Where did it come from?

Though many saints from Augustine to John of the Cross refer to The Flame of Love, the devotion is relatively new. In the early 1960’s in communist Hungary, Jesus and Mary introduced this devotion to a widowed mother of six and Secular Carmelite named Elizabeth Kindelmann. They did not begin with a nun or a priest or a monk for a very specific reason:

Mary: “. . . I, the Mother of Mercy, entrusted you with the most excellent of my graces: to make my Flame of Love known to others. Why precisely you? I will tell you. Listen, my daughter, you are also the mother of a large family. Through your children you know all the pains and problems of a family. Many times you were close to falling beneath the cross of difficult trials, and you still experience many sorrows over your children. . . . I know you understand me, and this is why I shared with you how I feel in my motherly Heart. My sorrow is just like your sorrow.
There are many cold families like yours . . . I want the Flame of Love of my heart to warm them up and others . . . Only a mother can truly share my sorrows. I am the Mother of Sorrows, I suffer greatly because of the souls being lost. I am tortured in pain as I grieve for the suffering of my Divine Son.”