Immaculate Heart

"My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God."

-- Blessed Virgin Mary, Fatima 13 June 1917

What is devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM)?

• Faithful, Daily Rosary

• Frequent Meditation on the Mysteries of the Rosary (15 minutes minimum)

• Communion of Reparation on the First Saturday of the Month

• Prayers & Sacrifice for the Conversion of Sinners

• Fulfill duties of your state in life, offering all to God in union with Jesus & Mary

• Frequent Sacramental Confession, reflecting on offenses against the IHM

• Frequent Adoration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament

• Perseverance

Why 5 First Saturdays, not 9 or 7?

In an apparition to Sister Lucia in Tuy on May 29, 1930, Jesus replied: "My daughter, the reason is simple. There are five types of offenses and blasphemies committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary."

• Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception

• Blasphemies against her Virginity

• Blasphemies against her Divine Maternity, in refusing at the same time to recognize her as the Spiritual Mother of all mankind

• Blasphemies of those who publicly seek to sow in the hearts of children indifference, scorn, or even hatred of My Immaculate Mother

• Offenses of those who outrage her directly in images

Why is lack of belief in Mary's Immaculate Conception, perpetual virginity, divine maternity and mission as Spiritual Mother of His Mystical Body blasphemous and harmful to souls?

Blasphemy is an act of insult, contempt or lack of reverence to God. Mary is the spouse of the Holy Spirit. In marriage, two become one flesh. Therefore, Mary can be viewed as the very physical presence of the Holy Spirit in the world. Without Mary, we have no example of the fullness of what we are created and called to be. Mary is the living realization of God's power and mankind's highest capacities - the perfect masterpiece of God. The enemies of God would have us forget and reject this masterpiece.

Rejection of Mary is willing blindness to God's plan, dishonors His work and denies His power and glory. Belief that Mary was a sinner and rejection of her role and mission as Mother of the Church is a refusal to hear the testament of Jesus on the Cross to "Behold your Mother!" Rejection of Mary is a form of the ancient Nestorian heresy which believes in radical distinction between Christ's divine and human nature. Seeing Mary as only the mother of His humanity, not as Mother of God, denies the role God assigned her as intercessor in the work of redemption and salvation. Mary is perfectly aligned to God's will and always leads souls to her Son. Rejection of Mary rejects the Lord's greatest gift to humanity and the "last remedy" for the fallen world and its spirit of indifference and hatred.

Indifference makes materialism the heart of human existence and promotes secularism - an emphasis on the self and obsessive desire for freedom from constraint. It makes people superficial and dismissive, trivializes the attacks of the enemy and makes goodness and pursuit of virtue boring and evil attractive. It encourages scorn of purity and virginity since these are the model par excellence of virtue. All of these lead to hatred of Mary and rejection of God's plan for our good.

What is Heaven's Strategy Against Hatred & Blasphemy?

God and Jesus show mankind the reality of the overwhelming love of a Mother for her children. The Blessed Virgin Mary rescues endangered souls and defeats the enemy by restoring enthusiasm and courage for service to her divine son and winning souls through devotion and conversion. The ready pardon of Christ converts many, but He extends pardon through the intercession of His Holy Mother and does this in the measure that we seek by prayers and sacrifices to beg mercy for sinners. God ordinarily gives graces not by Himself, but through human instruments. For example, Priests administer sacraments. Similarly Our Lady, as spouse of the Holy Spirit and God's assigned Mediatrix of all Graces, gives graces with the help of human instruments.

"God, who created us without us, does not want to save us without us."

-- St. Augustine