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sacrifices for sinners;
for many souls go to hell because they have
nobody to pray and make sacrifices for them.'
"The Blessed Virgin
Mary has been constituted universal Mediatrix and Mother of Divine Grace.
Nevertheless, by a design of Providence which wills us to be joined to Her, She
cannot act alone.
She needs us, our consoling love and our 'little devotions' of Reparation, to
save souls from hell.
Exalted and terrible [remarkable] mystery of the communion of saints, which
makes the salvation of
many souls really dependent on our own generosity! And what a motive for
generosity on our
part! For how could we refuse this missionary action which Our Lady awaits of
us, which She has
made so easy to fulfill.
"Now the most perfect
sacrifice, the most efficacious prayer, is of course the Holy Sacrifice of
the Mass and Holy Communion offered to God in the spirit of Reparation. All this
helps us
understand the pressing insistence of Our Lady, Her ardent desire that this
devotion of Reparation
be practiced everywhere as frequently as possible. This devotion is the dearest
to Her because
it is the most perfect and therefore the most efficacious for the salvation of
souls.'' (The Whole
Truth About Fatima, Vol. II, pp. 271-273).
Our Lady is pleading
for our cooperation in these Reparatory Devotions. Through the most
magnificent promises, She has assured us that our fervent First Saturday
devotions can secure not
only the conversion of sinners, but our own eternal salvation as well. And no
less importantly, by
another wonderful promise, Our Lady has linked the gift of peace to these acts
of reparation on the
First Saturdays. Thus, as Sister Lucy insisted, our very lives may well depend
on practicing and
promoting this devotion:
"Whether the world has
war or peace depends on the practice of this devotion, along with the
Consecration [of Russia] to the Immaculate Heart of Mary."
Lucy wrote those words
in a letter of March 19, 1939 when by all human estimations, World War II
was inevitable. She was saying that even then, at that late hour, God could and
would have averted
that horrible war if enough of the faithful had embraced the First Saturday
reparatory devotions.
Our situation today is a precise and obvious parallel.