Reparation is Still Relevant!

Reparation is still very much a necessity during the times we live in today. This devotion is an opportunity to draw hearts to the love and worship of the Heart of our divine Master. Once we encounter His love for us we are never the same.

“Jesus makes Himself poor in the Blessed Sacrament; He gives us all He has, reserving nothing for Himself, so as to possess our hearts and enrich them with Himself. I must forsake and despise (the opposite of adore) myself, if I wish to imitate Him and to win His most loveable Heart. “

St. Margaret Mary, II 741.

Our Lord appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alocoque (1647-1690) and asked her to spread devotion to His Most Sacred Heart. In a letter written to her Mother Superior in May 1688, St. Margaret Mary shares, The Great Promise Our Lord made regarding the Nine First Fridays:

“On Friday during Holy Communion, He said these words to His unworthy slave, if I mistake not: ‘I promise you in the excessive mercy of My Heart that Its all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Holy Communion on nine first Fridays of consecutive months the grace of final repentance; they will not die under My displeasure or without receiving their sacraments, My divine Heart making Itself their assured refuge at the last moment.’”

– From Jesus to St. Margaret Mary

“Reparation is the main characteristic element of the Sacred Heart devotion. Our Lord asks for reparation from His faithful friends: to console Him for the coldness and indifference of so many, they are to make Communions of reparation, especially of the First Fridays; to make the Holy Hour, but above all to strive to love Him more and more in order to make up for those who do not love Him.”

– Fr. Larkin, Enthronement of the Sacred Heart

First Friday Requirements: To meet the requirements for the First Friday Devotion a person must, on each First Friday for nine consecutive months and approach this devotion with the desire to console and show love to Christ.

1. Attend Holy Mass

2. Receive Holy Communion in the state of Grace.

An Act of Reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus 
[For the First Friday of the Month]

ADORABLE Heart of Jesus, glowing with love for us and Inflamed with zeal for our salvation: O Heart! ever sensible of our misery and the wretchedness to which our sins have reduced us, infinitely rich in mercy to heal the wounds of our souls, behold us humbly prostrate before Thee to express the sorrow that fills our hearts for the coldness and indifference with which we have so long requited the numberless benefits that Thou hast conferred upon us. With a deep sense of the outrages that have been heaped upon Thee by our sins and the sins of others, we come to make a solemn reparation of honor to thy most sacred majesty. It was our sins that overwhelmed Thy Heart with bitterness; it was the weight of our iniquities that pressed down Thy face to the earth in the Garden of Olives, and caused Thee to expire in anguish and agony on the Cross.

But now, repenting and sorrowful, we cast ourselves at Thy feet, and implore forgiveness. Adorable Heart of Jesus, source of true contrition and ever merciful to the penitent sinner, impart to our hearts the spirit of penance, and give to our eyes a fountain of tears, that we may sincerely bewail our sins now and for the rest of our days. Oh, would that we could blot them out, even with our blood! Pardon them, O Lord, in Thy mercy, and pardon and convert to Thee all that have committed irreverences and sacrileges against Thee in the Sacrament of Thy love, and thus give another proof that Thy mercy is above all Thy works. Divine Jesus, with Thee there are mercy and plentiful redemption: deliver us from our sins, accept the sincere desire we now entertain, and our holy resolution, relying on the assistance of Thy grace, henceforth to be faithful to Thee. And in order to repair the sins of ingratitude by which we have grieved Thy most tender and loving Heart, we are resolved in the future ever to love and honor Thee in the most adorable Sacrament of the Altar, where Thou art ever present to hear and grant our petitions, and to be the food and life of our souls. Be Thou, O compassionate Jesus! our Mediator with Thy Heavenly Father, Whom we have so grievously offended; strengthen our weakness, confirm these our resolutions of amendment, and as Thy Sacred Heart is our refuge and our hope when we have sinned, so may It be the strength and support of our repentance, that nothing in life or death may ever again separate us from Thee.
Amen