by
Damien F. Mackey
Today is the 10th of December (2021), on which day, nearly a century ago,
Our Lady of the Rosary fulfilled her promise:
“I shall come to ask for … the Communion of Reparation
on the first Saturdays of the month”.
Five First Saturdays book
1925: Our lady Fulfils Her Promise
On the 10th of December, 1925, Our Lady of the Rosary fulfilled her promise of the 13th of July (1917) with regard to the First Saturdays, when She told the three children: “I shall come to ask for … the Communion of Reparation on the first Saturdays of the month”.
Lucia was by then a Dorothean postulant at Pontevedra in Spain. The most holy Virgin appeared to her in her room, and by her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was a Child.
In order perhaps to appreciate Our Lady’s first gesture at this particular, intimate apparition, we must take the reader back to the biblical scene before the throne of king Ahasuerus, at the very moment when Queen Esther had presented herself in all her majesty, unannounced - and not summoned - before the Medo-Persian king.
“On the third day, when [Esther] ended her prayer, she took off the garments in which she had worshipped, and arrayed herself in splendid attire. Then, majestically adorned, after invoking the all-seeing God and Saviour, she took her two maids with her, leaning daintily on one, while the other followed carrying her train. She was radiant with perfect beauty, and she looked happy, as if beloved, but her heart was frozen with fear. When she had gone through all the doors, she stood before the king.
He was seated on his royal throne, clothed in the full array of his majesty, all covered with gold and precious stones. And he was most terrifying. Lifting his face, flushed with splendour, he looked at her in fierce anger. And the queen faltered, and turned pale and faint, and collapsed upon the head of the maid who went before her. Then God changed the spirit of the king to gentleness, and in alarm he sprang from his throne and took her in his arms until she came to herself. And he comforted her with soothing words, and said to her,
‘What is it Esther? I am your brother. Take courage, you shall not die, for our law applies only to the people. Come near’.
Then he raised the golden sceptre and touched it to her neck; and he embraced her, and said, ‘Speak to me’ …. But as she was speaking, she fell fainting. And the king was agitated, and all his servants sought to comfort her’. (Esther 15:1-16).
As on all the previous occasions when the Esther chronicle has been quoted in this book in relation to the Fatima story, Catholics who read these inspired words cannot fail to be impressed by how perfectly this Old Testament narrative continues to chime in with the details of its New Testament counterpart. It gives us a clear insight into the truth, alas one not sufficiently stressed and so not sufficiently appreciated, as to how truly Our Blessed Lady is placed between the wrath of God on the one hand, and sinful humanity on the other. Or, as She herself showed us, between the wrath of God and an eternal Hell!
As an immediate consequence of this neglect, we have it that in our days, ‘not all His servants seek to comfort Her …’. If this had been the situation in the presence of king Ahausuerus, he would no doubt have interpreted this neglect on the part of some as a slight on the Queen, and therefore as an insult upon himself.
By the same token, we must now extend and enlarge this scene, and truly see the holy Catholic Church herself as being placed in that perilous position of mediation between God and humankind, between Divine wrath and an eternity in hell. And within that enlarged panorama we begin to discern how first Lucia, and then ‘all those servants who seek to comfort Her’, have been placed in the rôle originally assumed by Queen Esther on behalf of her people, but truly fulfilled by the Lamb of God and the ‘New Eve’, and extended in time by the holy Catholic Church on behalf of all humankind.
There are in fact some distinct similarities between Esther and Sr. Lucia in the more important aspects of their lives. In the first place, both Esther and Lucia were marked out by Heaven for special favour and were raised up by God from obscurity to public prominence, in order to carry out their respective tasks of the utmost importance. But their being in the public eye was a cause of grave anxiety to both Esther and Lucia. Esther wrote about it to Mordecai:
“Thou knowest my necessity – that I abhor the sign of my proud position [i.e. the crown], which is upon my head on the days when I appear in public” (Esther 14:16).
Lucia, too, underwent grievous misery and mental suffering during the apparitions.
For instance, she related that for a period of time after the second apparition, she “lost all enthusiasm for making sacrifices and acts of mortification”, and she was temped to say that she had been lying about the apparitions, “and so put an end to the whole thing” (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, p. 69).
Both Queen Esther and Lucia were prepared to risk death rather than quit the task that God had assigned to them. Esther courageously went with her two maids into the presence of Ahasuerus the Great, who had the power of life and death over them. Lucia and her two cousins prepared themselves to suffer an agonising death in boiling oil at the hands of the sub-prefect, Santos, rather than reveal Our Lady’s secret to him. Ultimately the king, and Santos, each relented. In the case of Queen Esther, she so won over the king that his heart and hers were united thereafter in a common cause against the enemy, who had now become their enemy. This bond, this unity of heart and mind, was sealed by the visible gesture of the king, when he raised the golden sceptre and placed it on the shoulder of his terrified Queen.
So when, on the 10th of December, 1925, according to Lucia, “Our Lady rested Her hand on my shoulder”, we may, on the strength of the Esther parallel, take this to mean much more than a simple gesture of maternal reassurance, and see in it the passing on of a royal authority for what was to come next. For, “as She did so”, Lucia continues, “She showed me 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, 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’. (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, p. 195).
Next, the Blessed Virgin revealed to Lucia the full program of the Five First Saturdays, as the means by which She was to be consoled for the sins directed against her Immaculate Heart:
“Look, my daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at 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 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” (ibid.).
