Console Our Mother’s Immaculate Heart.

2017 is the year in which we will celebrate two important anniversaries: the 70th anniversary of the apparition of the Virgin of Revelation at Tre Fontane, Rome, and the Centenary of the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, in Portugal 1917.

What could be a better way to celebrate these anniversaries than by living more intensely the devotion to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart and consoling her by offering reparation for the sins of the world just as she asked the children at Fatima?  “Do you want to offer yourselves to God, to endure all the sufferings which he will send you, in an act of reparation for the sins by which he is offended and of supplication for the conversion of sinners?” (Memoirs of Sister Lúcia, I, 162).

To live this devotion to Our Lady’s Immaculate heart three things are necessary: the daily Rosary, the practice of the five first Saturday’s of the Month and then consecration to Our Lady’s Immaculate heart.

Starting on the 7th January2017, there are exactly five first Saturdays before the 100th Anniversary that will be celebrated on the 13th May 2017.  In this way, the Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary can be celebrated on the actual anniversary of the apparition.  There can be no better means of consoling Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart than to follow her maternal spiritual plan of conversion and renewal.

In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI visited Fatima and reminded everyone that the message Our Lady’s messages to the little shepherds are more than ever relevant today.  The pontiff said: “We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete. […] At a time when the human family was ready to sacrifice all that was most sacred on the altar of the petty and selfish interests of nations, races, ideologies, groups and individuals, our Blessed Mother came from heaven, offering to implant in the hearts of all those who trust in her the Love of God burning in her own heart.”  By inspiring a fervent devotion to daily prayer and love of God, Our Lady’s call is ever new and ever relevant even in our own time.

It was the Pontiff’s wish that “The […] centenary of the apparitions hasten the fulfilment of the prophecy of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to the glory of the Most Holy Trinity.”  When we follow Our Lady’s message we help to make the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart a reality in our lives and the more people who do the same the more Our Lady triumphs in the world!

May Our Lady, Queen of peace bless your preparations!