Consecration and Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

St. John Eudes, a seventeenth century Saint, composed two Masses in honour of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He, echoing the words of St. Augustine, said that these two Hearts are so closely attuned that, in a certain sense, they constitute one single Harp, vibrating in unison, giving forth but one sound, and one song, singing the same canticle of love. (Taken from SOUL magazine, May-June, 1986, p. 13). Adding words which Vatican II’s doctrine on Our Lady’s rôle in the Church would later parallel quite closely, St. John Eudes maintained that, “after God and His Son Jesus”, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary “is the first foundation from which we cannot separate ourselves without incurring the evident danger of eternal damnation”, since our salvation had been wrought in and through Mary’s Immaculate Heart (ibid.). Earlier saints had already testified to the fact that our salvation was wrought in and through Mary’s Immaculate Heart. Two contemporaries, St. Jerome and St. Augustine concur that all the afflictions that Our Lord endured during His Passion and Death on the Cross, had their counterpart in Mary’s Heart. Every blow rending the Body of the Son had its cruel echo in the Heart of His mother (ibid., p. 14). St. Bonaventure (d. 1274) said the same, and he asked: “Why wouldst Thou, most honoured Lady, be immolated for us? Is not Our Saviour’s Passion sufficient for our salvation? Must the Mother also be crucified with Her Son?” (ibid.). John Paul II, when explaining the meaning of Consecration at Fatima in 1982, also acknowledged this profound link in the Plan of God between the Hearts of Jesus and Mary: “The Immaculate heart of Mary, opened with the words ‘Woman, behold Your son!’ is spiritually united with the Heart of her Son opened by the soldier’s spear” (In Fatima’s Gospel Call, pp. 8-9). And again: “Mary’s Heart was opened by the same love for man and for the world with which Christ loved man and the world, offering Himself for them on the Cross, until the soldier’s spear struck that blow …” (ibid., p. 9). Three years later, John Paul II, mindful that Our Lord had stated explicitly to Sister Lucia that he wished for devotion to the Immaculate Heart to be placed alongside devotion to his own Sacred Heart, used the term “…'admirable alliance of Hearts’ of the Son of God and of His Mother (Angelus Address of September 15, 1985) to attest the unfathomable bond that exists between the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

In a later speech, when addressing a Symposium of theologians on the same subject, the Holy Father elaborated on this theme in these words:

“We can indeed say that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has been an important part of the ‘sense of Faith’ of the People of God during recent centuries. These devotions seek to direct our attention to Christ and to the role of His Mother in the mystery of Redemption, and, though distinct, they are inter-related by reason of the enduring relation of love that exists between the Son and His Mother”. (Soul, Jan-Feb, 1987, p. 18).

It is because of this “enduring relation of love that exists between the Son and His Mother” that we might regard the devotion of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as being a necessary complement to devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the same way as we look upon the doctrine of the New Eve as being necessary to complete that of the New Adam. John Paul II has used the context of his two solemn acts of entrusting to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (in 1982, and again in 1984) to clarify for us the nature of the relationships between the two Hearts:

“Our act of consecration refers ultimately to the Heart of her Son, for as the Mother of Christ She is wholly united to His redemptive mission. As at the marriage feast of Cana, when She said ‘Do whatever He tells you’, Mary directs all things to her Son, who answers our prayers and forgives our sins. Thus by dedicating ourselves to the Heart of Mary we discover a sure way to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, symbol of the love of our Saviour”.

Our Blessed Lord, therefore, did not suffer some strange lapse of memory when He, after informing St. Margaret Mary in the seventeenth century that the reparative devotion to His Sacred Heart was to be, in the Saint’s own words, “the last effort of His Love” to the world, He then, now in our modern era, asked for – even insisted upon – the practice of systematic devotion to the Immaculate Heart of His Mother.

This may need some further elaboration.
The Most Blessed Trinity has devised an ingenious Plan for the Redemption of the modern world. We can confidently apply to this great Plan the sublime title, ‘New Redemption, because, as we find, Our Lord Himself used this very same title to convey to St. Margaret Mary a sense of the powerful efficacy of the new program of reparation. The essence of this Divine Plan consists in Consecration and Reparation. These two elements are specially focussed upon by Pope Pius XI when he, in his classic encyclical on devotion to the Sacred Heart, proclaimed:
“But certainly … if the first and chief thing in consecration is the repayment of the love of the creature to the love of the Creator, the second thing at once follows from it, that, if the Uncreated love has been neglected by forgetfulness or violated by offences, compensation should be made in some way for the injustice that has been inflicted: in common language we call this debt one of reparation …”. (“Miserentissiimus Redemptor”, May 8, 1928, AAS 20: 167-168).
The first phase of the redemptive Plan: to pour out through the Sacred Heart of Jesus an abundant excess of love upon humankind, was revealed to St. Margaret Mary in the seventeenth century. Its practices include the
Nine First Fridays of Reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus,and
the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the home.

