First Five Saturday devotion of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
“God wishes to establish devotion to My Immaculate Heart in the world”
At Fatima, Our Blessed Lady requested the First Five Saturday devotion in reparation for the offences committed against Her Immaculate Heart, but in recent years, except in certain places, this wonderful devotion has largely fallen into neglect – even though it is needed more than ever now, and not just because of the sharp increase in horrific public blasphemies against the Most Holy Virgin, such as the recent sacrilege in Oklahoma, USA, where Satanists publicly desecrated a statue of Our Lady outside a church – with the permission of city officials!
God and Our Blessed Lady have attached great temporal and spiritual advantages to the practice of the First Saturday devotion. Realising how pleasing the whole Fatima message is to Heaven, and the advantages to be gained from it, Sister Lucia lamented that many ignore it. On December 26th 1957 she said to Father Fuentes: "Father, the most Holy Virgin is very sad because no one has paid any attention to Her Message, neither the good nor the bad. The good continue on their way, but without giving any importance to Her Message. The bad, not seeing the punishment of God actually falling upon them, continue their life of sin without even caring about the Message. But believe me, Father, God will chastise the world and this will be in a terrible manner . . . “
Previously, on March 19, 1939, Sister Lucia had said the following specifically regarding the First Saturday devotion of reparation:- “Whether the world has war or peace depends on the practice of this devotion, along with the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This is why I desire its propagation so ardently, especially because this is also the will of our dear Mother in Heaven”. We have only to look at the perilous state of the world today to see the wisdom of embracing this devotion, and encouraging others to. Pope Francis has publicly spoken on more than one occasion about a “piecemeal World War III” already underway, with the current worldwide spate of terrorist crimes, massacres and destruction. So we can see the temporal advantage of practising this devotion – but the spiritual advantage is even greater.
Our Lady made the sublime promise to Sister Lucia in 1925 at Pontevedra in Spain, that to those who practise this devotion, She would “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." It is a great mercy and blessing from our Mother, that a devotion which takes less than a couple of hours on one day each month, over a five month period, can have such an incredibly beneficial outcome on our eternal salvation, by simply making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of our Mother - which is always the first and foremost intention and the primary reason for this devotion – and yet so many pay little or no attention to it. On May 29th 1930, Our Lord gave Sister Lucia the reason for the Five Saturdays of reparation, saying: "My daughter, the reason is simple. There are five types of offenses and blasphemies committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary:
1. Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception.
2. Blasphemies against Her Perpetual Virginity.
3. Blasphemies against Her Divine Maternity, in refusing at the same time to recognize Her as the Mother of men.
4. The blasphemies of those who publicly seek to sow in the hearts of children indifference or scorn, or even hatred of this Immaculate Mother.
5. The offenses of those who outrage Her directly in Her holy images.
Sister Lucia used to do the devotion each First Saturday of her life. On November 1st 1927, she wrote a letter to her godmother, again highlighting the importance of the devotion, stating: “It seems to me, my dear godmother, that we are fortunate to be able to give Our Dear Heavenly Mother this proof of love, for we know that She desires it to be offered to Her. As for myself, I avow that I am never so happy as when first Saturday arrives . . . “ In these perilous times, we need to encourage others to imitate Sister Lucia’s example and try to keep each First Saturday, or if this is not possible, to do the First Five Saturday devotion at least once.
Pope Benedict XVI, during a homily at Fatima on May 13th 2010, left us in no doubt that the message of Fatima is still relevant for our times, when he said “He deceives himself who thinks that the prophetic mission of Fatima is concluded.”