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Pray, Pray, Pray!
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is the result of Our Lady’s apparitions at Fatima, Portugal in 1917. In that year, she appeared to three young shepherd children on the 13th of several months beginning in May. Through them she communicated the need for prayer and penance in reparation for the blasphemies and indifferences toward her Immaculate Heart and Sacred Heart of her Son, and for the sanctification of the world.
She appeared holding a Rosary in her hands and requested the praying of the rosary daily. After revealing a vision of Hell to them, she urged the children to make sacrifices for the conversion of lost souls, as “many souls fall into Hell because there is no one to pray and make sacrifices for them.”
The most well-known of her requests is the First Saturday devotion. On the first Saturday of each of five consecutive months, devotees are to go to confession, receive Holy Communion, and meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary, all in reparations to Mary’s Immaculate Heart and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a moveable feast that falls on the Saturday following Corpus Christi Sunday. This year we celebrate it on June 20.
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