Set clocks back one hour before you go to bed on Saturday night.
Psalm
119, Verse 46
I
will speak openly of your testimonies without FEAR even before kings.
Professing Christians! Are we ready to bear our testimony
for Jesus, against the sneer and ridicule of the ungodly? We are not likely to
"be brought before kings and rulers for the Son of Man's sake." Yet
no less do we need Divine help and strong faith in withstanding the enmity of a
prejudiced relative or scornful neighbor. Young people! You are perhaps in
especial danger of being ashamed of your Bible, your religion, your Savior. You
may be brought under the snare of the "fear of man," and be tempted
to compromise your religion, and to sacrifice your everlasting all from a dread
of "the reproach of Christ." But remember him, who for your sake
"before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession"; and shall the
dread of a name restrain you from sharing his reproach, and banish the
obligations of love and gratitude from your hearts? Have you forgotten that you
once owned the service of Satan? And will you not be as bold for Christ, as you
were for him? Were you once "glorying in your shame; "and will you
now be ashamed of your glory? Oh! Remember who hath said, "Whosoever shall
be ashamed of me and of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of
him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his
Father with the holy angels." Think much and often of this word. Think on
this day. Think on the station of "the fearful and unbelieving" on
the left hand on that day. Think on their eternal doom. What is a prison,
compared to hell? What need to pray and tremble! If you are sincere in your
determination, and simple in your dependence, then will the. "love of
Christ constrain you" , not to a cold, calculating, reluctant service; but
to a confession of your Savior, bold, unfettered, and "faithful even unto
death." Every deviation from the straight path bears the character of
being ashamed of Christ. How much have you to speak in behalf of his
testimonies, his ways, his love! When in danger of the influence of "the
fear of man," look to him for strength. He will give to you, as he gave to
Stephen—"a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able
to gainsay or resist." Thus will you, like them, be strengthened "to
profess a good profession before many witnesses."[1]
First Saturday[2]
The Five First Saturday’s devotion is one of the principal points of the Fatima message. It centers on the urgent need for mankind to offer reparation and expiate for the many injuries that the Immaculate Heart of Mary suffers from the hands of both impious and indifferent men.
On the First Saturday during 5 Consecutive
Months, the Devotion consists of:
1. Going to Confession,
2. Receiving the Sacrament of Holy Communion,
3. Saying five decades of the Rosary,
4. Meditating for 15 minutes on the mysteries of the Rosary.
All this offered in REPARATION for the sins of
blasphemy and ingratitude committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
During the third apparition on July 13, 1917, Our Lady
revealed that she would come to ask for the consecration of Russia to her
Immaculate Heart and for the Communion of Reparation of the Five First
Saturdays. Consequently, she asked for the devotion in 1925 and the
consecration in 1929. While staying at the House of the Dorothean Sister in
Pontevedra, Portugal, Sister Lucia received a vision on December 10, 1925, where
the Blessed Mother appeared alongside a Boy who stood over a luminous cloud.
Our Lady rested one hand on the Boy’s shoulder while she held on the other hand
a heart pierced with thorns around it. Sister Lucia heard the Boy say,
"Have pity on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother which is covered with
thorns with which ingrate men pierce it at every moment with no one to make an
act of reparation to pull them out." Our Lady expressed her request in the
following words, "See, my daughter, My Heart surrounded with thorns with
which ingrates pierce me at every moment with blasphemies and ingratitude. You,
at least, make sure to console me and announce that all those who for five
months, on the first Saturdays, go to confession, receive Communion, say five
decades of the Rosary and keep me company for 15 minutes meditating on the
mysteries of the Rosary, with the purpose of making reparation to Me, I promise
to assist them at the hour of death with all the graces necessary for the
salvation of their souls." A few days afterward, Sister Lucia
detailed this vision in a letter addressed to Monsignor Manuel Pereira Lopes,
her confessor when she resided in the Asylum of Vilar in the city of Oporto,
Portugal.
Why Five Saturdays?
Sister Lucia’s confessor questioned her about the reason
for the five Saturdays asking why not seven or nine. She answered him in a
letter dated June 12, 1930. In it she related about a vision she had of Our
Lord while staying in the convent chapel part of the night of the twenty-ninth
to the thirtieth of the month of May, 1930. The reasons Our Lord gave were as
follows: The five first Saturdays correspond to the five kinds of offenses and
blasphemies committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary. They are:
1.
Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception
2.
Blasphemies against her virginity
3.
Blasphemies against her divine maternity, at the same
time the refusal to accept her as the Mother of all men
4.
Instilling, indifference, scorn and even hatred towards
this Immaculate Mother in the hearts of children
5.
