What is the First Friday and First Saturday devotion?
These special Masses are opportunities to gain many graces by honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. These devotions are unique, because they were given to us directly by Our Lord and Our Lady through private revelations.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is remembered on Friday, the day His Heart was pierced for love of us on the cross. Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French nun and Visitation Sister, in the 1600s and told her: “Behold My Heart, which has loved everyone so intensely, yet is loved so little in return.”
During these apparitions, Our Lord told her about a special practice He particularly desired to be practiced: the nine First Fridays. He told her:
“I promise you that my all-powerful love will grant to all those who will receive Communion on the First Fridays, for nine consecutive months, the grace of final repentance: they will not die in my displeasure, nor without receiving the sacraments; and my Heart will be their secure refuge in that last hour.”
The devotion of First Saturdays began with the Apparitions of Our Lady to the children at Fatima.
During one of her apparitions, Our Lady told the children:
“I shall come to ask…that on the First Saturday of every month, Communions of reparation be made in atonement for the sins of the world.”
Nearly ten years after the Fátima apparitions, Our Lady reappeared to Lucia and told her what she wished people to do on First Saturdays:
“I promise to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation all those who, in order to make reparation to me, on the First Saturday of five successive months, go to confession, receive Holy Communion, say five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for a quarter of an hour, meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary.”
(You can read more about the promises attached to these two devotions here.)
Since then, Catholics have kept these traditions of honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary on First Fridays and First Saturdays. It's a beautiful way to growing appreciation of the gift of the Mass, and to make a sacrifice of love for Jesus and Our Lady. I warmly encourage you to consider giving it a try.