The Hour of Grace is from 12noon till 1pm on 8 December each year, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, Mother of God. The promise that goes with this Hour of Grace which begins with reciting King David's plea for mercy, Psalm 50(51) three times and continues with silent personal prayer in a place away from distractions is: 'The Blessed Virgin promised that whatever a person asked of her during this Hour of Grace (even in impossible cases) would be granted them, if it was in accordance with the Will of the Eternal Father.
 
That's a big promise, and many people who read about it think that it is a big leap to believe in.
 
I'd like to demonstrate that the leap is actually quite small.
 
What are the kinds of things that add a bit of clout to our prayers?
 
It helps if you pray out of right relationship with God. Praying this Psalm of repentance three times is a plea for mercy, and acknowledges the truth that we are sinners in need of God's forgiveness. We see our sin more clearly when we focus on the absolute absence of sin in Mary, the Mother of God. A heart in right relationship with God is more likely to be heard. 'The humble man's prayer pierces the clouds' Ecclesiasticus 35:17
 
Prayer with penance is more powerful than prayer alone. Praying for an hour is a sacrifice of all the other things we could be doing, and a challenge for anyone not used to spending an hour in prayer. Setting an hour aside to stay away from distractions is part of this too. Any hour of prayer is a reparative response to the question of Jesus on the night of His agony and betrayal, 'Could you not watch one hour with Me?' Matthew 26:40 Prayer flavoured with penance is more likely to be heard.
 
Praying in union with others is more effective than praying solo. Who could be a better prayer partner than Mary, the Mother of God? It is a mother's task to take the offerings of her children and arrange them in the way which will please the father most, removing the icky bits and adding her own special touch. A child might give mum a handful of flowers, and she will get rid of the insects, dead leaves and imperfect petals and add a matching ribbon and arrange them on a silver platter. With mum's help an ordinary offering becomes something especially pleasing. Think about how much more difficult it is to say No to two people who come before you with pleading eyes than to say No to one person. With Mary's help our prayers are more likely to be heard. Matthew 18:19
 
Praying in obedience is more meritorious than praying according to our own will. This Hour of Grace is prayed in accordance with heavenly instructions, and even if you feel a bit wobbly about the whether it is truly from heaven or not, you are still praying it in a way you wouldn't normally choose to. Romans 5:19
 
All four of these things are present when praying the Hour of Grace, so even without the promise attached, your prayers have a much greater hope of being heard and answered than usual.
 
For more information about the Hour of Grace, print and read this PDF:

If you are able, set aside this special Hour of prayer each year.

Immaculate Mary, Mother of God, we entrust all the prayers of our hearts to you, that you may take them to your Son Jesus and obtain His smile of mercy upon them. 

"Make of everything you can a sacrifice, and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners." Message of the Angel to the children of Fatima 1916

This message was given at the second visit of the Angel of Peace, in the summer of that year.

What is a sacrifice? It is something a person gives up for the sake of a higher cause or the acceptance without protest of an unsought suffering.

Sacrifice isn't something that we talk about much anymore except in the context of elite athletes, memorial days to acknowledge those who died in the Defence Forces, ballet dancers and ambitious businessmen. Sometimes we mention it around Mother's Day, or at a eulogy for someone with strong family values. When Lent comes around we talk about what we might be giving up as a penance, but not specifically in the context of sacrifice.

But in God's economy, sacrifice must be important otherwise the Angel would not have encouraged it. We see it first in Cain and Abel offering to God the fruits of their labours. Genesis 4:3-4. We see it in the temple worship offerings of oil, bread, wine and livestock, Exodus 29. It reaches its pinnacle in Jesus, 'He is the sacrifice that takes our sins away, and not only ours, but the whole world's.' 1 John 2:2.

We also see in God's economy that sacrifices have an effect on sin. Some of the temple sacrifices were referred to as sin offerings, and there were whole lists of different sacrifices depending on the role a person played in the community, Leviticus 4 and 5. Priests offered a young bull, leaders offered he-goats and individuals offered she-goats. Each offering was a request for mercy and leniency.

