Welcome to August, the month dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Ave Maria!
“Mary’s Immaculate Heart is as our heart should be: fully united to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ,” said Craig Pohl, Director of New Evangelization for the Diocese of Lansing, August 1.
“In this month of August, let us ask Mary to foster in us an ever-closer union between our own heart and the heart of her beloved son so that we too will remain ever-faithful to Him through all the temptations and trials that life brings, even to the Cross.”
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary dates back to the 16th century. The devotion then received new emphasis in recent decades due to the visions given to Lucia Dos Santos, oldest of the visionaries of Fatima, in her convent in Tuy, in Spain, in 1925 and 1926.
In those visions Our Lady asked Sister Lucia for the practice of the Five First Saturdays to help make amends for the offenses committed against her Immaculate Heart by the blasphemies and ingratitude of men and women.
On October 31, 1942, Pope Pius XII made a solemn Act of Consecration of the Church and the whole world to the Immaculate Heart. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.
• Additional information from The Prayer Book by Reverend John P. O'Connell, M.A., S.T.D. and Jex Martin, M.A.