By Fr. Peter Scott, FSSPX
Table of contents
Why Reparation?
Why to the Immaculate Heart?
Our Lady of Fatima
Why Five?
Reparation Requires Faith
Goal of Reparation
“Have pity on the Heart of your most holy Mother. It is covered with the thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to remove them with an act of reparation”. Our Lord to Sr. Lucia on Dec 10, 1925
We are very familiar with the duty of reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so eloquently requested by Our Lord Himself of St. Margaret Mary: “Behold this heart which has loved men so much and has loaded them with all benefits, and for this boundless love has had no return but neglect and contumely, and this often by those who were bound by a debt and a duty of a more special love”. In order to expiates these sins that so offended His Sacred Heart He requested a holy hour and communions of reparation.
WHY REPARATION?
In fact, in 1928 Pope Pius XI wrote an entire encyclical on reparation to the Sacred Heart (Miserentissimus redemptor), explaining the theological basis, the necessity and the many fruits of such reparation for souls and for the Church. He there explains that “we are holden to the duty of reparation and expiation by a certain more valid title of justice and of love, of justice indeed, in order that the offence offered to God by our sins may be expiated and that the violated order may be repaired by penance: and of love too so that we may suffer together with Christ suffering”. He further explains that to consecration to the Sacred Heart must be added expiation “whereby sins are wholly blotted out, lest the holiness of the supreme justice may punish our shameless unworthiness, and reject our offering as hateful rather than accept it as pleasing”. Reparation is consequently not an outdated medieval concept, as the modernists maintain, but just as necessary as always. Pope Pius XI continues to point out that it is the error of naturalism, a revival of old Pelagianism, which denies the reality of original and actual sin, which is at the root of the denial of the necessity of reparation.
WHY TO THE IMMACULATE HEART?
But why, you may ask, ought we to make reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary? Is she God, so as to be offended herself by the insults against the divine majesty? God she is not, but Mother of God, she certainly is, and as such she is the creature most closely united to the Sacred Humanity of her Divine Son, to such an extent as to share in a “community of will and of suffering” (St. Pius X) by which she “merited to become most worthily the Reparatrix of the fallen world” (Ib.), that is to participate in Our Lord’s very work of Redemption of mankind. Christ’s sufferings are consequently her sufferings, including the offenses given by the ingratitude of men of all time. It follows logically that reparation to her Immaculate Heart is reparation to the Sacred Heart of her Divine Son. It is uniting our meagre and limited reparation to the perfect love of her Immaculate Heart, leading directly to the Heart of her Divine Son. For who could unite us more perfectly to the sacrifice of our Divine Saviour, paying for the sins of the world than she who engendered us to the life of grace by standing faithful at the foot of the Cross?
OUR LADY OF FATIMA
Here we come to the core of the mystery of Fatima. It is not just devotion to the Immaculate Mother of God, Our Lady of the Rosary, as she called herself. It is essentially a mystery of reparation, in which the Hearts of Jesus and Mary are inseparable. Already in 1916 the angel of Portugal requested “reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference” by which the Holy Trinity is offended, invoking the merits of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, along with those of the Sacred Heart. On July 13, 1917 the Blessed Mother promised to return to request the consecration of Russia and communions of reparation to the Immaculate Heart, which she did in 1929 and 1925 respectively.
When she requested reparation to her Immaculate Heart in 1925, Our Lady asked for Confession, Communion, recitation of the Rosary and meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary “with the intention of making reparation to me”. She was very explicit in explaining that the thorns with which her Immaculate Heart is pierced are the insults with which she and her Divine Son are treated, and asked for reparation in these words: “My daughter, look at My Heart surrounded with the thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You, at least, try to console me . . .”
Likewise, for the consecration of Russia, requested in 1929 as a reparation for the errors of atheistic communism that that country was spreading throughout the world. When Pope Pius XII consecrated Russia to the Immaculate of Mary on July 7, 1952, he saw it as the supernatural response to the attacks of Communism against the Church, giving this as the goal: “that the Christian Faith, which is the honour and support of human society, may be strengthened and increased among the peoples of Russia, and that all the wiles of the enemies of religion, all their errors and their deceptive artifices, may be driven far from you; that public and private morality may be brought into conformity with the teachings of the Gospels; that those especially who among you profess themselves as Catholics, although deprived of their pastors, may resist with fearless fortitude the assaults of the impious, if necessary even unto death . . .”
