Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus long seemed to me a repellent exercise. Apart from anything else it was generally represented by coloured prints or plaster statues showing Jesus, with hair like a spanielâ??s ears, pointing to an anatomically incorrect heart bound with a wreath of thorns and floating on the outside of his chest. It was all in the worst taste of the 19th century.
I have since discovered that the devotion is far older, not at all sugary and based on biblical ideas. The person with whom its popularisation is associated, St Margaret Mary Alacoque, has her saintâ??s day next Friday. She is not a 19th-century figure, but lived from 1647 to 1690. She was declared a saint only in 1920, when Benedict XV, who had fruitlessly sought world peace, was the Pope.
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