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| Sr. Lucia with the image she liked the most |
The July 13th apparition was without a doubt the richest in content and also the most symbolic of the messages of Fatima. At this apparition, the three parts of the secret were revealed by Our Lady to the little shepherds, and it was also here that the Lady first spoke of the devotion of Five First Saturdays.
One of the reasons Lucia remained on earth and did not go to Heaven together with her cousins soon after the apparitions was to establish in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the practice of the first Saturday of five consecutive months.
Modus Operandi
Few years after the apparitions at Fatima, in 1925 to be precise, when Lucia was already a Dorothean sister, Our Lady appeared to her to remind her of the First Saturdays Devotion which she had requested in 1917. This time the Blessed Virgin told her in detail how it was to be observed.
Because some doubts arose in Lucia as to how it should be carried out, the Child Jesus appeared to her the following year on February 15, 1926, to enquire if she had already spread the devotion to His most holy Mother. At this same apparition, Lucia reported that oftentimes people were not able to find a confessor on the first Saturday, to which the Holy Child said that they could do the confession on any day of the month provided that they were in the state of grace on the first Saturday for the Communion of Reparation.
“Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.” (Our Lady in an apparition to Lucia in her room in Pontevedra on December 10th, 1925)
In order to understand why reparation needs to be made to the Heart of Mary, it is necessary to understand that the seriousness of an offense is proportional to the dignity of the person offended. It is not the same to offend a person on the street as to offend one’s own mother. The crime can be the same but the seriousness is much greater when it is perpetrated against one’s own mother. Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Summa Theologica that the Virgin Mary, since she is the mother of God, has a certain dignity from the infinite good who is God.
The offenses against Our Lady are much more serious because the Virgin Mary stands at a different level from us all. The angels and the saints live in the order of Glory, because they see God face to face; we, on the other hand, if we live in friendship with God, are at the order of Grace. Mary by being the mother of Jesus who is divine participates in some way in the hypostatic union; therefore, the offenses against Our Lady are very serious because indirectly they are offenses made against God himself.
When Our Lady appears with her heart crowned with a crown of thorns like her son’s around his head, she wants to show in an easier to understand symbolic way how much she suffers from the “blasphemies and ingratitude” of men. If the son suffers then so does the mother.
Why does Our Lady ask us for this devotion of the five first Saturdays? It is because she understands the evil we inflict upon ourselves when we offend her heart. The Virgin Mary is glorious in Heaven, she can suffer no more; it is the feedback or the consequences of our offenses made against her that concern her. When a son hits his elderly father or mother the greater evil done by this son is not what was done to the father or mother, but what he did to himself; such terrible evil that if one day he becomes aware of it the remorse will surely consume him.
When a confessor of Sister Lucia asked her why five Saturdays and not seven, the perfect number in the Bible, Sister Lucia referred the question back to Our Lord who replied: “My daughter, the reason is simple, there are five types of offenses and blasphemies uttered against the Immaculate Heart of Mary:
- The blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception;
- Against her virginity;
- Against the divine maternity, denying, at the same time, to receive her as the Mother of all men;
- Those who publicly seek to infuse indifference, contempt, and even hatred in the hearts of children toward this Immaculate Mother;
- Those who directly outrage her sacred images.
Henceforth, these offenses have to be rectified, that is, the natural order of things has to be put back into its right place. To do this, we must perform four acts: going to confession with the intention of making reparation or restitution, receiving communion made with the same intention, praying the holy Rosary, and spending fifteen minutes meditating on the mysteries of Jesus’ life.
Confession
In addition to being a personal confession of our own sins if we have them, and we always have them, this confession has another dimension: it is a devotional confession, that is, we make it for those who do not make them, and we ask forgiveness for the sins of others. It is once again the missionary dimension of Fatima, piety not only for our own sanctification, but also at the service of the sanctification of others.
The confession has to have a restorative intention; in the case this intention is forgotten, remember it at the next confession; it does not need to be made on a Saturday, it can be made on another day, as long as on the first Saturday of the month the person is in the state of Grace.
The Sacred Communion
“Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53)
Many Christians have abandoned the Sunday practice of going to Mass; and among those who still do, they have not for years considered themselves worthy to receive the body and blood of Our Lord. We make this Communion of Reparation not so much for ourselves, but for all those who are not joined with us in the Mystical Body, who are not in full communion with Christ and his Church, that is, the branches that are not abiding to the vine that is Christ. (John 15:5)
The Rosary
This is prayed with the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We pray the Rosary for all those who do not pray it every day, and those who have not yet discovered the richness of this prayer, the time spent in contemplating on the mysteries of Christ in the history of our salvation.
Spend 15 minutes meditating on the 15 mysteries of the Rosary
These 15 minutes are spent being with the Lord contemplating on his mysteries, initially 15 and now 20. Since the meditation or contemplation is on the Lord, it can be done during the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, it can also be a meditation of the Word of God such as Lectio Divina which nowadays many Christians practice; what is important is that we spend 15 minutes alone with Jesus hidden sacramentally in the tabernacle, and spiritually in our hearts.
The value of this Campaign
It is evident that both the offenses, as well as the acts of love for God, revert back to us. God does not need the good that we do for him nor does the evil that we do reach him. Both the evil as well as the good stay with the one who practices it. It is fundamentally we who bring evil upon ourselves, and God suffers not because of any evil that we do to him, but rather that this evil that we presumably do to him revert back to us. “The spell returns to the sorcerer” or “Whoever does evil, evil will happen to him”, says the people.
Many campaigns are made to awaken dormant values in the hope that once awakened it will continue with the help of certain practices. The campaigns are made to conquer the inertia, so that once on the move the hope is that it will continue on its own. This is what we observe in business practices when new products are advertised or if certain products are brought back into the market. The same logic works in religious practices; it is difficult to take people out of a mediocre life, immobility, and spiritual apathy, or as the Italians say, “doce fare niente”, which means sweet laziness.
In conversation with the Child Jesus at the apparition in Tuy on 15th of February, 1926, still on the subject of the first Saturdays, and why Lucia’s confessor had expressed certain reservations regarding the importance of this devotion:
“But my confessor said in the letter that this devotion is not lacking in the world, because there are many souls who receive You on the First Saturdays, in honour of Our Lady and of the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary.” (Lucia)
“It is true, my daughter, that many souls begin the First Saturdays, but few finish them, and those who do complete them do so in order to receive the graces that are promised thereby. It would please me more if they did Five with fervour and with the intention of making reparation to the Heart of your heavenly Mother, than if they did Fifteen, in a tepid and indifferent manner…” (Child Jesus)
In every campaign there has to be an appealing factor to take people out of their inertia. It is necessary to promise something in return; in this campaign, it is the promise of help, and that at the hour of death there will be all the graces necessary for salvation for those who are faithful to this devotion. But it is clear that God, as the Child Jesus pointed out to Sister Lucia, prefers those who practice this devotion for pure love and not for reasons of “spiritual commercialism”.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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