Direct insults against Her sacred images
Let us keep the above reasons firmly in our minds.
Devotions have intentions attached to them and knowing them adds merit and
weight to the practice.
Modifications to the Five First Saturdays
Devotion to facilitate its observation
The original request of Our Lady asks one to confess and
receive Communion on five consecutive first Saturdays; to say five decades of
the Rosary; to meditate during 15 minutes on the mysteries of the Rosary for
the purpose of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in reparations
for the sins of men. In subsequent private visions and apparitions however,
Sister Lucia presented to Our Lord the difficulties that devotees encountered
in fulfilling some conditions. With loving condescension and solicitude, Our
Lord deigned to relax the rules to make this devotion easy to observe:
·
Confession may be done on other days other than
the First Saturdays so long as one receives Our Lord worthily and has the
intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
·
Even if one forgets to make the intention, it
may be done on the next confession, taking advantage of the first occasion to
go to confession.
·
Sister Lucia also clarified that it is not necessary
to meditate on ALL mysteries of the Rosary on each First Saturdays. One or
several suffice.
With much latitude granted by Our Lord Himself, there is no
reason for the faithful to hesitate or delay this pious practice in the spirit
of reparation which the Immaculate Heart of Mary urgently asks.
This devotion is so necessary in our days
The culture of vice and sin remains unabated even as one
reads this. Abortion, blasphemy, drug abuse, pornography, divorce and bad
marriages, religious indifference, the advances of the homosexual agenda and
others are just some of society’s many plagues that cut deeply into the
Immaculate Heart of Mary. We must
console Our Lady amidst all these insults and injuries to her and her Divine
Son. She asks for reparation, she pleads for our prayers, she hopes for our
amendment of life. Let us listen to her maternal pleas and atone for the
ingratitude of men. The First Five Saturday’s devotion stimulates the spirit of
reparation; it instills a tender love for the Holy Sacraments of Confession and
the Blessed Eucharist. It nurtures a holy affection for the Immaculate Heart of
Mary and the Rosary. Above all, it is an excellent means to maintain one in the
state of grace while immersed in the daily spiritual battles and prosaic existence
in the neo-pagan world that we live in. Let us not delay in observing this
devotion for it too gives us hope for eternal salvation.
Don't
forget to pray for the Poor Souls in Purgatory from November 1 to the 8th.
Purgatory[3]
Father Gerard,
that the custom of having thirty masses said for the dead is also widely spread
in Italy and other Christian countries. These Masses are called the Thirty Masses of St.
Gregory, because the pious custom seems to trace its origin back to this
great Pope. It is thus related in his Dialogues (Book 4, chap. 40): A
Religious, named Justus, had received and kept for himself three gold pieces.
This was a grievous fault against his vow of poverty. He was discovered and
excommunicated. This salutary penalty made him enter into himself, and some
time afterwards he died in true sentiments of repentance. Nevertheless, St.
Gregory, in order to inspire the brethren with a lively horror of the sin of
avarice in a Religious, did not withdraw the sentence of excommunication:
Justus was buried apart from the other monks, and the three pieces of money
were thrown into the grave, whilst the Religious repeated all together the
words of St. Peter to Simon the Magician, Pecunia tua tecum sit in
perditionem—“Keep thy money to perish with thee.” Sometime afterwards, the holy
Abbot, judging that the scandal was sufficiently repaired, and moved with
compassion for the soul of Justus, called the Procurator and said to him
sorrowfully, “Ever since the moment of his death, our brother has been tortured
in the flames of Purgatory; we must
through charity make an effort to deliver him. Go, then, and take care that
from this time forward the Holy Sacrifice is offered for thirty days; let not
one morning pass without the Victim of Salvation being offered up for his
release.” The Procurator obeyed punctually. The thirty Masses were celebrated
in the course of thirty days. When the thirtieth day arrived and the thirtieth
Mass was ended, the deceased appeared to a brother named Copiosus, saying,
“Bless God, my dear brother, today I am delivered and admitted into the society
of the saints.” Since that time the pious custom of celebrating thirty Masses
for the dead has been established.
Daily Devotions
·
Unite in the work of the Porters of St. Joseph by joining them
in fasting: Today's Fast: Authentic Feminism
· Saturday Litany of the Hours
Invoking the Aid of Mother Mary
·
Offering to
the sacred heart of Jesus
·
Rosary
[1]https://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/19-psalms/text/books/bridges-psalm119/bridges-ps119.pdf
[3]Schouppe
S.J., Rev. Fr. F. X.. Purgatory Explained (with Supplemental Reading: What Will
Hell Be Like?)
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