The three children of Fatima really took this request of the angel to heart, and what they did can guide us in our own response. At times of family sorrow, they would offer God their tears. They would offer up the pains of being misunderstood and treated with contempt. They would forgo their lunches and give them to poor children. They would choose to go without drink and suffer thirst, and the consequent headaches. They would offer up any feeling of abandonment they felt. Often they needed the mutual encouragement of each other to keep going through the difficulties of each sacrifice.

Reparation isn't a word that gets used much these days either. It crops up sometimes in court cases that get a lot of media attention. Usually it is in a financial context, for example, payments to the children of the stolen generations, to victims of sexual abuse, to victims of severe injuries following a car accident. A few years ago there was a lot of debate about federal parliament saying an official 'sorry' to the children of the stolen generations because the lawyers were worried that saying 'sorry' would be an admission of guilt and open the way for appeals for monetary compensation.

In God's economy the concept of compensation is clearly set out, in order that there may be speedy resolution of situations between people and so that there are just limits to what is expected by way of compensation. Exodus 21 and 22 set out many of them. For example if two men quarrel and come to blows, if the blows incapacitate one of them from earning a living, the other must compensate the injured one and care for him until he is completely cured. A thief, if caught, is required to repay double what he stole. Other transgressions of the property of another require full restitution or double depending on circumstances.

But reparation is a term used in Leviticus 5 to fix transgressions against God. There are three categories. The first appears to be giving less to God than what is due to Him (tithes, ritual sacrifices). The second is when someone realizes after the fact that they transgressed against a commandment. The third is about sins of fraud through deception, perjury, or exploitation. In each case the reparation is in two parts. The first part requires a standard offering of an unblemished ram. The second part is determining the value of what was denied God or someone else, and paying back the whole sum plus 20 percent. Now we can understand better the promise of Zaccheaus to Jesus in Luke 19, 'Look, sir, I am going to give half my property to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody I will pay him back four times the amount.'

This teaches us that when we sin, we are expected to make reparation as well as seeking forgiveness. It indicates that we need to do something over and above to restore our relationship with God. For Catholics that is why the priest gives us a penance to do when we go to Confession to seek mercy and pardon for our sins. Giving us a penance trains us to take repairing our relationship with God seriously. Putting it another way, if you promised a dear friend that you would meet them for lunch and then you didn't show up, seeking forgiveness is the first obvious thing you should do. Even if your friend forgives you, your relationship has been damaged and needs a bit of a grand gesture (flowers, chocolates, movie tickets etc) to begin the restoration process.

All this begs the question, 'When was the last time I took any efforts towards a grand gesture for God?'

Scary isn't it? Especially when the next part of the Angel's message reminds us that God is offended by our sins. Each and every time I sin, I offend God, no matter how big or small that sin is.

Mostly we don't understand the full horror of our sins because we so easily forget how good, kind, beautiful, loving, provident and almighty God really is. It is a poor comparison, but maybe it will help. Think of a tender hearted mother and a child. When a mother discovers that her child has lied to her, she is sad because her child did not trust her with the truth, because her child has disappointed her by choosing the lesser path, and because it will be so much more difficult now to help her child on the path to truth, goodness and happiness. The better the mother, the more her heart will grieve. God grieves even more because sin closes the door to heaven for us. No one with unforgiven sin can be admitted into the fullness of the presence of God that heaven is. For sins that don't completely rupture our relationship with God, we thank Him for the merciful option of having our souls purified in purgatory.

The last part of the Angel's message invites us to offer up our sacrifices not just for ourselves but also for others so that they may be granted the gift of conversion. In the later messages of Our Lady at Fatima she often requested sacrifices for sinners.

This anecdote from 'Fatima in Lucia's own words' is instructive:

"One day, I was asked if Our Lady had told us to pray for sinners, and I said she had not. At the first opportunity, while the people were questioning Jacinta, Francisco called me aside and said: 'You lied just now! How could you say that Our Lady didn't tell us to pray for sinners? Didn't she ask us to pray for sinners then?' 'For sinners, no! She told us to pray for peace, for the war to end. But for sinners, she told us to make sacrifices.' 'Ah! That's true. I was beginning to think you had lied.' "

Such is the importance of sacrifices for sinners compared to prayer for sinners.

Let's do something today in response to the heavenly requests that have been given to us.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, Blessed Jacinta, holy Sr Lucia, pray for us.

"Pray, pray very much and make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls go to Hell because there are none to sacrifice themselves and to pray for them." Message of Mary to the children of Fatima August 1917.

