The Immaculate Heart of Mary
174. The Church celebrates the liturgical memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary the day after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The contiguity of both celebrations is in itself a liturgical sign of their close connection: the mysterium of the Heart of Jesus is projected onto and reverberates in the Heart of His Mother, who is also one of his followers and a disciple. As the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart celebrates the salvific mysteries of Christ in a synthetic manner by reducing them to their fount -the Heart of Jesus, so too the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a celebration of the complex visceral relationship of Mary with her Son's work of salvation: from the Incarnation, to his death and resurrection, to the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Following the apparitions at Fatima in 1917, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary became very widespread. On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the apparitions (1942) Pius XII consecrated the Church and the human race to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and extended the memorial to the entire Church.
In popular piety devotions to the Immaculate Heart of Mary resemble those of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, while bearing in mind the distance between Jesus and his Mother: consecration of individuals and families, of religious communities and nations(189); reparation for sins through prayer, mortification and alms deeds; the practice of the First Five Saturdays.
With regard to receiving Holy Communion of the Five First Saturdays, the same as has been said in relation to the Nine First Fridays can be repeated(190): overestimation of temporal factors should be overcome in favour of re-contextualization the reception of Holy Communion within the framework of the Eucharist. This pious practice should be seen as an opportunity to live intensely the paschal Mystery celebrated in the Holy Eucharist, as inspired by the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
.......FROM:
CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP
AND THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SACRAMENTS
DIRECTORY
ON POPULAR PIETY AND THE LITURGY
PRINCIPLES AND GUIDELINES
Vatican City
December 2001
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Our Lady of Fatima announced an intervention of God in history through:-
The Great promise of the Heart of Mary where she stays with us through the First Saturday’s reparation by promising the grace of final perseverance and assuring world peace and unity for the Universal Church.
On July 13, 1917, when Our Lady appeared to the three children, she said, “You saw hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish devotion to my Immaculate Heart in the world. If they do wha
t I shall tell you, many souls will be saved and there will be peace”. Our Lady promised that she would come back to ask for the Eucharistic Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays….
Eight years later, she appeared with the Child Jesus who spoke first: “Have compassion on the heart of your most holy mother, which is covered with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce at every moment, while there is no one to remove them with an act of reparation”.
Our Lady then said: “My daughter, look at My Heart surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at 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 all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the First Saturday of Five consecutive months go to (1) Confession and receive Holy Communion, (2) recite Five Decades of the Rosary and (3) keep me company for a quarter of an hour while meditating on mysteries of the Rosary, (4) with the intention of making reparation to Me”.
Why are there FIVE First Saturdays and not seven or nine?..Our Lord…answered: “…. There are Five kinds of offences and blasphemies…; (1)…against the Immaculate Conception; (2)… against Her Virginity; (3)… against Her Divine Maternity; (4)… those who openly seek to Foster in the Hearts of children indifference or even hatred for this Immaculate Mother; (5) The offences of those who directly outrage Her in Holy Images.”Each of the Five Saturdays corresponds to a specific offence. In this way, we can help remove the thorns from Our Lady’s Heart.
: The Blessed Virgin Mary revealed that God has entrusted the fate of the world to Her Immaculate Heart.
: In May 2010, Pope Benedict XVI expressed the hope that the Message of Fatima will be “increasingly accepted, understood and lived in every community.” …even by those who think that, because the Fatima Apparitions are a private revelation, the message is purely something devotional of a lesser importance; classified for them as a mere Marian devotion. But this is a terrible mistake! Although public revelation (the Bible, the Tradition of the Church and its Magisterium) is the only needed source of Revelation for the salvation of souls; it is also true that at different moments of history, the Good Lord of history, has chosen messengers to actualize the measures of faith and morals needed to succeed over the powers of evil.
: The Holy Father confirmed to his flock that the Message of Fatima is NOT a mere devotion intended for devotees but much more than that, an urgent call from heaven to change the lifestyles, mores and folkways of corrupted societies by repenting, doing penance, converting to Jesus Christ and abandoning “the evil spirit and his worldly deeds” as we promised in our baptism. This message is an echo of the Gospel actualized for our times of confusion and uncertainty.
>There is not much time left to spread the Message before it is too late! Today is more urgent than never before! In March 1939 Our Lord told Sr. Lucia, “The time is coming when the rigor of my justice will punish the crimes of diverse nations.”
The eschatological tension we live today is the sign from Heaven of the urgency of this message to be known, understood in a greater scope and lived, lived, lived!