart… I thirst to be loved in the Blessed Sacrament… Many souls surround me, but they do not console me… My Heart asks for love, as the poor ask for bread…” [scroll for more]”
She says that the Divine Heart was submerged in a deep desolation, but had something indefinably sweet on its face, an expression of infinite goodness, although combined with endless pain, due to the ingratitude of men, even the most favored, for his gifts.
However, Sofía hesitated, “only one thing bothered me, it was the name of the Eucharistic Heart, I would have liked it to be the Sacred Heart”.
And he entrusted it to his Spiritual Director, who wisely told her to calm down, because what we don’t understand today will become clear tomorrow.
And a few months later, Sophia was back in the little church and Our Lord appeared to her again and said,
“I am the Eucharistic Heart… I thirst to be loved… Make me known, make me love!… Spread this Devotion of mine in the world!”
This devotion, although new, expressed a doctrine as old as the Eucharist itself, for which the faithful, priests, and consecrated souls were enthusiastic.
Because it came from the trunk of the Devotion to the Eucharist and was associated with the Sacred Heart.
And it meant veneration and gratitude to the infinite love of the Heart of Jesus for giving us the Eucharist.
This devotion aims to ignite love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, not for the benefits that can be derived from Him, but out of pure gratitude aroused by the gift of the Holy Eucharist.
Because everywhere on earth, where there is a Host consecrated in a Tabernacle, even in the most distant missions, He remains with us, patiently waiting, wanting us to pray and console Him.
The Eucharistic Heart of Jesus also calls attention to the fact that it can only be perpetuated with the priesthood.
And in fact He is grateful for the grace of the Lord to make priestly vocations flourish with each generation, after two thousand years, and until the end of the world.
These revelations of Jesus to Sophia Prouvier immediately attracted the attention of the Church, and in the same year the devotion spread in France and soon reached all of Europe.
While cardinals and bishops rushed to give their assent and encourage the apostles of the Eucharistic Heart, because eminent speakers of holiness and doctrine promoted it.
As characters of the stature of the Discalced Carmelite Father and Servant of God, Augustine of the Blessed Sacrament, Hermann Cohen, Saint Peter-Julian Eymard, and Leo Dupont, called the Saint of Tours.
In 1879 Cardinal Guibert, Archbishop of Paris, erected the first diocesan confraternity of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.
Saying that the devotion to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus contains and unites in itself the devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Heart, with the intention of honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the act of love with which He delivered the Eucharist, and through that, perpetuated His adorable Presence among us.
The Devotion to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus was approved by Pius IX, who granted an indulgence to the invocation.
“Praised, adored, loved, and grateful be the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus at all times, in all the tabernacles of the world, until the end of time.”
On November 9, 1921, Benedict XV approved his own Mass and Office, and assigned the feast of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus to the Thursday following Corpus Christi, saying that the particular reason and purpose of this feast is to commemorate the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
And he asked that hearts burn more and more every day in the flames of divine charity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which by His infinite Love, instituted the Most Holy Eucharist.
But the works of God bear the seal of contradiction and hell could not bear a devotion so disastrous for his kingdom and so salutary for souls.
So the Holy Office rained down fierce criticism accusing the devotion of being inadequate and superfluous, because it was no different from the devotion to the Sacred Heart, they said.
But the intervention of eminent theologians dispelled these objections.
Father Alberto Lepidi, for example, who was a theologian and papal canonist for 28 years, explained the difference between the two devotions thus,
“The Devotion to the Sacred Heart honors in a general way the love of Jesus, which gives man the benefits of Redemption.”
And devotion to the Eucharistic Heart, on the other hand, honors in a particular and precise way the love of Jesus Who instituted the Eucharist, to always remain with us, giving himself to man in the reality of his Body and Blood.
This discussion was settled by Leo XIII, who entrusted the worship and apostolate of the Eucharistic Heart to the Redemptorist Fathers.
Therefore, the celebration of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus is still in force, and is celebrated by some communities, although after the liturgical reordering promoted after the Second Vatican Council, it has been integrated into the solemnity of Corpus Christi.
Well, up to here what we wanted to demonstrate that fundamental devotions of the Church arose and were developed by supernatural apparitions, when the priests believed more in the supernatural.
And I would like to ask you if the priests you know believe in Marian apparitions or not.