The Five First Saturdays' Devotion

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The Five First Saturdays' Devotion

MARY'S GREAT PROMISE AT FATIMA

THE observance of the First Saturday in honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is intended to console her Immaculate Heart, and to make, reparation to it for all the blasphemies and ingratitude of men. This devotion and the wonderful promises connected with it were revealed by the Blessed Virgin with these words recorded by Lucy, one of the three children to whom the Blessed Virgin appeared at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917:

I promise to help at the hour of death, with the graces needed for salvation, whoever on the First Saturday of five consecutive months shall:

1. Confess and receive Holy Communion.

2. Recite five decades of the Rosary.

3. And keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on one or more of the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.

ACT OF REPARATION TO BE RECITED ON THE FIRST SATURDAYS

O MOST holy Virgin and our Mother, we listen with grief to the complaints of thine Immaculate Heart surrounded with the thorns which ungrateful men place therein at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. Moved by the ardent desire of loving thee as our Mother and of promoting a true devotion to thy Immaculate Heart, we prostrate ourselves at thy feet to prove the sorrow we feel for the grievances that men cause thee, and to atone, by means of our prayers and sacrifices, for the offenses with which men return thy tender love.

Obtain for them and for us the pardon of so many sins. A word from thee will obtain grace and amendment for us all.

Hasten, O Lady, the conversion of sinners that they may love Jesus and cease to offend the Lord, already so much offended and will not fall into Hell.

Turn thy eyes of mercy toward us that henceforth we may love God with all our heart while on earth and enjoy Him forever in Heaven. Amen.

NOTE: Confession during the week, preceding the first Friday, will suffice for the first Saturday, or conversely when Saturday is the first day of the month. The Rosary may he recited at any convenient time of the day, and the fifteen-minute meditation may be made at any time during the day on one or more of the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. A sermon for the occasion may be substituted for the meditation. Meditation consists in thinking over the events as if one were present at the happenings mentioned in the mystery, or in considering what one would have done had he been present during the event considered in a particular mystery, all in the spirit of reparation to the Immaculate Heart.

ACT OF CONSECRATION TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

QUEEN of the Most Holy Rosary, Refuge of the Human Race, Victress in all God's battles, we humbly prostrate ourselves before thy throne, confident that we shall receive mercy, grace and bountiful assistance and protection in the present calamity, not through our own inadequate merits, but solely through the great goodness of thy Maternal Heart.

To thee, to thy Immaculate Heart in this, humanity's tragic hour, we consign and consecrate ourselves in union not only with the Mystical Body of thy Son, Holy Mother Church, now in such suffering and agony in so many places and sorely tried in so many ways, but also with the entire world, torn by fierce strife, consumed in a fire of hate, victim of its own wickedness.

May the sight of the widespread material and moral destruction of the sorrows and anguish of countless fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, and innocent children of the great number of lives cut off in the flower of youth, of the bodies mangled in horrible slaughter, and of the tortured and agonized souls in danger of being lost eternally move thee to compassion. O Mother of Mercy obtain peace for us from God, and, above all, procure for us those graces which prepare, establish and assure the peace.

Queen of Peace, pray for us and give to the world now at war, the peace for which all peoples are longing, peace in the truth, justice and charity of Christ. Give peace to the warring nations and to the souls of men, that in the tranquillity of order the Kingdom of God may prevail.

Extend thy protection to the infidels and to all those still in the shadow of death give them peace and grant that on them, too, may shine the sun of truth that they may unite with us in proclaiming before the one and only Savior of the World: "Glory to God in the highest and peace to men of good will."

Give peace to the peoples separated by error or by discord and especially to those who profess such singular devotion to thee, and in whose homes an honored place was ever accorded thy venerated image today, perhaps often kept hidden to await better days bring them back to the one fold of Christ, under the one true Shepherd.

Obtain peace and complete freedom for the Holy Church of God, stay the spreading flood of modem paganism; enkindle in the faithful the love of purity, the practice of the Christian life and an apostolic zeal so that the servants of God may increase in merit and in number.

Lastly, as the Church and the entire human race were consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so that in reposing all hope in Him, He might become for them the sign and pledge of Victory and salvation; so we, in like manner, consecrate ourselves forever also to thee and to thine Immaculate Heart, our Mother and Queen, that thy love and patronage may hasten the triumph of the Kingdom of God and that all nations, at peace with one another and with God may proclaim thee blessed and with thee may raise their voices to resound from pole to pole the chant of the everlasting Magnificat of glory, love and gratitude to the Heart of Jesus, where alone they can find truth and peace.

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