Cardinal’s homily
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
One hundred years ago, this coming December 10th, the Blessed Virgin Mary, with the Infant Jesus at her side resting on a bright cloud, appeared to the Servant of God Lucia dos Santos, the surviving shepherd child of Fatima who was at the time a Postulant with the Sisters of Saint Dorothy in Pontevedra, Spain. Our Lady rested one of her hands on the shoulder of Lucia and with the other hand showed Lucia her Immaculate Heart encircled with thorns. The Child Jesus then spoke to Lucia with these words: “Have compassion on the Heart of your most holy Mother, covered 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.”
After these words of the Infant Jesus, the Blessed Virgin spoke: After these words of the Infant Jesus, Our Lady spoke:
Look, my daughter, at my Heart surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me every 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 all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite one decade of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.
The words of Our Lady referred to the second part of the Secret or Message of Fatima revealed to the shepherd children of Fatima on July 13, 1917, the third of her six apparitions from May to October of that year.
At the conclusion of the apparition on July 13th, Our Lady showed the three shepherd children, Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and the Servant of God Lucia dos Santos, an understandably terrifying vision of Hell and spoke to them with these words: You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.
The vision of Hell is the first part of the Secret or Message.
Our Lady then made clear that the devotion to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart is a devotion of reparation for the many and grievous sins which offend the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son and, therefore, offend her Heart perfectly united to His Most Sacred Heart. The reparation made to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for the grievous offense caused by our sins thus rescues souls from eternal death.
Our Lady then made known what Our Lord was asking through her apparition. She declared:
To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays . If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.
While making clear the great suffering which results from a failure to take up devotion to her Immaculate Heart, Our Lady also gave words of hope: In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world. In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, etc. Our Lady’s words on devotion to her Immaculate Heart are the second part of the Secret or Message.
There is also a third part of the Secret or Message, which the Servant of God Lucia only committed to writing on January 3, 1944. She wrote: At the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated toward him from her hand. Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’
The Secret or Message speaks about the practical apostasy of our time, that is, the going away from Christ by many in the Church and the violence and death which are its fruit. Many, while they may not directly espouse heretical teachings, in practice reject the truth and love which flows unceasingly and immeasurably from the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Instead, they embrace the confusion, lies and violence of contemporary culture. Their lives contradict the most fundamental truths of the faith.
The third part of the Secret or Message described the martyrdom of those remaining true to Our Lord, those of one heart, in Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, with His Most Sacred Heart. The Servant of God Lucia writes that beneath the two arms of “a big cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork tree with the bark … there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in their hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.” As is clear from Our Lady’s message, only the Faith, which places man in the relationship of unity of heart with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through the mediation of her Immaculate Heart, can save man from the chastisements which rebellion against God necessarily brings upon its perpetrators and upon the whole of society. It is also clear that living the Faith in a totally secularized culture means readiness to accept ridicule, misunderstanding, persecution, exile and even death, in order to remain one with Christ in the Church under the maternal protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Through the call for reparation and penance, Our Lady shows the way to salvation from eternal death, the fruit of mortal sin.
Regarding the Devotion of the First Saturdays, the Servant of God Lucia received a second vision of the Child Jesus on February 15, 1926, just some two months after the vision of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, with the Infant Jesus at her side on a bright cloud. In the vision of February 15, 1926, when the Servant of God observed to the Child Jesus that her confessor had declared that the devotion of the First Saturdays was not lacking in the world, He replied: It is true, my daughter, that many souls begin them, but few finish them, and those who do finish them, do so to receive the graces that are promised. It would please me more if they did five decades with fervor and with the intention of making reparation to the Heart of their heavenly Mother, than if they did fifteen decades in a tepid and indifferent manner.
In both the apparitions of December 10, 1925, and of February 15, 1926, Our Lady made clear the substance of the devotion of the First Saturdays: 1) a profound realization of how sin offends Our Lord and His Immaculate Mother, 2) a humble and contrite heart which strives to make reparation for sins committed and the offense they cause to Our Lord and His Immaculate Mother, and 3) trust in the promise which accompanies the devotion, that is, Our Lady’s promise to assist at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, those who observe the First Saturdays with true repentance and desire of reparation. The devotion is not an isolated act but expresses a way of life, namely, daily conversion of heart to Christ’s Most Sacred Heart, under the maternal guidance and care of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
Our Lady’s insistence on the devotion of the First Saturdays is a wonderful expression of her unfailing maternal love. Even as she appeared at Tepeyac in 1531 to bring her children to Our Lord and thus free them enslavement to Satan and to deadly sin, so she appeared at Fatima to the three shepherd children and at Pontevedra to the Servant of God Lucia dos Santos to show her children the way to freedom from the rebellion before God, which is grievous sin with its fruit, eternal death.
Through the devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially the devotion of the First Saturdays, the promise of Our Lord made through the Prophet Isaiah is realized: “For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.” It was fulfilled, first of all and most perfectly of all, in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary by her irreplaceable cooperation in the Mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation.
As the account of the Finding of Our Lord in the Temple teaches us, the Virgin Mother of God was always treasuring that mystery in her heart. She maternally draws our hearts to her Immaculate Heart, so that we may place our hearts ever more perfectly into the Sacred Heart of Jesus, treasuring in our hearts the great mystery of Christ alive within us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Thus, we, under the maternal care of Our Lady, will give powerful witness in the world to Christ, to His divine truth and divine love, even at the cost of ridicule, misunderstanding, persecution and death. Thus, by God’s grace, through the intercession of the Mother of God, Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse, and all the saints, the evils of the present time will be overcome and the world will be prepared to welcome the Bridegroom at His coming on the Last Day.
Let us now lift upon our hearts, one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, opened for us in the Eucharistic Sacrifice by which He makes sacramentally present for us His Sacrifice on Calvary. Let us lift up, with our hearts, the love which inspires the devotion of the First Saturdays in reparation of the offense which our sins give to His Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of His Virgin Mother. Let us commit ourselves to the devotion of the First Saturdays and the way of life, the way of divine love, which it expresses. Let us trust that through the confession of our sins and Holy Communion – the most perfect communion of our hearts with the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus – , and through the meditation on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, the mysteries of our communion with the Lord – the Mystery of Faith – , we will be purified of sin and confirmed in grace to be His faithful “fellow workers in the truth” for the salvation of the world.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE