This Friday is the feast of the Sacred Heart of  Our Lord Jesus Christ.  The symbol of the heart pierced on the Cross is a reminder that God loves us not only with the divine love of a heavenly Father, but also with a very real human love through taking on human flesh and becoming one with us in Jesus.  The price of that love is expressed symbolically in the crown of thorns and its power to cleanse and heal us by fire. Although we find the roots of this devotion in the Middle Ages with reverence for the wounds of Christ, it was fostered by the visions granted to St Margaret Mary Alacoque at the end of C17 to combat the understanding of God as distant and angry encouraged by Calvinism and, within the Catholic Church, by Jansenism.