First Saturday Devotion
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The Benediction monk Alcuin of York (735–804) began the practice of honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday. In 1899, a laywoman (and later religious sister) named Maria Inglese began the practice of receiving Holy Communion on the First Saturday of the month in reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Pope St. Pius X approved this devotion in 1905.
However, it wasn’t until Sister Lúcia Santos, one of the Portuguese witnesses of Our Lady of Fátima, reported that on December 10, 1925, the Virgin Mary appeared to her at the convent in Pontevedra, Spain, and requested the institution of the devotion of the Five First Saturdays in reparation to her Immaculate Heart that the devotion became widespread. The requirements for the First Saturday Devotion are, for five consecutive First Saturdays: (1) Go to confession within eight days before or after the First Saturday with the intention in your heart of making reparation and consoling our Blessed Mother; (2) Receive Holy Communion on the First Saturday in a spirit of reparation; (3) Pray five decades of the Holy Rosary with the intention of making reparation for offenses made against the Immaculate Heart of Mary; and (4) Keep Mary company by meditating for fifteen minutes on the mysteries of the Rosary. This meditation entails thinking or reading meditatively in order to dwell on one or more of the mysteries in Our Lady’s life. The fifteen-minute meditation and the praying of the Holy Rosary are to be performed separately. The five consecutive First Saturdays of reparation were requested by Our Lady of Fátima to atone for the five ways in which people offend her Immaculate Heart: Offenses or blasphemies (1) Against her Immaculate Conception; (2) Against her perpetual virginity; (3) Against her divine maternity; (4) Those who implant in children’s hearts, indifference, contempt and even hatred against our Immaculate Mother; and (5) Those who insult her directly in her sacred images. Our Lady promised to assist all those who practice the First Saturday Devotion on five consecutive months with the graces necessary for salvation at the hour of their death. It would be a serious mistake to think that those who practice the devotion on five consecutive First Saturdays are guaranteed passage into heaven when the moment of their death arrives. Our cooperation with grace is always required. Our regular practice of the First Saturdays is a sign of our devotion to the Immaculate Heart and a desire on our part to make reparation for the blasphemies against her. |
Recitation of the Rosary at 7:30 AM
Holy Mass at 8:00 AM Confessions from 8:30 to 9:30 AM Come and join us! 
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