The saints reveal the fulfillment of Christ’s promises. As I promised a couple episodes back, we want to treat you to a series of reflections on the particular witness of particular saints through a series of episodes on our podcast. These episodes follow from the wildly popular “Saturdays with the Saints” lecture series we host each year on Notre Dame’s campus. For one hour on the morning of Notre Dame home football games, a scholar typically from Notre Dame delivers a public lecture on a saint. We’ve been hosting this series for 15 years now, and this year we focused on “Saints of the Sacred Heart.”

I myself delivered the first lecture this year on St. Margaret Mary and the rebirth of the devotion to the Sacred Heart. The lecture that followed was delivered by friend and colleague, Tim O’Malley. His lecture was on St. Claude de Colombiere, which is especially fitting because St. Claude is the one who made St. Margaret Mary’s visions of the Sacred Heart known to the world. But as Tim taught in his lecture, it matters very much that St. Claude was himself a Jesuit, as was our late Pope Francis who dedicated his last encyclical to the Sacred Heart. And so our conversation about this saint is also about the Spiritual Exercises, daily obedience to God’s will, and the shock of Christ’s personal and particular love for each of us.

Follow-up Resources:

• “Providence and Obedience: Colombière, the Jesuits, and the Sacred Heart,” by Tim O’Malley via Church Life Journal
• “St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and the Devotion to the Sacred Heart,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• Learn more about the “Saturdays with the Saints” series: https://mcgrath.nd.edu/events/saturdays-with-the-saints/
• “Dilexit Nos – Part 1, a conversation with Joshua McManaway and Melissa Moschella” (about Pope Francis’s encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus), podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Dilexit Nos – Part 2, a conversation with Brett Robinson and Abigail Favale” (about Pope Francis’s encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus), podcast episode via Church Life Today

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.