THE NECESSARY DEVOTION

Each year we discuss the necessity of obeying the Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ who asked us for a small favor 103 years ago. Sadly, most Catholics have not found the time to do this necessary devotion.

Well, perhaps they are too busy with other, more important things; I don’t know but it’s getting a little tiresome, year after year to watch the awful disintegration of the structures of the faith and folks still cannot grasp the concept that when God commands us, He intends that we obey. We are in the midst of a spiritual chastisement and tragically, many have become so numb in the consciences that they are in grave danger of losing their souls if they fail to wake up in time. Since they are no longer able to sense the danger, we must do all in our power to pray and make reparation for them, begging God’s mercy for them.

When we heard about the Message of Fatima in our school days, we never thought that “Pray for the conversion of sinners” would apply to our own beloved family members but that is precisely where so many of us are at the present time. I would so very much love to have readers pray not just for their own loved ones to repent and be re-converted, but for us all to pray for each others’ families as well. Just think of the good we would bring about!

NOTE:

This post has not been completely updated and so you may see errors – I have been occupied restoring the posts after our site was badly hacked on our old hosting platform. I am quite old and my goal now is just to restore enough essays to bring forward the prophetic Message of Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima, Portugal in 1917 and its increasing urgency for these chaotic times.

I hope that before I leave, we will have new writing on the Rosary and updated material on Our Lady of Fatima. Meanwhile, – and always! No amount of online information outweighs the beautiful spiritual truths of Our Lady of the Rosary – please understand that only she will keep us safe in this terrible war for our souls!

Yes, she will keep us safe, but only if we cling to her in humility and obedience – obey her requests! There is no other way – only through devotion to the Immaculate Mother of God, using the Holy Rosary as she has commanded her children – only through Mary will we return to Jesus!

Pitiful Apostates

More than a century after our popes refused to honor Our Lady’s request, Christianity, and especially the Holy Catholic Church, is losing on every front. The pitiful apostates running the Church cannot see their way clear to obey — they are too far gone in the subterranean depths of depravity — they cannot do what is needed until we, the faithful, by our penances and prayers, make reparation for these grave insults to God and His beloved emissary, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The confusion of minds today has increased to the point that Catholics may no longer be able to obey. And so this post is not for them but for those of you reading this, I hope you will consider trying even harder this year to help someone return to Fatima, come keep Our Lady company, make your First Saturdays of Reparation and by the grace of God, pass the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on to others.

No one else will help us, so we must try even harder to save souls by bringing them to First Saturdays. Any First Saturday will do to begin our First Saturdays, but when we continue them, offering every First Saturday, . it’s a beautiful way to tell our Blessed Mother we love her!

t until we storm heaven with our. proof that we are obeying all that heaven has asked of us, and most urgently the First Saturdays of Reparation and her real, true Rosary with her requested prayers, we are not very likely to please her or Our Good Lord who sent her to us.

“I will never forsake you!”

On her second visit (June 13, 1917), Our Lady told the little shepherds,,

“Jesus wishes to make use of you to make me known and loved. He wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.” … “I will never forsake you. My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the path that leads you to God.” … Our Lady extended her right hand and in front of her palm was a heart encircled by thorns which pierced it. In Lúcia’s words, “We understood that this was the Immaculate Heart of Mary outraged by the sins of humanity and seeking reparation.”

And then, the following month, after showing them the the vision of Hell, Our Lady said:

“You have seen Hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish throughout the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If people do what I request, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end. But if people do not stop offending God, another and worse war will break out in the reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that it is the great sign that God gives you, that He is going to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, famine, and persecutions against the Church and of the Holy Father.

“To prevent this I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.

“If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace. If not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecution of the Church; the good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, she will be converted, and some time of peace will be given to the world.”

Note, if you will, the choice Our Lady offers: Do this and this will happen. Don’t obey and this will happen. Salvation history is filled with choices and so often, the recalcitrant children of God simply shrugged it off, with entirely predictable consequences. In this late age, however, God is giving us so much leeway! Surely at least some of our religious leaders must see the danger here and yet they continue to provoke God’s righteous anger.

The Visit: December 10, 1925

Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité , in Volume II of the Whole Truth About Fatima quotes Sister Lúcia of Fatima’s recollection (given in the third person):

“On December 10, 1925, the Most Holy Virgin appeared to her, and by Her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was the Child Jesus. The Most Holy Virgin rested Her hand on her shoulder, and as She did so, She showed her a heart encircled by thorns, which She was holding in Her other hand.
At the same time, the Child said: “Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce It at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.”

Then the Most Holy Virgin said:

“Look My daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console Me and announce in My name that I promise to assist at the moment of death, with all 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.”

In this revelation, Our Lady of the Rosary as Mediatrix of Graces, promises the supremely valuable gift of God’s grace, that is, the gift of final perseverance, without which other gifts are worthless, “For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matt 16, 26).

Frère Michel continues, “the first fruit of the Communion of Reparation is the salvation of the one practicing it. Let us place no limits on the divine mercy, but keep to the letter of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s promise: whoever fulfills all the conditions set down can be sure of obtaining at the moment of death at least – and this even after miserable lapses back into a state of grave sin – the graces necessary to obtain the pardon of God, and to be preserved from eternal chastisement.”

