Carry out the1st Saturday on your own or if you are unable to travel
1/ Carry out the 1st Saturdays independently
It is, of course, possible to do the 1st Saturdays on your own, without being part of a group (because there is no group nearby, because you don’t want to create one, or for personal reasons). In this case, you identify a nearby Mass venue and perform the 5 Requests of Notre Dame on your own (see 1st Saturdays card).
2/ Carry out the 1st Saturdays despite the impossibility of travelling or having a priest.
There may be exceptional circumstances in which it is impossible to receive sacramental communion or even confession: inability to travel (illness, elderly people, no means of transport), isolated area without a priest, government measures, etc.
In these extraordinary cases, the 1st Saturdays are perfectly feasible. As usual, the five requests of Our Lady are made on Saturdays, but confession is replaced by an examination of conscience, and sacramental communion by spiritual communion (1) (also called communion of desire).
How to proceed
1/One begins by examining one’s conscience. Then we sincerely ask God for forgiveness for our faults and recite our act of contrition. We then finish by saying, as we do at Mass, three times : “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but just say the word and I will be healed.
2/ Once this “inner confession” has been made in your heart, you prepare your spiritual communion like a sacramental communion. Be in silence, if possible kneeling before a cross, a statue or a pious image(2). Place yourself in the presence of the Holy Trinity, the Blessed Virgin and her Guardian Angel. Meditate for a few minutes on the renewal of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, which takes place at each Mass during the Elevation.
3/ Finally, we achieve spiritual communion by making an act of desire and asking Jesus to come into us. To do this, we can recite the prayer of Saint Alphonsus de Liguori:
“My Jesus, I believe in your presence in the Blessed Sacrament. I love you more than anything else and I want you to come into my soul. I cannot now receive you sacramentally into my heart: come there at least spiritually. I embrace you as if you had already come, and I unite myself to you entirely. Do not let me ever have the misfortune of separating from you.
Then you give thanks in your heart as you would for a normal communion.
Don’t forget to do all this in the spirit of reparation like every1st Saturday.
Note 1: The Council of Trent clearly defined spiritual communion: “To communicate spiritually is to unite oneself to Jesus Christ present in the Eucharist, not by receiving him sacramentally, but through a desirestemming from a faith animated by charity. ” (Council of Trent session XII). St. Thomas sums up the fruits of this spiritual communion in four words: “Like the other communion, it sustains and strengthens, repairs and rejoices.
Note 2: Take the beautiful image above of Sister Lucia of Fatima’s vision of elevation.
