HOLY HOUR. - A pious practice of reparation (v.) to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, originating from the revelations of Paray-le-Monial, when Jesus asked St. Margaret Mary Alacoque to rise every Thursday between eleven and midnight, and to spend an hour in prayer, uniting herself to his agony in the garden of Olives, with her face to the ground, to appease divine wrath and implore forgiveness for sinners (Vie et oeuvre, II, 72).
The saint remained faithful to it until death. The H. H. soon spread, especially in religious Institutes. In 1829 the Jesuit Father Debrosse founded at Paray the Confraternity of the Holy Hour, approved and granted indulgences by Pius VIII. Gregory XVI extended the plenary indulgence to the faithful of the entire world, on condition that they were enrolled in the register of the confraters. Leo XIII then raised the association to an archconfraternity (April 6, 1886), to which Pius X granted the privilege of affiliating confraternities of the same name throughout the entire world, while the pious practice was adopted by the Apostleship of Prayer (v.). Since the purpose of the cult of the Sacred Heart is to establish the triumph of its reign of love in the world, the H. H. has spread not only in private and domestic forms, but also in public and solemn ones before the Blessed Sacrament exposed in churches.
It consists of an hour of meditated prayers, whose subject is the agony of the Lord in the garden of Gethsemane, possibly between eleven and twelve at night; nevertheless, to encourage this pious exercise, the Church has authorized the faithful to anticipate it to the hour at which the recitation of Matins in the Divine Office may begin.
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Arnaldo M. Lanz