However, it is very important to note that reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was not an invention of Fatima, nor even in 1917 a novelty. Already five years previously St. Pius X had authorized and granted special indulgences for the observance of the twelve first Saturdays of the month “in a spirit of reparation” “for the horrifying blasphemies uttered against the most august name and heavenly prerogatives of this same Blessed Virgin”. (AAS, t 4, 1912, p. 623).
WHY FIVE?
If St. Pius X had previously asked for twelve First Saturdays, why then did Our Lady request only five? In fact, it was during a Holy Hour at Tuy, on May 29, 1930 that Sr. Lucia asked Our Lord precisely why the number five First Saturdays. The answer she received was the following:
“My daughter, the reason is simple. There are five kinds of offence and of blasphemy uttered against the Immaculate Heart of Mary:
- Blasphemies against her Immaculate Conception
- Blasphemies against her virginity
- Blasphemies against her divine maternity, refusing at the same time to recognize her as the Mother of men
- Blasphemies of those who strive publicly to impose on the hearts of children indifference towards, or contempt of or even hatred of the Immaculate Mother
- Offenses of those who insult her directly in her holy pictures
Here, my daughter, is the reason for which the Immaculate Heart of Mary inspired me to ask for this little reparation.”
REPARATION REQUIRES FAITH
It is fundamental to note that all these attacks concern directly the Catholic Faith. Our Divine Saviour is especially offended when doctrines concerning his Mother are attacked or denied. This is hardly surprising, not just because she is His Mother, but also because these doctrines are really a summary of our whole Catholic Faith. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, for example, necessarily presumes Faith in the Church’s teachings concerning Original Sin, the Redemption and Sanctifying Grace. The doctrine of Our Lady’s Perpetual Virginity is essential to the mysteries of the Incarnation and Nativity of Our Divine Saviour, and of the excellence of a state of life consecrated to God, and of Our Lady’s fullness of grace. That Mary is the Mother of God, and consequence the Mother of all the redeemed is the immediate consequence of her participation in the mystery of the Redemption as the perfect associate of her divine Son, the Mediatrix of All Graces and Co-Redemptrix. To sow indifference in the minds of children is to deny the motherhood of grace which is the consequence of this role in the Redemption. To insult her in her images is the old heresy of iconoclasm and a brutal way of denying the necessity of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary that follows from these doctrines.
The reparation to the Immaculate Heart which heaven requests of us is, then, chiefly an act of Faith. It is for this reason that no heavy penances are requested, nor anything that could come from our own efforts, but simply a profound profession of our Catholic Faith, as is found in the Rosary, and in the reception of Holy Communion, rightly called the “mystery of Faith” since it also, like the teachings concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a summary of our Catholic Faith, presuming a profession in all the most wonderful doctrines that it expresses.
Hence the disproportion between the little effort required to make the First Saturdays and to consecrate ourselves (and Russia) to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the graces promised – the conversion of Russia and our own eternal salvation. It is the profession of Faith which opens the treasures of heaven, which pours graces upon souls, which unleashes the all powerful prayers of the Mother of God and which is pleasing to God, as St. Paul teaches: “Let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us: looking on Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who having joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb 12:2).
GOAL OF REPARATION
Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is, then, an act of Faith in the power and the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, associated with prayers for the conversion of souls. Its goal is to save souls from falling into hellfire. It strives to so appease the justice of the Almighty that the Immaculate Heart might draw many souls, as a powerful magnet, to the infinite Mercy of God. This intention of reparation is explicitly contained in the Fatima prayer that we recite after each decade of the Rosary, requested on July 13, 1917, when Our Lady said: “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. In order to save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If you do what I tell you, many souls will be saved, there will be peace.” She reiterated the same goal of reparation the following month: “Pray, pray very much and make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls go to hell because they have nobody to pray and make sacrifices for them”. (Aug. 19, 1917).
Thus reparation is not an invention of a private revelation, at Fatima. The message of Fatima reminds us quite simply of the truths of our Faith, and of the necessity of prayer, of satisfaction for sins, and of devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It turns us towards the greatest goal of Holy Mother Church, which is to save souls. Let us, then love to pray for the salvation of souls. Let us think of souls when we pray our Rosary, when we assist at Mass, when we receive Holy Communion. Then they will no longer be routine and repetitive, but fervent. Let all these acts of piety be done in union with the prayers and love of the Mother of God. Let them be done with great and childlike confidence in Our Lady’s power of intercession. Let them be done with simplicity, humility and fervour. Let the sacrifices of every day be offered up in union with Our Lady’s sacrifice at the foot of the Cross, and the Blessed Mother will transform our little efforts into gold, into graces, into souls for heaven, into our mutual sanctification as members of Holy Mother Church.