Do you know the devotion where Jesus promises grace over grace?

I will establish my home in the furnace of love, in the heart pierced for me. At this burning hearth I will feel the flame of love so hitherto languishing revive in my guts. Ah! Lord, your Heart is the true Jerusalem; let me choose it forever as my resting place ... ".

Santa Margherita Maria Alacoque (1647-1690), is called the "messenger of the Sacred Heart." Sister of the order of the Visitation - order founded by St. Francis de Sales and St. Joan of Chantal -, she has since 1673 a series of apparitions of the Heart of Jesus: “The Divine Heart was presented to me as in a throne of flames , more blazing than a sun and transparent as a crystal, with the adorable plague; it was surrounded by a crown of thorns and surmounted by a cross. "

In the third apparition, Jesus asks Margaret to communicate every first Friday of the month and to prostrate himself face to face for an hour on the night between Thursday and Friday. From these words arise the two main manifestations of devotion to the Holy Heart: the Communion of the 1st Friday of the month and the Holy Hour of reparation for the wrongs suffered by the Heart of Jesus.

In the twelfth of the Promises collected by Margaret Alacoque from the voice of Jesus (the "Great Promise") grace is assured to the faithful who approach the first Friday of the month, for 9 consecutive months and with a sincere heart, to the Holy Eucharist: "I I promise in the excess of the mercy of my Heart that my almighty love will grant to all those who communicate on the first Friday of the month for nine consecutive months the grace of the final penance. They will not die in my misfortune, nor without receiving the Sacraments, and my Heart will be their safe haven in that extreme hour. "

In the fourth and most important apparition, which took place on the eighth day after the feast of Corpus Domini in 1675 (the same date on which the liturgical calendar today celebrates the solemnity of the Sacred Heart), Jesus says to Sister Margherita "Here is that Heart that has so much loved men to spare nothing until the supreme sacrifice without limits and without reservations, to demonstrate his love. Most of them, however, reciprocate me with ingratitude, which they manifest with irreverence, sacrileges and with apathy and contempt for me in this sacrament of love. But what worries me most is seeing me treated like this even by hearts dedicated to me. "

In this vision, Jesus asked the saint that the first Friday after the octave of Corpus Domini was consecrated by the Church at a special celebration in honor of her Heart.

The feast, celebrated for the first time in Paray-le-Monial, the city of Burgundy where the monastery of Sister Margherita stood was extended to the whole Church by Pius IX in 1856.