Sacred Heart apparition

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Whitney

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My background: I have been looking into the original churches and have been attending Catholic Churches and an Orthodox Church near my house on occasion too. I was not raised in a Christian family and persisted in atheism into my 20s, then was invited to and began attending Protestant Churches and was baptized in 2014.
This morning I was reading about the apparition of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque where she writes about experiencing excruciating pain and humiliation for penance “Our Lord came and asked her for a bitter sacrifice to appease His justice which was aroused by the sins of a single house of religious” and again “for the length of one long night she suffered mystically the indescribable tortures of hell and volunteered herself for an extraordinary public penance, which in her humility she does not describe for us”.
I am having a hard time believing this to be the actual Christ, I guess centering around Jesus asking her for sacrifice to appease his bitter Justice. Didn’t Jesus’s sacrifice appease the Father’s Justice? Jesus is recorded as saying to this humble sister, “I have chosen you as an abyss of unworthiness and ignorance”. Which we are all unworthy, that is true, but in the Gospels Jesus generally doesn’t address genuinely pious people this way.
Another question, sort of related: when reading about miracles in the Catholic Church I seem to read a lot about it being tested whether it was true usually referring to whether or not it actually happened or was a fake. But what about testing the spirit of the thing? What is the policy for that? As Jesus even says in the above apparition Satan will come and try to deceive us, and conceivably come pretending to be Jesus or Mary.
Thanks for you help! I truly love the Catholic Church and I feel so blessed that God has brought me to learn about it and see the beauty in it’s rich history and practices.

The account of the apparition I read can be found here:
https://www.ewtn.com/library/CHRIST/FIRSTFRI.TXT
 
Colossians 1: 24
Describes how Saint Paul made up what was lacking in Christ’s sacrifice.
 
Whitney said:
Didn’t Jesus’s sacrifice appease the Father’s Justice?
Click to expand...
Yes, it did. I think what Jesus was asking for was for her to make up in some small measure for the love that Christ asks of all men in return for His great sacrifice. We owe Christ a debt of gratitude that should come from us being moved by His great love for us.

She wrote,

It was then that He made known to me the ineffable marvels of His pure love and showed me to what an excess He had loved men, from whom He received only ingratitude and contempt.
Code: 
           "I feel this more than all that I suffered
           during My Passion. If only they would make Me
           some return for My Love,** I should think but
           little of all I have done for them and would
           wish, were it possible, to suffer still more.
           But the sole return they make for all My
           eagerness to do them good is to reject Me and
           treat Me with coldness. Do you at least
           console Me by supplying for their
           ingratitude, as far as you are able."
The justice Jesus is talking about is that it is just that we be grateful and love Him in return for His love in suffering for us. People in general were not doing this but even moreso in the particular religious house He spoke of, where you wouldn’t expect this kind of ingratitude, forgetfulness and great sin, it was even more hurtful. He asked St. Margaret Mary if she would be willing to love Him in a particularly heroic way to make up for the sin of the others. He also gave her the grace to bear what He asked of her.

In the Mass, we say
Code: 
Priest: The Lord be with you.
People: And with your spirit.
Priest: Lift up your hearts.
People: We lift them up to the Lord.
Priest: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
People: It is right and just.
 
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Whitney said:
Jesus is recorded as saying to this humble sister, “I have chosen you as an abyss of unworthiness and ignorance”. Which we are all unworthy, that is true, but in the Gospels Jesus generally doesn’t address genuinely pious people this way.
Click to expand...
I think what He means here is that she had been chosen to offer up sacrifice for the sins of others in a greater way or to a greater degree than is asked of most people. The “abyss of unworthiness and ignorance” are the immensity of man’s sin. She also received great graces in order to be able to make the sacrifice. But through her also, He asked that the message of First Fridays in honor of the Sacred Heart be spread so that us common folk would have a way of also making a sacrifice of love to His heart for the sins of ingratitude and coldness. We haven’t been chosen to do this in a heroic degree like St. Margaret Mary, but He isn’t requiring that of everybody. He said
Code: 
          "I feel this more than all that I suffered
           during My Passion. If only they would make Me
           some return for My Love, I should think but
           little of all I have done for them and would
           wish, were it possible, to suffer still more."
He asks so little of us but that little return of love to Him from us, means so much to Him that He would be willing to suffer even more for it.
Whitney said:
But what about testing the spirit of the thing? What is the policy for that? As Jesus even says in the above apparition Satan will come and try to deceive us, and conceivably come pretending to be Jesus or Mary.
Click to expand...
I’m not sure what you mean by “testing the spirit of the thing” but you’ll notice that He told Margaret Mary
Code: 
           But listen, My daughter, believe not
           lightly and trust not every spirit, for Satan
           is enraged and will seek to deceive you.
           Therefore, do nothing without the approval of
           those who guide you; being thus under the
           authority of obedience, his efforts against
           you will be in vain, for he has no power over
           the obedient."
Jesus promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church, so she would be protected against any kind of deception if she was obedient to those who guide her. (Because those who guide her, were being guided by Christ through the Holy Spirit.)
 
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He’s asking for redemptive suffering here, the state of being a victim soul to some degree. He has asked this of very many great saints and all the mystics, I believe.

St. Faustina, St. Gemma, St. Therese in a less direct manner, St. Catherine of Siena, and many others.
 
Thank you so much for your thorough answer!! I am grateful you spent time to write that out, you’ve given me a lot to think through and your answer makes sense. I was only confused how the priest/people call and response tied in?
 
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