The devotion to the Sacred Heart is one of the most practiced and well-known Catholic devotions, wherein the heart of Jesus is viewed as a symbol of "God's boundless and passionate love for mankind". This devotion is predominantly used in the Catholic Church, followed by the high-church Anglicans and Eastern Catholics. In the Catholic Church, the liturgical Solemnities of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is celebrated the first Friday after the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, or 19 days after Pentecost Sunday; the devotion is concerned with what the Church deems to be the long-suffering love and compassion of the heart of Christ towards humanity. The popularization of this devotion in its modern form is derived from a Catholic nun from France, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, who said she learned the devotion from Jesus during a series of apparitions to her between 1673 and 1675, in the 19th century, from the mystical revelations of another Catholic nun in Portugal, Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart, a religious of the Good Shepherd, who requested in the name of Christ that Pope Leo XIII consecrate the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Predecessors to the modern devotion arose unmistakably in the Middle Ages in various facets of Catholic mysticism with Saint Gertrude the Great. The Sacred Heart is depicted in Christian art as a flaming heart shining with divine light, pierced by the lance-wound, encircled by the crown of thorns, surmounted by a cross, bleeding. Sometimes, the image is shown shining within the bosom of Christ with his wounded hands pointing at the heart; the wounds and crown of thorns allude to the manner of Jesus' death, while the fire represents the transformative power of divine love. The devotion to the Sacred Heart is an outgrowth of devotion to what is believed to be Christ's sacred humanity. During the first ten centuries of Christianity, there is nothing to indicate that any worship was rendered to the wounded Heart of Jesus; the revival of religious life and the zealous activity of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and Saint Francis of Assisi in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, together with the enthusiasm of the Crusaders returning from the Holy Land, gave a rise to devotion to the Passion of Jesus Christ and to practices in honour of the Sacred Wounds.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart developed out of the devotion to the Holy Wounds, in particular to the Sacred Wound in the side of Jesus. The first indications of devotion to the Sacred Heart are found in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the fervent atmosphere of the Benedictine or Cistercian monasteries, it is impossible to say with certainty who were its first devotees. Saint Bernard said that the piercing of Christ's side revealed his goodness and the charity of his heart for us; the earliest known hymn to the Sacred Heart, "Summi Regis Cor Aveto", is believed to have been written by the Norbertine Blessed Herman Joseph of Cologne, Germany. The hymn begins: "I hail Thee kingly Heart most high." From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the devotion was propagated but it did not seem to have been embellished. It was everywhere practised by individuals and by different religious congregations, such as the Franciscans and Carthusians. Among the Franciscans the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has its champions in Saint Bonaventure in his Vitis Mystica, B.

John de la Verna, the Franciscan Tertiary Saint Jean Eudes. Bonaventure wrote: "Who is there who would not love this wounded heart? Who would not love in return Him, who loves so much?” It was a private, individual devotion of the mystical order. Nothing of a general movement had been inaugurated, except for similarities found in the devotion to the Five Holy Wounds by the Franciscans, in which the wound in Jesus's heart figured most prominently. According to Thomas Merton, Saint Lutgarde, a Cistercian mystic of Aywieres, was one of the great precursors of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A contemporary of St. Francis, she "... entered upon the mystical life with a vision of the pierced Heart of the Saviour, had concluded her mystical espousals with the Incarnate Word by an exchange of hearts with Him." Sources say that Christ came in a visitation to Lutgarde, offering her whatever gift of grace she should desire. Christ granted her request and Lutgarde's mind was flooded with the riches of psalms, antiphons and responsories.

However, a painful emptiness persisted. She returned to Christ, asking to return his gift, wondering if she might, just exchange it for another. "And for what would you exchange it?" Christ asked. "Lord, said Lutgarde, I would exchange it for your Heart." Christ reached into Lutgarde and, removing her heart, replaced it with his own, at the same time hiding her heart within his breast. Saint Mechtilde of Helfta became an ardent devotee and promoter of Jesus’ heart after it was the subject of many of her visions; the idea of hearing the heartbeat of God was important to medieval saints who nurtured devotion to the Sacred Heart. Mechtilde reported that Jesus appeared to her in a vision and commanded her to love Him ardently, to honor his sacred heart in the Blessed Sacrament as much as possible, he gave her his heart as a pledge of his love, as a place of refuge during her life and as her consolation at the hour of her death. From this time Mechtilde had an extraordinary devotion for the Sacred Heart, said that if she had to write down all the favors and all t

Wayne Falla is a former English cricketer. Falla was a right-handed batsman, he was born in Northumberland. Falla made his debut for Northumberland in the 1990 MCCA Knockout Trophy against Cumberland. Falla played Minor counties cricket for Northumberland from 1990 to 2000, which included 31 Minor Counties Championship matches and 17 MCCA Knockout Trophy matches, he made his List A debut against Yorkshire in the 1992 NatWest Trophy. He made 4 further List A matches for the county, the last coming against Leicestershire in the 2000 NatWest Trophy. In his 5 List A matches, he scored 184 runs at a batting average of 36.80. He made two half centuries, with a high score of 80 against Ireland in the 1999 NatWest Trophy. Wayne Falla at ESPNcricinfo Wayne Falla at CricketArchive

In art, a reception piece is a work submitted by an artist to an academy for approval as part of the requirements for admission to membership. The piece is representative of the artist's work, the organization's judgement of its skill may or may not form part of the criteria for accepting a new entrant; the work itself is retained by the academy, many academies have large and valuable collections acquired in this way. Alternative terms include diploma work at the Royal Academy in London, diploma piece, in France at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, tableau de réception or morceau de réception; the term masterpiece originated in the same way under the earlier system of guilds, including those for artists. The requirement to submit a reception or diploma piece is related to the practice in the medieval period and of requiring a craftsman to submit one or more virtuoso or test-pieces to a guild to demonstrate his skill before he was granted membership. Membership of an academy may be by technique and limited by numbers or age.

The Royal Academy, for instance, at one time limited the number of engravers who could join, where artistic styles and tastes change, new categories of membership may be created as necessary. When Antoine Watteau applied to join the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, there was no suitable category for his fête galante works, so the academy created one rather than reject his application, describing him as a "peintre des festes galantes". While this acknowledged Watteau as the originator of the genre, it prevented him being recognised as a history painter, the highest class of painter, the only one from which the academy's professors were drawn. Charles-Antoine Coypel, the son of its director said: "The charming paintings of this gracious painter would be a bad guide for whoever wished to paint the Acts of the Apostles."In 1728, when Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin was admitted to the same academy for The Ray, it was as a "painter of animals and fruits". Masterpiece Reception pieces visitor trail at the Louvre