This was the long-awaited moment. In the presence of her Divine Son, the Queen of Heaven had at last completely unveiled the second phase of Heaven’s wondrous redemptive Plan for the apocalyptic age: the mystical weapon of the Five First Saturdays.
In its components, there is nothing new in this devotion; for essentially it consists of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, sacramental Confession and the holy Rosary, accompanied by meditations on the Mysteries. Thus there is nothing in the devotion with which Catholics should be unfamiliar. It is quite within the reach of all. But what characterises the devotion and makes it perhaps unique, is the purity of intention that is meant to accompany the practice of it. In other words, the Five First Saturdays is a totally unselfish devotion, requiring of those who practice it that they go beyond their own interests, so as to make of themselves an oblation of pure love to Our Blessed Lady.
This wonderful first apparition at Pontevedra seems clearly to have its prefiguration in that scene from the Book of Esther that we have just been discussing. The king reached out with his golden sceptre, saying to Esther, “‘Speak to me’. And she said to him, ‘I saw you, my lord, like an angel of God, and my heart was shaken with fear at your glory. For you are wonderful, my lord, and your countenance is full of grace’.
But as she was speaking, she fell fainting. And the king was agitated, and all his servants sought to comfort her” (15:12-16).
The King of Heaven and earth is there in the Person of the Child Jesus; the Queen of Heaven herself, greatly in distress; the solicitous servants in the person of Lucia, standing in for all those who would take the divine message to heart; and finally there is the mandate to carry the message to the whole world with the authority of the Magisterium. Truly, then, a Catholic would be hard pressed to find a more accurate and better inspired resumé of an old devotion presented under this beautiful new form of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. As the Cardinal had said: It is you yourselves who have the remedy in your own hands”.
1926: The Resplendent Child Returns
On the 15th of February, 1926, Lucia, now at Tuy in Spain, received a further apparition pertaining to the Five First Saturdays devotion. At this point in time Lucia was in a state of great perplexity as to how she might propagate the devotion. Her confessor had written to her that it was necessary for the vision of the 10th of December to be repeated, “for further happenings to prove its credibility” (ibid., p. 197). And despite the fact that Lucia’s Mother Superior was prepared to propagate the devotion, her confessor had insisted that the latter, on her own, “could do nothing to propagate this devotion” (ibid.).
It was at that stage that Sr. Lucia had a further encounter with the Divine Child in the garden. She had also met the Child, “some months earlier”, she says, and, without suspecting who He was, she asked Him if he knew the “Hail Mary”. He said that He did. She then asked Him to say it, but, as He made no attempt to say it by Himself, she said it with Him three times over, at the end of which she again asked Him to say it alone. But as He remained silent and seemed unable to say the “Hail Mary” alone, Lucia asked Him if He knew where the Church of Santa Maria was. To which he replied that He did. Thereupon, Lucia asked Him to go there every day and to say this: “O My heavenly Mother, give me your Child Jesus!” Lucia taught this to Him and then left Him.
When the Child returned on the 15th of February, Lucia questioned Him: “Did you ask out heavenly Mother for the Child Jesus?” The Child turned to her and said:
“and have you spread through the world what our heavenly mother requested of you?”
With that He was transformed into a resplendent Child.
Lucia, knowing then that it was Jesus, explained to Him the difficulties that she was experiencing at that stage with her confessor, who had asked for the vision of Pontevedra to be repeated, and who had said that the Mother Superior alone could not effectively promote the devotion. To this, Our Lord replied with these telling words:
“It is true that your Superior alone can do nothing, but with My grace she can do all. It is enough that your confessor gives you permission and that your Superior speaks of it, even without people knowing to whom it has been revealed” (Ibid., pp. 196-197).
But that was not the only problem that poor Lucia had to clarify with the Divine Child. Her confessor had also suggested in his letter to her that the devotion which she had described to him in honour of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was fairly widespread throughout the world at that time. Were there not many souls who receive Holy Communion on the First Saturdays, in honour of Our Lady and the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, he argued?
Again Our Lord’s reply is highly instructive; for He insists that not just any devotional routine will do. He is very specific about what he wants. Essentially it is obedience that he is after:
“It is true, My daughter, that many souls begin the First Saturdays, BUT FEW FINISH THEM, and those who do complete them do so in order to receive the graces that are promised thereby. It would please Me more if they did Five with fervour and with the intention of making reparation to the Heart of your Heavenly Mother, than if they did Fifteen, in a tepid and indifferent manner …” (Ibid., p. 197).
We might be surprised to learn that our Divine Lord chose to appear to Sr. Lucia, not as an adult, but as a little Child. But as St. Louis de Montfort had explained in his Love of Eternal Wisdom:
“… when the Incarnate and glorious Wisdom appeared to His friends, He appeared to them, not in thunder and lightning, but meekly and gently; not assuming the majesty of a king or of the Lord of Hosts, but with the tenderness of a spouse, the kindness of a friend. Sometimes, He has appeared in the Holy Eucharist, but I cannot remember having read that He ever did so, EXCEPT UNDER THE FORM OF A MEEK AND BEAUTIFUL CHILD”.
And so, fittingly, Our Lord appeared to Lucia at Pontevedra and at Tuy in His gentlest possible guise, under the aspect of the “little Lamb” of the Eucharist, to encourage us and to remind us that the devotion that Our Lady of Fatima has named the “Communion of Reparation”, is essentially a Eucharistic-oriented devotion.
