St. John Eudes (whose feast day is August 19th) had a profound understanding of the union of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He explains in his writings, which are an important part of our formation in the Order, that these Two Hearts were (and are) so identical in Their spirit, affection and will, that They are but one single Heart. He emphatically declares in his writings and by his life that “The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the Heart of Mary!” This union of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary is an essential part of the charism of the Order. As an Order of the Two Hearts, we lovingly turn our spiritual gaze to this great saint, seeing him as a “spiritual father” and hoping to continue the work which he was called to begin.  

St. John Eudes has been called, by the Holy See, “the father…the doctor…and the apostle” of devotion to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. In the Decree of Beatification, Pope Pius X wrote, “His services to the Church received a vast increase when, burning with singular love for the most holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary, he was the first to think, not without some divine inspiration, of offering to them liturgical worship.” This saint first introduced to the Church, in 1648, the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary by composing the Mass and the accompanying Office. Our Lady, through this feast of her Heart, thus prepared the faithful to receive the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In 1670, St. John Eudes presented the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the Church, three years before Our Lord revealed His Heart to St. Margaret Mary. St. John Eudes also carefully and lovingly gathered together what had previously been said of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Melting all of this wealth within the furnace of his own heart, he drew forth from there the gold of his writings on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And so it was that Our Lord used St. John Eudes as his faithful instrument to lay the solid theological foundation upon which the popular devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary has been built.