The History of First Saturday Devotion

The devotion of First Saturdays was not at all new, but was given a new emphasis by the Blessed Virgin. Previously, there had existed the practice of devoting Saturdays to Mary. For instance, “The Fifteen Saturdays in honor of the Most Holy Rosary”, a popular devotion of the Rosary Confraternities to receive the Sacraments and perform pious works on each of fifteen consecutive Saturdays in honor of the Fifteen Mysteries of Our Lady’s Rosary. Pope Leo XIII enriched this devotion with generous plenary indulgences.

Then, just a few years before Our Lady came to Fatima, St. Pius X, on June 13, 1912, granted generous new indulgences for the Devotion of Reparation on the First Saturdays of the month, in order to “promote the piety of the faithful towards Immaculate Mary, Mother of God, and to make reparation for the outrages done to Her holy Name and Her privileges by impious men”. On November 13, 1920, St. Pius’s successor, Benedict XV granted new indulgences to this practice when accomplished for eight consecutive months.

And so we see that when Our Lady requested that the Pope solemnly approve of this devotion and promote it, she was not seeking the impossible, but merely adding precision and simplifying an established devotion. And yet, since 1925, no pope whatsoever has obeyed this very simple request.

The failure of the Popes

Pope Benedict XV was succeeded by Pope Pius XI who did much to proclaim the Kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ. But this pope pointedly ignored Sister Lúcia and her efforts to call the true message of Fatima to his attention. His efforts to broker peace failed dismally and his aid to the Russian people only served to assist Stalin’s hellish communism in its stranglehold on the enslaved Russian people.

We shall see in another post very soon how Pius XI’s misguided actions were the trigger for Our Lady’s return, in 1929 to ask for the Consecration of Russia, which he also ignored, thus contributing to Russia’s spreading of its errors, and causing the loss of untold numbers of souls.

Pope Pius XII also did not establish the Devotion of the First Saturdays of Reparation as Our Lady requested. Much is made of his failure to Consecrate Russia, but the establishment of First Saturdays was easily within his reach and consequently, it is inexcusable that this was not done for fully 35 years until 1960, when all became clearer with John XXIII’s open defiance of the request of the Mother of God. I firmly believe that If any earlier pope had established the requested devotion to the Immaculata, and promoted the First Saturdays of Reparation, Our Lady, Mediatrix of Graces would have generously provided sufficient grace for the Pope and Bishops to willingly perform the Consecration of Russia as Our Lady asked.

John Paul II, whom many today call “Great” and “Saint” added to the betrayal by refusing to promote the simple and profoundly merciful devotion of First Saturdays of Reparation, and promoting instead the false “Divine Mercy” devotion and the “Luminous” mysteries, knowing full well that every DM chaplet recited was a rosary denied to Our Lady, and every recitation of the Luminous Mysteries supplanted one of Our Lady’s venerable mysteries, thus falsely pitting the two Sacred Hearts against each other. The Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary are not vying with one another for our attention! Those who attempt to set the one against the other are offending both Hearts deeply.

At Fulda, John Paul gave his reasons for not revealing the Third Secret, When asked why the Third Secret was not revealed, the Pope responded:

“Given the seriousness of the contents, my predecessors in the Petrine office diplomatically preferred to postpone publication so as not to encourage the world power of Communism to make certain moves. On the other hand, it should be sufficient for all Christians to know this, if there is a message in which it is written that the oceans will flood whole areas of the earth and that from one moment to the next millions of people will perish, truly the publication of such a message is no longer something to be so much desired.”

Thus, Pope John Paul II showed that he placed human considerations ahead of trust and obedience to God. He also never gave a clear explanation for why he refused to promote the First Saturdays asked for by Our Lady. If he was truly the devout Marian pope he professed to be, why did he refuse Our Lady this small favor she had asked for?

Our Popes have not obeyed Our Lady’s request for the First Saturdays of Reparation, our Bishops have not promoted this devotion (for the most part) neither have the majority of Novus Ordo Catholics. But now, more than ever, we few faithful can and must obey Our Lady’s request in this, the centenary year of the apparitions, miracle and message of Fatima.

The First Saturday of May has passed but we still may make June through October to close the Fatima cycle with Five First Saturdays. Since many of us are in areas of lockdown, I hope you will consider making your First Saturdays as reparatory as possible in the current circumstances, by either following the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass online, or by devoutly reading the Mass in your Missals. That is my favorite way as the reading in seclusion helps my troubled mind find peace and recollection. The Holy Ghost has told us that Our Lady knows the thoughts of our hearts, so trust in her loving guidance and offer First Saturdays – many of you already do every Saturday this way – and we have reason to hope that these small offering we make to her will be the beginning of the necessary flood of God’s grace back into the world to restore the Church.

These First Saturdays are a lovely spiritual bouquet for the Queen of the Holy Rosary, Queen of our hearts! Please make every effort to perform this devotion!

Thank you for reading. Please encourage others to make the essential First Saturdays of Reparation between now and October.

† Remember – Our Lady needs us to obey: First Saturdays of Reparation, daily rosary, at least 5 mysteries, wear her brown scapular and live your Total Consecration to her Immaculate Heart, offering daily duties in reparation and for the conversion of poor sinners.

† Immaculate Heart of Mary, Queen of our hearts, Mother of the Church, do thou offer to the Eternal Father the Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the conversion of poor sinners, especially our Pontiff.

† Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

† Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Thy Kingdom come! Viva Cristo Rey!

† St. Joseph, guardian of the Holy Family, protect our families, protect our priests!

† St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle!

~ by evensong, for love of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Queen of our hearts.
Vouchsafe that I may praise thee, O Sacred Virgin, give me strength against thine enemies!