What can we learn from this message?

If the message wasn't of the utmost importance, then the Mother of Jesus would not have been sent as a messenger to give it to us.

The message is worth studying in detail, because messages like these tend to be carefully layered and only yield their full impact after a lot of prayerful pondering.

'Pray' is the first word of the message. What is prayer? The raising of the heart and mind to God. Each and every time Mary appears on earth she asks us to pray. It stands to reason that if she is asking us to pray, then most of us are not praying, or if we are praying we need to increase our prayer.

Why pray? Because pray connects us with God, the source of everything that is good. Prayer connects us to the power source of love. Prayer is the switch that turns the power on. If we pray, we give God permission to help us.

Why are we so reluctant to pray? Because the sheer act of praying acknowledges that we are not in control; acknowledges that God is the creator and that we are His creatures, and that we are not God. Despite the mountain of evidence in our lives that we are not in control, we still hate to admit it.

'Pray very much' is the next part of the message. A loving mother tells us what to do: 'Eat your greens. Eat lots of greens and you will be healthy.' If we pray much we will be on our way to being spiritually healthy. As long as we pray, and pray more than we are praying now, how we pray isn't important.

'Pray very much and make sacrifices for sinners.' This part of the message tells us what we should be praying about. Prayer is praise/adoration, thanksgiving, contrition/repentance and petition/intercession. If we are weak on those first three types of prayer, then work on them first. We tend to be pretty good at asking God for things, to heal us, to help us pass our exams, to take away our problems, to make that cute person of the opposite sex notice us etc. But how good are we at 'Pray very much for sinners'?

'Pray very much for sinners' implies that in our petitions and intercessions to God that the majority of those prayers should be for the conversion of those who are not living according to the 10 Commandments (not putting God and God's will in the first place in their lives, swearing, not attending Sunday worship, ignoring their obligations to their parents, stealing, lying, perjury, violence, murder, participating in sexual activity outside marriage, greed for material things etc). Every one of us has at least one person in our lives doing some of those things. Have we prayed for him or for her? Have we prayed regularly for him or for her?

'Pray very much and make sacrifices for sinners'. Here the Mother of Jesus is telling us that prayer alone is insufficient to obtain a conversion, sacrifices are also necessary. What are we willing to do as a sacrifice in intercession for a loved one's conversion? Are you willing to reduce your social media time? Could you give up the biscuit you like with your cup of tea? Is adding an extra no-alcohol day to your week possible? By and large our world has forgotten that prayer combined with sacrifice is very powerful, but Our Lady has not forgotten and like the good mother she is, she reminds us.

This need for both prayer and sacrifice to obtain a conversion alerts us that to win the conversion of a soul is not easy, and that it requires commitment and perseverance. It takes dedication and courage, and the good news is that if the mother of Jesus has requested this of us, then it is possible for us to do it.

The last part of the message gives us all the motivation we need: 'For many souls go to Hell because there are none to sacrifice themselves and to pray for them.'

Why do we need to pray and sacrifice ourselves for our loved ones who are living sinful lives? Because we don't want them to end up eternally unhappy. If Mary is real, then God is real, and Hell is real. Hell never ends, not for a thousand years, not for a million years, not even after a billion years. Hell never ends. To not see beauty, to not hear harmony, to not feel loved, to not have a friend, to never hear another kind word, and to know that it was your own misdeeds and your own refusal to love that obtained a place for you in Hell. What unimaginable horror!

Our heavenly mother came to remind us that Hell is real, and that we have to do our bit to prevent others from spending their eternity there. If we truly thought about it, we wouldn't even wish our worst enemy to be deprived of love for all eternity. Even though it is so unfashionable to talk about the existence of consequences for our actions, that doesn't make those consequences go away. It is all too easy to think that consequences are only for those who are convicted of criminal misdeeds. Where are the consequences of our actions leading, to heaven or to hell?

'For many souls go to Hell': that part of the message should make us shudder. The mother of Jesus is telling us that it is quite common for souls to go to Hell, and not just the world's most hated persons from history. She is telling us that we need to do our bit to reverse this trend. She is telling us that we cannot assume that everyone we attend the funeral of will end up in heaven, contrary to what most eulogies have to say.

