J.M.J. On this First Saturday, we recall that we are to make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. But can we also speak of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as the object of reparation?
Here is an article that I wrote in 2014 for the Newsletter of the Saint Paul and Minneapolis Archdiocesan Division of the World Apostolate of Fatima.
Appearing
to Sister Lucia on February 15, 1926 at her Dorothean Convent in
Pontevedra, Spain, the Child Jesus asked whether the veneration to the
Immaculate Heart of Mary, which Our Lady encouraged two months earlier
on December 10, 1925, was being propagated. The sole surviving Fatima
seer, acknowledging that some of the Faithful were having difficulty in
going to Confession on the First Saturday, humbly asked Our Lord if they
would be allowed eight days to fulfill this part of the Five First
Saturdays devotion. The God-Man kindly replied: “Yes, even more time
still if they receive Me in the state of grace and have the intention of
making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”[1]
Our Lord’s incredibly gracious response to Sister Lucia reminds us of
at least four truths: 1.) Our God is tender and more understanding than
we can imagine; 2.) receiving Holy Communion in the state of grace,
that is without any mortal sin, is always and everywhere necessary—there
is no dispensation for this requirement; 3.) having the intention to do
something precedes the act itself (another way to state this is that
our choices, good or bad, begin deep within us); 4.) the Immaculate
Heart of Mary, like the Sacred Heart of Jesus, is an object to which
reparation is to be offered.
It is this last truth that garners our attention in this brief reflection.
In his article entitled, “The Hearts of Jesus and Mary and the
Theology and Practice of Reparation,” Monsignor Arthur Burton Calkins, S.T.D., offers a closer look at the reality of reparation to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary, identifying this reparation as “the ‘consolation’ which
we offer to her Immaculate Heart for what our sins have caused her to
suffer for us.”[2]
Already in the second and third apparitions of Our Lady to the three little shepherds at Fatima[3]
do we see a summons to make reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
This call is further specified in the aforementioned apparitions at
Pontevedra, Spain.
Reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus has long been known, esteemed and practiced by many Christians.[4]
By analogy, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, ever at the side of the Most
Sacred Heart of Jesus due to her dignity as the Mother of God and the
Queen of the Universe, deserves repair for the offenses that have
bruised It.
The notion of consolation is critical in understanding
reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We console and offer solace
to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the sins that have gravely wounded It and for the abuse that It has unfairly suffered.
Certainly, Our Lady has not been treated as is fitting, given her
status as the sinless, Ever-Virgin Mother of God who was assumed into
Heaven and is now the Queen of Heaven and earth.
Sin is the outright refusal to recognize the dominion of Christ the King and that of Mary the Queen.
Monsignor Calkins trenchantly notes:
In raising the topic of reparation offered to the Immaculate Heart of
Mary, a topic which emerges with particular exigency at Fatima in our
own century, we must keep in mind that because of Mary’s Immaculate
Conception her soul was eminently sensitive to and capable of love and
suffering: “how deeply must every torment of her Son have been impressed on her Immaculate Heart“! As we noted in the case of reparation offered to the Heart of Jesus that He could see every act of “consolation”
in the Beatific Vision, so in an analogous manner, even if Our Lady did
not have a specially infused knowledge in detail of the sins of men,
she must have been aware in at least a general way of our sins as well
as our desire to offer her consolation.[5]
Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is especially incumbent on those who love Our Blessed Lady.[6]
May we embrace it and never shirk from it, for it forms, in a mystical
way, part of the hymn of praise that we gladly sing to the Mother of
Jesus who now lives in Paradise.
[1] See http://www.rosary-center.org/firstsat.htm.
As if that were not enough, Jesus further showed Sister Lucia His
unspeakable mercy when He addressed the matter of those who forget to
make the requisite intention: “They can do so at their next Confession,
taking advantage of their first opportunity to go to Confession.”
[3] June 13, 1917 and July 13, 1917, respectively.
[6]
Among motives for reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary that
derive from the devotion known as the Holy Communion of Reparation to be
made on the five First Saturdays, which Sister Lucia mentioned to her
confessor, is atonement for the blasphemies against Our Lady’s
Immaculate Conception, her Perpetual Virginity, and her Divine
Maternity and her Spiritual Maternity as well as for the sins of those
who foster indifference and hatred against her in the hearts of children
and for the sacrileges of those who outrage her in her holy images.
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