In the third apparition at Fatima, the Blessed Mother told the little seers that, to save souls and avert war, she came to request not just the praying of the Rosary and consecration to her Immaculate Heart, but a “Communion of reparation” on the first Saturdays of the month. In 1925, in a later vision to the surviving visionary, Sr. Lucia, Mary asked that her children console her Immaculate Heart, grieved by men’s blasphemies and ingratitude, by committing to the following on the first Saturday of five consecutive months: going to Confession, receiving Holy Communion, reciting five decades of the Rosary, and keeping her company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to her.[1] Sister Lucia later explained that the Five First Saturday devotion was requested by Jesus to make reparation for the five kinds of offenses and blasphemies uttered against His mother: (1) blasphemies against her Immaculate Conception, (2) her perpetual virginity, (3) her divine maternity and identity as the mother of men, (4) the desecration of images of her, and (5) those who seek to plant scorn, indifference, or hate of Mary in the heart of others.[2]
While the element of five consecutive Saturdays
was new, the recognition of Saturday as a day specially devoted to Mary had a
long history in the Church. In the tenth century we hear of Saturday Masses
being celebrated in her honor in churches in Italy, France, and Germany. The Franciscans
and Benedictines spread the devotion, and by the seventeenth century the
Dominicans had started the practice of honoring Mary with special acts of
devotion on the fifteen consecutive Saturdays preceding the feast of the Holy
Rosary. The popes attached an indulgence to the Fifteen Saturdays for anyone
who: (1) went to Confession, (2) received Holy Communion, and (3) prayed five
decades of the Rosary. Also in the seventeenth century, St. John Eudes and Ven.
John J. Olier began to speak to their spiritual sons of the first Saturday of
the month as a day of reparation for blasphemies against the Blessed Mother.[3]
It has been suggested that Saturday became a day of
devotion to the Blessed Mother in memory of the desolation she suffered on Holy
Saturday. While not denying this impulse, I wish to suggest another reason for
the practice – the Saturday Sabbaths shared between Mary and Jesus. As
Christians we look to Sunday, the first day of the week, as the day to worship
and renew our consecration to the Lord in the celebration of the Eucharist
(Acts 20:7; Rev 1:8; CCC 2190). But Saturday was the day that, by divine command,
Jesus and Mary set apart to the Lord (Ex 20:8-11; Dt 5:12-15). “This is a sign
between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the
LORD sanctify you [mekoddishkem, ‘consecrate you’]” (Ex 31:13). Saturday
was the day that no work was done. The Sabbath dinner, the finest meal of the
week, was prepared by Mary in advance. She and Jesus attended the synagogue
where they prayed and meditated upon Scripture, and then returned home to spend
the rest of the day enjoying one another’s company as they prayed and discussed
God’s revelation and their daily lives.
After Jesus’s ascension Mary shared the Saturday Sabbath with the Apostle John, marking Saturday as the day when the Church experienced her maternal care in a special way. And for Mary, those Saturdays continued to be the day that her Son showered her with His affections – communicated to her through John. When we today undertake the Five First Saturdays, what we ultimately seek through its practices is the intimacy shared between Jesus and Mary on those days. It is a sign, and its various practices a means of deepening, our total consecration, in union with the Immaculate Heart, to Jesus. It is also a means for the Sacred Heart to express, through us, His love for His mother and soothe the wounds inflicted upon her heart.
Adapted The
Biblical Roots of Marian Consecration: Devotion to the Immaculate Heart in
Light of Scripture (TAN Books, 2022).
