page_title: Mary of the Divine Heart
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Mary of the Divine Heart / Biography / Early years
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Schloss Darfeld im gleichnamigen münsterländischen Ortsteil der Gemeinde Rosendahl, Kreis Coesfeld, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Deutschland. English: Darfeld Castle in Rosendahl, district of Coesfeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. This is a photograph of an architectural monument.It is on the list of cultural monuments of Rosendahl, no. 73
context_page_description: Mary of the Divine Heart, born Maria Droste zu Vischering, was a German noblewoman and Roman Catholic nun of the Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, best known for having influenced Pope Leo XIII to make the consecration of the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope Leo XIII himself called the solemn consecration "the greatest act of my pontificate".
context_section_description: Maria Droste zu Vischering spent her childhood with her family in the Castle of Darfeld, in Rosendahl near Münster, and was a child full of life. Her mother stated, "She doesn't mind her dress. She is running into the mud, jumping into the wet grass and the bushes until she is so dirty that she has to change every stitch".
  Vischering was taught at home by governesses. On April 25, 1875, Vischering and her brother Max received their First Communion. In April 1879, Vischering continued her education at the boarding school of the Sacré-Coeur Sisters in Riedenburg, in Bavaria. While there, she heard a homily on Psalm 45: "Listen, my daughter,... forget your father's house..., the king will fall in love with your beauty".  Vischering decided that she should become a religious. During the spring of 1879, while she was listening to a particular devotion of one of the sisters to the Heart of Christ, Maria Droste zu Vischering reached an important conclusion: "I began to understand that without the spirit of sacrifice the love of the Heart of Jesus is merely an illusion".
  While at school, she contracted pneumonia and, shortly before her 18th birthday, returned home to recover. In 1883, at the chapel of the Castle of Darfeld, Vischering is said to have had an interior locution of Jesus Christ who told her: "Thou shalt be the wife of My Heart". On 5 August of that same year, on the Silver Jubilee of her parents' marriage, Vischering told them of her desire to become a religious.
caption: Castle of Darfeld, where Maria Droste zu Vischering spent her childhood.
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