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Upon the cross, Jesus showed the depth of his love for us, pouring out his lifeblood for our redemption.
When his side was pierced, blood and water flowed forth from his heart like a fountain of life and grace (see John 19:34). In devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we contemplate this great love.
In the earliest days of the Church, the apostle John, who had seen Jesus’ heart pierced, wrote, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). By the twelfth century, the wound in the heart of Jesus was looked upon as a symbol of his divine love. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, this devotion was of a private, interior, and mystical nature. In the sixteenth century, devotional prayers and acts of piety became popular. But it was in the seventeenth…
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