DAYLIGHT
SAVINGS TIME TOMORROW
Today imagine that God came to you
and said you can move back time for two hours for any moment in your life. What
would you change? Think of that before going to confession.
First Saturday Devotion[2]
Five consecutive Saturdays in reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
The practice of the First Saturday devotion was requested by Our Lady of Fatima, who appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, multiple times starting in 1917. She said to Lucia, the oldest of the three children: “I shall come to ask . . . that on the First Saturday of every month, Communions of reparation be made in atonement for the sins of the world.” Years later she repeated her request to Sr. Lucia, the only one still living of the three young Fatima seers, while she was a postulant sister living in a convent in Spain: “Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me at very 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 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 15 minutes while meditating on the 15 mysteries of the rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.”
Conditions to Fulfill the First Saturday Devotion
There are five requirements to obtain this promise from the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On five consecutive first Saturdays of the month, one should:
1. Have the intention of consoling the Immaculate Heart in a spirit of reparation.
2. Go to confession (within eight days before or after the first Saturday).
3. Receive Holy Communion.
4. Say five decades of the Holy Rosary.
5. Meditate for 15 minutes on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary with the goal of keeping Our Lady company (for example, while in church or before an image or statue of Our Lady).
Read How to Make Your First Saturday Rosary Meditation According to Sr. Lucia
Our
Lord appeared to Sr. Lucia on May 29, 1930 and gave her the reason behind the
five Saturdays devotion. It is because there are five types of offenses and
blasphemies committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary:
1. Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception
2. Blasphemies against Our Lady’s perpetual virginity
3. Blasphemies against her divine maternity, in refusing at the same time to recognize her as the Mother of men
4. Blasphemies of those who publicly seek to sow in the hearts of children, indifference or scorn or even hatred of their Immaculate Mother
5. Offenses of those who outrage Our Lady directly in her holy images
Never think that Jesus is indifferent to whether or not His mother is honored!
God loves a grateful heart; in the comments section state what you are grateful for.
Daylight
Savings time had begun in an effort to help save energy and provide workers
with more hours of serviceable daylight during the long summer days. Daylight Savings
Time was first introduced in the U.S. in 1918. However, it was not until
1966, when the Uniform Act was passed, that all states had to either observe
DST or pass a state law to abstain.
Daylight Saving Time Begins
Facts
·
Benjamin Franklin first
proposed the idea of DST in 1784. He wrote An Economical Project for the
Journal of Paris, wherein he discussed the cost of oil for lamps as well as
working while it was dark and sleeping while it was day.
·
Daylight Savings Time changes
at 2:00 a.m. This time is selected in an effort to provide the least
amount of inconvenience to businesses and citizens.
·
Hawaii and Arizona do not use
DST. Up until 2006, Indiana only used DST in part of the state.
Daylight Saving Time Begins
Top Events and Things to Do
·
Move your clocks forward 1
hour before bed on Saturday night before the Daylight-Saving Time day in March.
·
Go to bed an hour earlier
Saturday night before the Daylight-Saving Time day.
·
Get outside and enjoy the
extra hour of daylight.
·
Replace the batteries in the
smoke alarm and carbon dioxide monitors.
·
Clean out the medicine
cabinet. Dispose of all medicines properly.
Today imagine that God came to you
and said you can move back time for two hours for any moment in your life. What
would you change? Think of that before going to confession.
First Saturday
SAINTS FILICITY AND PERPETUA
Sirach, Chapter
40, Verse 7
As he reaches safety, he wakes up,
astonished that there was nothing to fear.
Our loving God wants us free; He speaks to us at times
through our dreams and reassures us of His assistance. Rest is an important
part of God’s care for us and the world.
In the Jewish calendar God specified that we are to
rest one out of seven days, but it goes further with a rest after seven weeks
ending in a year of Jubilee after the 49th year called a Shemitah.
The Shemitah Year is the seventh year of the
seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah for the Land of Israel and still
observed in contemporary Judaism. When Moses received the Levitical law, God
gave the commandment to rest on the seventh day… the Sabbath. Moses also
applied the cycles of "seven"
to weeks and years. A cycle of
seven weeks points to the 50th day, called Pentecost. And a cycle of seven sets
of seven years points to the 50th year, the year of Jubilee. The year of
Jubilee is based on letting the land rest every seventh year as follows;
"For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and
gather their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a Sabbath of
rest, a Sabbath to the Lord." (Leviticus 25:3-4)
Before the Exodus, the Israelites had been slaves in
the land of Egypt, without freedom and without possessions. When they reached
the land of Canaan, Joshua divided the land among their tribes and their
families… so that each had his own inheritance. Every adult male among them
became a landowner. This land was a permanent possession that could never
depart from his family. If a man became poor, he could sell part or all of his
land… but only temporarily. It would always revert to him or his descendants at
the “Year of Jubilee.” If he became even poorer and was unable to pay his debts,
he could sell himself into slavery, and work to pay off his debts. Again, that
slavery could only ever be temporary. When the great “Day of Atonement” in the
“Year of Jubilee” came he became a free man once again and repossessed his
inheritance. The most unusual observance that God commanded the Israelites
through Moses was… the keeping of the Year of Jubilee. For most people this celebration occurred only once in their lifetime and
for many not even that, as it occurred …only once every 50 years. At
this year of jubilee all Israelites who had sold themselves into slavery were
set free… and all land that had been sold reverted to its original owner. This
meant that the Israelites could not ever be in permanent slavery; nor could any
Israelite permanently lose his inheritance![1]
God’s purpose for the jubilee is to set men free from slavery. Are there
people and things you are enslaved too? Now is the time to break free from
them. If others happen to be enslaved to you; now is the time to release them
and god’s mercy will shine on you! If you are enslaved to alcohol, drugs,
pornography, food or any other thing or person. Free yourself to be able to
give yourself to God.
