Even the Devils Believe

Blessed Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus!

John (Serge) links to a post with quotes on the devotion from St Gertrude the Great, St Mechthild, and St Thérèse.

I've been reading Gertrude's Herald of the Memorial of Divine Love the last couple days, thanks to +Laura's stories about her. (Gertrude is one of her focuses as an academic.) There are some beautiful quotes on the Sacred Heart, the devotion to which Gertrude was instrumental in promoting, including this one from Book II of the Herald:

[J]ust before the procession [on the day of the Purification] was due to start, after I had received the food of life and as I was meditating on God and myself, I saw my soul, like wax melting in the heat of the fire, being placed close to the Lord's most sacred breast, as though to take the imprint of a seal. Suddenly, as I looked, it seemed to spread around and even to be drawn into the interior of that treasury wherein all the fullness of the Godhead corporeally dwells. Thus it was sealed with the imprint of the resplendent and ever tranquil Trinity.

…

The Lord appeared to me, and I saw that that part of his sacred breast to which he had taken my soul on the day of the Purification and held it like wax being carefully melted at the fire was now moist with perspiration and breaking out violently in beads of sweat, as though the wax of which I had formerly had sight were melting in the intense heat of the hidden fire which was burning there. And yet this divine treasury with marvelous and ineffable power, absorbed these drops in an indescribable way. Who could doubt the mighty power of the boundless love stored up therein, disclosing a mystery so great and so unfathomable?