A SILENT JUBILEE

December 10, 2025, a Jubilee Year began which will end on December 10, 2026, offering special plenary indulgences for those who visit the convent-Shrine of Pontevedra, Spain. At the Shrine, the Church is celebrating the centenary year of the Apparition of Our Lady and the Child Jesus to the Fatima Visionary Sister Lucia. It was in this apparition that Our Lord and our Lady asked for the practice of the Five First Saturdays of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Some have called it a silent Jubilee because most of us Catholics are not aware of it. I learned  of it by accident, on June 1st, when I visited the website of the Marian Movement for Priests. The International Director, in his Annual Letter, was calling the Movement’s members to a fervent observance of this centennial year by responding to the request of Our Lord and Our Lady for reparation. He encouraged us not only to make first Saturdays a day with Mary, but every Saturday.

A deeper look at this request for the first Saturday devotion will help us see its critical importance for our times. In the July 13, 1917, apparition at Fatima, Our Lady had promised Sister Lucia that she would return to ask for the "Five First Saturdays" devotion for reparation to her Immaculate Heart. On that day, She had told the children: “You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. It is to save them that God wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If you do what I tell you, many souls will be saved, and there will be peace…This war will end, but if men do not refrain from offending God, another and more terrible war will begin during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night that is lit by a strange and unknown light [this occurred on January 28, 1938], you will know it is the sign God gives you that He is about to punish the world with war and with hunger, and by the persecution of the Church and the Holy Father...To prevent this, I shall come to the world to ask that Russia be consecrated to my Immaculate Heart and I shall ask that on the First Saturday of every month Communions of reparation be made in atonement for the sins of the world. If my wishes are fulfilled, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, then Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, bringing new wars and persecution of the Church; the good will be martyred and the Holy Father will have much to suffer; certain nations will be annihilated. But in the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and the world will enjoy a period of peace.”

 In 1925 eighteen-year-old Lucia joined the Dorothean Sisters and became a postulant at the convent at Pontevedra, Spain. It was here that Our Lady did return to her, as promised, to request the Five First Saturdays devotion. On December 10, 1925, Our Lady appeared and beside Her was the Child Jesus, borne by a luminous cloud. The Most Holy Virgin put Her hand on Lucia’s shoulder and showed her a Heart surrounded by thorns which She held in the other hand. At that same moment, the Child said to her:

“Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.”

Then Our Lady said: “Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall:

1) confess  2) receive Holy Communion, 3) recite five decades of the Rosary, and  4) keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.” (Pontevedra apparition, Dec. 10, 2025) *

“Again on February 15, 1926, the Child Jesus appeared to Sister Lucia to urge the spread of the practice of the First Saturdays, with the intention of making reparation for five blasphemies against the Immaculate Heart: 1) blasphemies against her Immaculate Conception, 2) against her Virginity,      3) against her divine Motherhood and the refusal to recognize her as the Mother of men, 4) contempt and even hatred towards her images, and 5) the work of those who instill indifference to her in the hearts of the little ones. These are five spiritual wounds that prevent the action of God's Grace in souls, to the point of distancing them from Him and putting them in a position of being eternally lost. It is very important to remember that the practice of First Saturdays is not the personal initiative of Sister Lucia, but of Jesus himself.” (MMP 2026 Annual Letter)

In the course of this apparition, Lucia asked Our Lord, “My Jesus! Many souls find it difficult to confess on Saturday. Will You allow a Confession within eight days to be valid?” He answered: “Yes. It can even be longer, provided that the souls are in the state of grace when they receive Me on the First Saturday, and that [when making their Confession] they had the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” (1926 apparition at Pontevedra, Spain).

                Our Mother, at Fatima, showed her great concern for all her children, warning us about the dangers that we would face in these very days. She not only warned us but gave us a way through them, devotion to her Immaculate Heart, the rosary, and the practice of the First Saturdays. There is so much concern and debate, “Did the Holy Father consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart or  did he fail to do so?” Let the theologians debate on that! But there is one question that you can answer. “Have I responded to Our Lord and Our Lady’s request for the First Saturday Devotion of Reparation?”  And having become aware of the sorrow and suffering of Our Mother have you offered to live a life of sacrifice, prayer, and reparation for sinners to help her bring all her children home to the Father and bring peace to our world?

                To inspire you I would like to share some of the words Our Lady gave in locutions to her son, Servant of God, Father Stefano Gobbi whom Our Lady chose to begin Her Maiian Moverment for Priests. They come from the book of Her messages given through Father Gobbi, ”To the Priests, Our Lady’s Beloved Sons” as quoted in the MMP 2026 Annual Letter.

December 8,1988 (394d-e): “My Adversary has succeeded in making everything ugly, through the stain of sin and of impurity. […] Man is being crushed under the weight of a civilization without God, which disfigures in him the image of his original dignity. […] A dense darkness has now descended to obscure everything. And so it is then that the Immaculate Mother, at this time, is presenting herself as the sign of your sure hope. Because it is my motherly duty to bring souls back to grace, hearts back to love, bodies back to purity, people back to the great dignity of children of God, the world back to the perfect glorification of the Most Holy Trinity.”

September 15, 1989 (411j-k) given at Fatima: “And so I am asking you today, children consecrated to my Immaculate Heart, that which, in this very place in May 1917, I asked of my three little children, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, to whom I appeared: Do you also want to offer yourselves as victims to the Lord, on the altar of my Immaculate Heart, for the salvation of all my poor sinful children? If you accept this request of mine, you must do what I now ask of you.”

 August 4, 1979 (180b): “These are the hours of battle, and therefore those weapons which I have prepared especially for you must be made use of: - the consecration to my Immaculate Heart; - the frequent recitation of the holy rosary; - the practice of the five first Saturdays of the month in reparation for the offenses committed against my motherly Heart.”

                As I observe what is happening in the world. sin and desecration of all that is sacred abounds, and in the Church, apostasy froom revealed truths of our faith and lukewarmness, we are at a red-alert level.  But we should not fear because our Mother has given us an Ark of Refuge, Her Immaculate Heart. She will never abandon her children. Let us take her hand and follow her lead as she followed her Son, Our Lord, and Savior Jesus Christ.