Five consecutive Saturdays in reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
The practice of the First Saturday devotion was requested by Our Lady of Fatima, who appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, multiple times starting in 1917. She said to Lucia, the oldest of the three children: “I shall come to ask . . . that on the First Saturday of every month, Communions of reparation be made in atonement for the sins of the world.” Years later she repeated her request to Sr. Lucia, the only one still living of the three young Fatima seers, while she was a postulant sister living in a convent in Spain: “Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me at very 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 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 15 minutes while meditating on the 15 mysteries of the rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.”
Conditions to Fulfill the First Saturday Devotion
There are five requirements to obtain this promise from the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On five consecutive first Saturdays of the month, one should:
1. Have the intention of consoling the Immaculate Heart in a spirit of reparation.
2. Go to confession (within eight days before or after the first Saturday).
3. Receive Holy Communion.
4. Say five decades of the Holy Rosary.
5. Meditate for 15 minutes on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary with the goal of keeping Our Lady company (for example, while in church or before an image or statue of Our Lady).
Read How to Make Your First Saturday Rosary Meditation According to Sr. Lucia
Why
Five Saturdays?
1. Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception
2. Blasphemies against Our Lady’s perpetual virginity
3. Blasphemies against her divine maternity, in refusing at the same time to recognize her as the Mother of men
4. Blasphemies of those who publicly seek to sow in the hearts of children, indifference or scorn or even hatred of their Immaculate Mother
5. Offenses of those who outrage Our Lady directly in her holy images
Never think that Jesus is indifferent to whether or not His mother is honored!
Reflect
today on what it took to make Christ the gentle shepherd of our souls!
Perpetua
was twenty-two, well born, married and the mother of a tiny son still at her
breast. Felicitas, an expectant mother, was a slave. They were among five
catechumens whose arrest and imprisonment were meant as a warning to the other
Christians in Carthage in the year 203. Tormented by her father who was a pagan
and wanted her to apostatize, terrified by the darkness and stifling heat of
the dungeon where they were imprisoned, Perpetua's greatest suffering
nevertheless was for her baby who was with her. Baptism, however, drove away
her fears and with the coming of the
Holy Spirit she was at peace and the prison became to her as a palace; in
visions she learned the manner of their martyrdom and caught glimpses of what
awaits souls in the life after death. Among these was a vision of Purgatory
where she saw her little brother Dinocratus suffering. Dinocratus had died when
he was only seven, painfully ulcerated about the face. Perpetua saw him
"coming out of a dark place where there were many others," dirtily
clad, pale, with the wound still on his face, and he was very hot and thirsty.
Near him was a fountain but its brim was higher than he could reach and, though
he stood on tiptoe, he could not drink. By this vision she knew he needed her
prayers, and she prayed for him night and day. On the day the Christians were
put in stocks, she had another vision and saw Dinocratus freed. This time he
was clean and finely clothed, on his face was a clean scar and beside him a low
fountain reaching only to his waist. On the edge of the fountain was a golden
cup ever full of water, and Dinocratus drank. "And when he had drunk, he
came away — pleased to play, as children will." In the meantime, Felicitas
was worried for fear her baby would
not be born in time for her to die for Christ with her companions. There was a
law which forebade throwing even a Christian woman to the wild beasts if she
was with child. Three days before they were to go to the arena, they prayed God
would permit the birth of her child, and as soon as their prayers were done,
her labor began. She gave birth to a little girl who was afterward adopted by
her sister. At last the scene of their martyrdom and in it Perpetua and
Felicity were told to put on the garments of pagan priestesses, the two refused
and so were stripped naked, covered with nets, and sent to face assault by a
maddened cow said to have been used in insult to their womanhood and their
maternity. Strangely enough the audience — screaming for blood though it was —
yet was touched by the sight of these two so young and so valiant, and the
people shuddered. Perpetua and Felicitas were called back and clothed in loose
robes. Now Perpetua was thrown, her garment rent, and her thigh gored.
Regaining her feet, she gathered her tunic over her thigh so in suffering she
would not appear immodest and looking about found her fallen hair ornament and
repinned her hair lest one soon to be a martyr seem to grieve in her glory.
Looking for Felicitas, she gave assistance to her and standing together they awaited
another attack. But the mob cried, "Enough," and the two were led off
to the headsman's block. Catching sight of her brother, Perpetua cried out:
"Stand fast in the faith and love one another; and do not let our
sufferings be a stumbling block to you." Felicitas was struck down first then
Perpetua — but only after the nervous swordsman had struck her once and failed
to sever her head. The second time she guided his sword with her own hands. So
brave, and so full of love; perhaps if she were dying now, she would exhort us
to be brave and full of love in slightly different words. Perhaps she would cry
out, "Stand fast in the faith and love one another; and do not let our
color be a stumbling block to you." Perpetua was white, and Felicitas was
black.
Daily
Devotions
·
Manhood of the Master-Day 27
God loves a grateful heart; in the comments section state what you are grateful for.
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