The Sacred Heart of Jesus

The Friday after the second Sunday of Pentecost — nineteen days after Pentecost — the Church contemplates the heart of Christ pierced on the cross, sign of his love for humankind. The devotion was given its modern shape by the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in the 1670s and by Pius IX's extension of the feast to the whole Church in 1856.

The image of the pierced heart draws on the Gospel of John, where a soldier's lance opened the side of the crucified Christ and blood and water flowed out — signs, the Fathers said, of the Eucharist and Baptism born from his wounded love. The Solemnity invites the faithful to find in the Sacred Heart not a sentimental symbol but the inexhaustible source of divine mercy, and to consecrate themselves to a love that, as Margaret Mary heard, "has loved men so much and is so little loved in return."