The other thought that eventually comes when pondering this message is that if I don't start praying and offering up some sacrifices to obtain conversions then I am partially responsible for those who could have been saved from Hell if I had started praying and offering sacrifices. How horrible must it be to stand before the judgment seat of God and to discover that no one had ever prayed for you! That no one had loved you enough to even light a candle for you. On the other hand, what consolation must it be to learn at the judgment seat of God that your friend had prayed for you every day; and that your friend had given up swearing in order that you might receive mercy and pardon.

Even though this message was given to the world in 1917, it is still relevant. When God speaks through Mary, He speaks eternal truths. He speaks truths that do not change with the centuries and with the millennia. We could even say that this message is even more relevant now than it was in 1917 because back then family life was strong, Sunday worship was strong and governments upheld the 10 commandments in their laws.

What should we do to respond to this message?

* We should pray daily.

* We should include prayers for the conversion of sinners in our daily prayers.

* We should find something each day to offer up as a sacrifice to God for the conversion of sinners.

Doing these three things is not beyond anyone.

You might find the prayers on the PDF below useful in doing the first two things:

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, Blessed Jacinta, holy Sr Lucia, pray for us.

As part of preparing for this month's study group, I needed to find something devotional for the closing prayers. Choosing for previous months had been easy and obvious, but not for August. So I asked for guidance, and the good Lord led me to the private revelations He had made to Berthe Petit just on a hundred years ago.

To find out more about her and how her spiritual experiences related to WW1, visit http://www.motherofallpeoples.com/2005/07/the-sorrowful-and-immaculate-heart-of-mary-the-revelations-of-berthe-petit/

Through Berthe Petit it was made known that Jesus wanted His mother to be honoured under the title Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, and in due course the following short but powerful prayer was indulgenced by the Church:

Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us who have recourse to you.

What is particularly interesting is the promise attached to it, 'This devotion to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of My Mother will restore faith and hope to broken hearts and ruined families; it will help to repair the destruction; it will sweeten the sorrow.'

I know plenty of families where members are estranged from each other, and what heartache such estrangement causes. Then there are the families suffering the long term effects of separation and divorce, and the long term effects of abortion. I am sure that you know plenty of families in these situations, too. So let us take hold of this heavenly remedy which has been given to us, and use this little prayer whenever you are reminded of your own family's sorrow or are told of the sorrows of another family.

If you'd like to take hold of this further, the PDF below has some prayers and an act of consecration to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary composed by Berthe Petit.

Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, we entrust ourselves, our families and our parishes to your intercession.

Today, 7 Sep 2013, is the First Saturday of September, and a day dedicated to devotion to Our Lady. Tomorrow the feast day of Our Lady's birthday would normally be celebrated - except this year it falls on a Sunday and the Sunday liturgy takes precedence. So this blog-post is in honour of Our Lady's special weekend, and hopefully to please her.

Last weekend I was at the counter of the piety stall when an unusual request was made. A gentlemen had been making great progress getting into habits of prayer, and not being too computer savvy, desired a printout of the seven Fatima prayers. Most booklets of prayer don't seem to include these prayers. It was a reasonable request, so I promised him a copy of these prayers.

I thought I knew them all quite well, but until I went searching on Google I hadn't been made aware of the two prayers for peace dictated to Sister Lucia some two decades after the well known apparitions to the three young seers ceased. As with the others, they are nice and short and relatively easy to commit to memory, and an excellent reminder to pray for peace on a regular basis.

The PDF below is an A4 page containing 4 copies of these seven Fatima prayers.

You might like to print them out, stick one in your regular prayer book and share the rest around.

In a few short years, 2017, we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of these apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima - which are so essential for understanding God's perspective on our modern era. If the good God took such extraordinary measures to get our attention, then we should study these events, learn from them and put heaven's messages into daily practice in our lives.

At Medjugorje, war broke out in that region some 10 years after the apparitions took place. Similarly it was about 10 years later that the genocide in Rwanda erupted after the apparitions of Our Lady at Kibeho. In both places she pleaded for peace and for prayers for peace, which largely went unheeded.

Let us not repeat those mistakes and pray the Rosary and pray for Peace on a daily basis, with the Fatima prayers as our reminder and guide.
 
Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us
Our Lady, Queen of Peace, pray for us