A Reflection · June 2026 · Month of the Sacred Heart

Two Hearts, One Night

The First Friday and First Saturday Devotion

June is the month the Church consecrates to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is the month of a Heart on fire — a Heart that loved us to the point of being pierced, a Heart that has never stopped asking for love in return.

It was to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, in the quiet of her convent at Paray-le-Monial in the 17^th century, that Our Lord first revealed the depths of this devotion. He showed her His Heart — wounded, crowned with thorns, blazing with love — and asked that the faithful honour it, above all through the First Friday Devotion:

To those who faithfully fulfilled this, He made a remarkable promise — the grace of final perseverance, of not dying without receiving the sacraments necessary for salvation. It was a promise born not from obligation, but from the longing of a Heart that loves without measure.

Two centuries later, in the hills of Fatima, that same Sacred Heart spoke again — this time through His Mother. When young Jacinta Marto lay dying, she drew Lucia close and whispered with the urgency of one already touching eternity:

And then Our Lord Himself appeared to Sr. Lucia on 15 February 1926, asking with gentle persistence why this devotion had not yet been spread. He was not distant or demanding — He spoke as a partner, as one who walks beside us in mission. And His request was luminous in its unity:

He desires that devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary be placed beside devotion to His Sacred Heart. Not above, not below — beside. Two Hearts, perfectly united in love, in suffering, and in intercession for the world.

This is precisely the grace of the Five First Saturdays of Reparation. Our Lady asked that on five consecutive First Saturdays, the faithful complete four acts:

• 01 Receive the Sacrament of Confession
• 02 Receive Holy Communion
• 03 Pray five decades of the Rosary
• 04 Keep Our Lady company for fifteen minutes, meditating on the Mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to her Immaculate Heart

It is not merely a devotional exercise. It is a response to a Mother’s plea. It is reparation offered for the sins and ingratitudes that wound her heart — blasphemies against her name, her virginity, her Divine Maternity; indifference to her images; the abandonment of children’s hearts away from her.

This is the very spirit of our Night of Love Vigil — to move from the Sacred Heart of Jesus adored on First Friday, through the night in prayer and reparation, to greet the Immaculate Heart of Mary at dawn on First Saturday.

It is not two separate devotions placed side by side by human convenience.
It was God Himself who arranged it this way.

Our Lady promised that all who complete the Five First Saturdays with this intention will receive the graces necessary for salvation at the hour of death.

Yet she also told Lucia, with sorrow, that the Triumph of her Immaculate Heart awaits a sufficient number of souls making this reparation.

This June, as we honour the Sacred Heart of Jesus and answer St. Margaret Mary’s call, let us also answer Our Lady’s.

Let us make the Five First Saturdays. Let us spend that holy night in vigil — from His Heart to Hers — and become the souls Heaven is waiting for.

Ave Maria!