HISTORY OF THE DEVOTION TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

Eight years after the Fatima events, when Sister Lucy was living in a convent in Pontevedra, Spain, she experienced another apparition of Our Lady (see picture above). On this occasion, the Virgin returned as She had promised at Fatima to relate the specific requirements for the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.

Lucy, writing in the third person, gives the account of the December 10, 1925, visit of Our Lady and the Child Jesus:

"The Most Holy Virgin appeared to her (Sister Lucy), and by Her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was the Child Jesus. The Most Holy Virgin rested Her hand on her (Sister Lucy's) shoulder and as She did so, She showed her (Sister Lucy) a heart encircled by thorns, which She was holding in Her other hand. At the same time, the Child said:

"'Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce It at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.'"

Then the Most Holy Virgin said to Sister Lucy:

"Look, My daughter at My Heart surrounded by thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You, at least, try to console Me and announce in My Name that I promise to assist at the moment of death, with all 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 fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary with the intention of making reparation to Me."

What a charming dialogue in which the Child Jesus and His Mother take turns speaking -- He, to plead Her cause, while She makes Her requests ... to lead us back to Him.

The devotion of the Communion of Reparation on the Five First Saturdays, mentioned by the Virgin at Fatima on July 13, 1917, and then confirmed at Pontevedra as described above, forms an essential part of the Message of Fatima.

The most astonishing thing at Pontevedra is the incomparable promise made by Our Lady.

The Most Holy Virgin grants there, with unmeasurable generosity, the grace of final perseverance, which not even a holy life of prayer and sacrifice will necessarily merit, for it is always a gratuitous gift of the Divine Mercy. The promise is without any restrictions.

The disproportion between the little devotion requested, and the grace which is attached to it, reveals to us the almost infinite power of intercession conceded to the Blessed Virgin Mary for the salvation of souls.

Let us keep to the letter the promise of Our Lady that whoever will have fulfilled all the wanted conditions, can be sure of obtaining, at least at the moment of death, and even after miserable relapses into a state of grave sin, the graces necessary for salvation in order to obtain God's pardon and be preserved from eternal punishment.

In calling for the Five First Saturdays, Our Lady was, in a way, reiterating the First Saturday devotions previously approved by the Church.

On July 1, 1905, St. Pius X approved and granted indulgences for the practice of the first Saturdays of twelve consecutive months in honor of the Immaculate Conception. On June 13, 1912, finally, he granted new indulgences to the practice of the first Saturday of each month. This practice greatly resembled the request of Pontevedra.

In order to promote the piety of the faithful towards Mary Immaculate, Mother of God, and in order to repair the outrages made against Her holy name and against Her privileges by wicked men, Pius X has granted, for the first Saturday of each month, a plenary indulgence, applicable to the souls in Purgatory.