This plan was revealed to St. Margaret Mary in terms of a ‘New Redemption’; a phrase which needs to be properly understood, since there was nothing at all lacking – either for our age or for any other age – in Christ’s original act of Redemption upon the Cross.
Fr. Larkin’s simple but effective explanation of the phrase ‘New Redemption’ in his book, The Enthronement of the Sacred Heart, that its ‘meaning is of course that the effects of the Redemption would be renewed through devotion to His Heart’, should suffice for the average reader who is not a theologian.
The second, and concluding phase of the redemptive Plan, as we saw, was first revealed by Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima in 1917 to the three shepherd children, but was explained in detail by Sr. Lucia alone in the 1920’s. It consists in Consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary and reparative devotion to her Immaculate Heart. The Church sees Mary, not as the goal, but as the guide, who always leads souls who honour her properly to her Son, but especially to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament (cf. “Redemptoris Mater”, # 44).
The reparative aspect of devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is summarised in the Reparation program, commonly known as The Five First Saturdays, as has been outlined and explained in this chapter.
Now, as we come to regard the Fatima revelations about the Immaculate Heart of Mary in terms of their being a concluding phase in this Divine redemptive Plan – whose first phase consisted in the seventeenth century revelations – it become apparent that St. Margaret Mary’s same description, “last effort of His Love”, may legitimately be applied also to the Marian devotion of the Five First Saturdays. Our Lord meant what He said. There is no contradiction whatsoever.
The Blessed Trinity had no intention of revealing all at once to humankind the full extent of so ineffable a plan for reparation in the new-fashioned world. A certain amount of time would be required for this all-encompassing spiritual program to be brought to a state of mature actuality on earth, so as to be susceptible of being absorbed into the minds and hearts of finite and sinful creatures. It was as if Heaven must painstakingly craft and design its program of reparation, allowing some centuries to pass before the mystical weapon, honed and shaped to perfection, was ready to be unveiled in all its grandeur and solemnity. It is foreshadowed by the mystical “two-edged sword” of Scripture, to sing about which the Psalmist composed “a new song to the Lord” (Psalm 149:1, 6). This finely honed sword pf double devotion is goven only to God’s faithful, in their spiritual warfare with the rampant forces of evil: “… to deal out vengeance to the nations and punishment on all the peoples; to bind their kings in chains and their nobles in fetters of iron”. (vv. 7-8). John Paul II had put it another way, when he had reminded us that: “If we turn to Mary’s Immaculate Heart, She will surely help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths toward the future”. (Symposium, with reference to “Redemptor Hominis”). We may be sure that this great Pope with his acute sense of destiny was guided here by his awareness of how history has shown that nations may either heed the warnings made by Almighty God through His prophets and saints, and be saved, like the Ninevites at the preaching of Jonah, and like the entire Jewish nation in Queen Esther’s time; or they can refuse to listen and to repent, and so suffer the terrible consequences of their ill-will, such as the majority of the Jewish nation when confronted by the Messiah, preceded by His own great prophet St John the Baptist. In our own age God has sent to warn us, not a prophet, but Our Lady Queen of Prophets. She, exercising as Queen the rôle of the ancient Hebrew prophets, and of St. John the Baptist, has in her visitations of the modern era warned the world of impending catastrophes and chastisements without satisfactory repentance. John Paul II had in fact likened the tone of Our Lady of Fatima’s plea: “Be converted and do penance”, to the vehement call to penance by the Precursor: “It sounds severe. It sounds like john the Baptist speaking on the banks of the Jordan. It invites to repentance. It gives a warning. It calls to prayer. It recommends the Rosary”. (“Speech at Fatima, in 1982). Universal prayer and penance have always been the remedy for averting disaster and for turning away God’s wrath from the face of the earth. But it is only in modern times that Heaven has specified, through Mary the Queen of prophets, that the prayer and penance be of a reparative nature in relation to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. “It is through the Immaculate Heart of Mary that peace must be asked, because God has entrusted the peace of the world to her”. (Jacinta’s words to Lucia in 1919). Unfortunately however, despite the signs and miracles that the Mother of Christ has provided in abundance at places like Lourdes and Fatima, we of the modern era have generally allowed her solemn message to fall to the ground unheeded. Her most precious gift to us, the request of the Communion of Reparation of the Five First Saturdays, far from becoming known ever more perfectly throughout the Catholic community with the passing of time, has – until very recently – been almost universally spurned by the majority. Part of the reason for this is no doubt ignorance. Catholics would have hardly ever, in the post-Vatican II era, had this devotion even mentioned to them from the pulpit, let alone properly explained. In the case of genuine ignorance, those true words: ‘One cannot love what one does not know’, would certainly apply. But, whatever be the cause of this unhappy neglect, the best remedy will always be that Catholics take upon themselves the personal responsibility of ensuring that they, in obedience to Our Lady’s clear directives, become conversant with the devotion, so as to practice it properly and to lead others to do likewise.