First Friday devotion

 FIRST FRIDAY DEVOTION ❤️AND SAINT MARGARET MARY ALACOQUE 🙏❤️

“Announce it and let it be announced

to the whole world,

that I set neither limit, nor measure,

to My gifts of grace,

for those who seek them

in My Heart.”

The words of the Our Lord Jesus Christ

to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

In May 25, 1671, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque entered the monastery of the Salesians in Paray-le-Monial. She professed her vows in the Order of the Visitation of Our Lady on November 6, 1672. Margaret Mary was soon to be recognized by her love for Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

In the years 1673-1674, she had visions of Christ who showed to her his compassionate and bleeding heart, bottomless abyss of love for men: this will be the foundation of the Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Margarita understood that private revelation she received is a Divine will which she couldn’t just keep it for herself. She told her Superior about it and to the competent Church authorities, who thought it so strange that sent it to be examined by some experts. The result: she was treated as a “visionary. From this moment onwards, part of her daily cross was to obey and remain at their disposal. Nevertheless, Father Claude de la Colombiere, superior of the Jesuits believed and encouraged her when she opened her soul to him in a retreat he preached to the Visitation nuns.

Margarita is a nun in whom one can trust: a nun who was always sick, very shy, timid but dependable for any work entrusted to her. She was a nurse, a teacher of the students of distinguished families living at the school, head of the novices, and among those considered to be the superior.

During the octave of Corpus Christi of 1675, she witnessed the apparition of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who told:

“BEHOLD THE HEART WHICH HAS SO LOVED MEN THAT IT HAS SPARED NOTHING, EVEN TO EXHAUSTING AND CONSUMING ITSELF, IN ORDER TO TESTIFY ITS LOVE; AND IN RETURN, I RECEIVE FROM THE GREATER PART ONLY INGRATITUDE, BY THEIR IRREVERENCE AND SACRILEGE, AND BY THE COLDNESS AND CONTEMPT THEY HAVE FOR ME IN THIS SACRAMENT OF LOVE. BUT WHAT I FEEL MOST KEENLY IS THAT IT IS HEARTS WHICH ARE CONSECRATED TO ME, THAT TREAT ME THUS.

THEREFORE, I ASK OF YOU THAT THE FRIDAY AFTER THE OCTAVE OF CORPUS CHRISTI BE SET APART FOR A SPECIAL FEAST TO HONOR MY HEART, BY COMMUNICATING ON THAT DAY, AND MAKING REPARATION TO IT BY A SOLEMN ACT, IN ORDER TO MAKE AMENDS FOR THE INDIGNITIES WHICH IT HAS RECEIVED DURING THE TIME IT HAS BEEN EXPOSED ON THE ALTARS.

I PROMISE YOU THAT MY HEART SHALL EXPAND ITSELF TO SHED IN ABUNDANCE THE INFLUENCE OF ITS DIVINE LOVE UPON THOSE WHO SHALL THUS HONOR IT, AND CAUSE IT TO BE HONORED. “

After experience, Margaret Mary did all she could in promoting the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus with all the means at her disposal: by letter, person conversations, communicating favors, distributing small prayer cards, writing to the chaplain of King Louis XIV to ask him to consecrate himself, his family and the palace to the Sacred Heart. She tried to get the approval to celebrate the Mass of the Sacred Heart. She spread God’s Will in a special way to the nuns and priests. The devotion began in of Paray-le-Monial  and from there to the Salesian communities in Dijon, Moulins, Saumur; then, Lyon and Marseille; then to Europe and America. The result of this activity is an explosion of fervor and a desire to seek holiness. She did not succeed, nevertheless, without bitter difficulties and obstacles from those who were influenced by Jansenism and by those who considered unnecessary a new practice of piety.

The devotion to the Heart of Jesus propagated by Margaret is not a surge of sentiments nor is founded on feelings which are at the same time sugary and fleeting. She understood that the love for Jesus Christ suffering in the Garden has to be expressed by atonement and reparation for the offenses committed all the time. It is to participate in the pain, anguish, loneliness and abandonment that Jesus suffered for the sins of mankind. This is carried out with desires of fidelity and of personal purification, in continuous search of the Eucharist to accompany Our Lord, in a living desire  of communion, and in the need to live dying unto oneself for God’s glory and for the salvation of mankind,  thus, counteracting the destructive work of sin. For this reason, the devotion’s message to the Christian world consists in simple and strong practices impregnated with firm faith, and at the reach of anyone: Mass, frequent Communions, visits, prayer and holy hours.

Margaret Mary died on October 17, 1690.

Pope Benedict XV canonized her on 13 May 1920. In the Bull of canonization an explicit mention of the promise of final perseverance to  those who communicate on the First Friday of nine consecutive months was made.

1st Friday of the month: DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS. 12 Promises of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

1. GO TO HOLY MASS AND WORTHILY RECEIVE THE HOLY COMMUNION

2. ON THE FIRST FRIDAY OF NINE CONSECUTIVE MONTHS WAS MADE

WITH THE INTENTION OF REPAIRING 

3. FOR THE SINS COMMITTED AGAINST HIS MOST SACRED HEART.

Our Lord Jesus Christ revealed to St. Margaret Mary 12 Promises to those who have a sincere and loving devotion to His Sacred Heart. These promises are listed below:

1. I will give them all the graces necessary in their state of life.

2. I will give peace in their families and will unite families that are divided.

3. I will console them in all their troubles.

I will be their refuge during life and above all in death.

4. I will bestow the blessings of Heaven on all their enterprises.

5. Sinners shall find in my Heart the source and infinite ocean of mercy.

6. Tepid souls shall become fervent.

Fervent souls shall rise quickly to great perfection.

7. I will bless those places wherein the image of My Heart shall be exposed and honored and will imprint My love on the hearts of those who would wear this image on their person. 

8. I will also destroy in them all disordered movements.

9. I will give to priests who are animated by a tender devotion to my Divine Heart the gift of touching the most hardened hearts.

10. Those who promote this devotion shall have their names written in my Heart, never to be effaced.

11. I promise you in the excessive mercy of my Heart that my all-powerful love will grant to all those who communicate on the First Friday in nine consecutive months, the grace of final penitence: they will not die in my disgrace, nor without receiving their Sacraments. 

12. My Divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in this last moment.