On the feast of St. John the Evangelist — December 27, 1673 — during her time of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in the small choir of the Paray-le-Monial monastery, Margaret Mary Alacoque had her first major apparition of Christ. He invited her, as she records in her Autobiography, to take the place that St. John had taken at the Last Supper — to rest her head against His Heart.
He then said: 'My divine Heart is so passionately inflamed with love for men, that being unable any longer to contain within itself the flames of its burning charity, it must spread them abroad through your means.' This first apparition established the framework for the three further great apparitions that followed (1674–75) and for the universal Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Margaret Mary was canonised in 1920.