What is First Saturday Devotion?

Meditation Set #1:  (Month of November)

Joyful Mysteries [Loving God]



1. The Annunciation: “Hail, full of grace.” Another day had begun in the little home of Nazareth - a quiet, cool March day. Mary would spend it as she has spent countless others, quietly working about the house. An ordinary girl, Mary, as the world judges; ordinary like the rest of the villagers, like Joseph ... Suddenly an angel was by her side: “Hail, full of grace!” An ordinary person would be rather disturbed by such a visitor, and by such a greeting. And Mary was! “She was troubled at His word.” The angel had implied that Mary loved God with all her heart, soul, mind, strength; that she loved God enough to become His Mother. Loving God wholeheartedly - like Mary, I was created to do just that - and being “ordinary” puts no barriers in my way!
2. The Visitation: “Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country ... and she entered the house of Zechariah and saluted Elizabeth.” Because Mary was ordinary - that is, a real human being, unselfish, heart full of affection - this Mystery tells me something remarkable about loving God. The God-Man was now divinely conceived in her womb. Keep to your quiet home, Mary, (we might have advised) and love Him, love Him alone. But Mary knew this secret about loving God: to love God alone is to love Him not at all. Of her Son’s commandment, “Love one another,” Mary’s visitation was an unconscious prophecy. Loving God requires that I love everyone else - even those I cannot like! How do I do that? Practice seeing Christ in others and act accordingly. “What you do for others, you do to me.” Christ meant that.
3. The Nativity: “She laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” Mary and Joseph found accommodations in one of Bethlehem’s hillside caves. It offered some protection from the biting cold of a December night, nothing more. Air, heavy with moisture seeping through the damp earthen wall; stifling odors of cattle; darkness made all the more emphatic by a lantern’s frail light and the smallest patch of night horizon, too low for stars - yes, there would be room here. And here, Mary and Joseph loved God as He was never loved on earth. God can be loved - wholeheartedly - anywhere. Loving God does not depend on the kind of a place I’m in - it depends on the kind of a person I am.
4. The Presentation in the Temple: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices!” We think of Mary as the very quietest of women. Her recorded words are few; when others speak, she “ponders their words in her heart.” It is almost as if she spent her life somewhat drably, in the far corners of her soul. No. She was the perfect woman, God’s masterpiece; so Mary sang. Lark in the light of the morning never sang so sweetly as she. “My soul magnifies the Lord! ... rejoices in God! He Who is mighty, Holy His Name!” No whisper from a dark corner, that! The silent Mary’s unpremeditated song - and it leapt out of her love for God. Loving God makes a heart that sings - a heart I should wear on my sleeve!
5. The Finding of Jesus in the Temple: “They found Him.” In three syllables, this Mystery of the Rosary reveals the very root and fiber of love for God; it tells exactly what loving God means. “They found him.” A perfect expression of our meditation’s theme. To love God is nothing else than to have found Jesus. The explanation is no less simply told: all my love for God is from Christ; the prodigal downpour of grace which drops invisibly upon the world is His meriting. Every spark of divine charity, the briefest, the brightest, in every soul in every age, has been struck to life on one Cornerstone - Christ. Mary’s Son came into the world to look for me that I might find Him. I find Him in the Sacraments, the Mass, in my neighbor. Am I on the watch for Jesus, wholeheartedly, as Mary was?

Sorrowful Mysteries [Suffering]

1. The Agony: “If it is possible, let this chalice pass from Me!” Suffering did not come upon Christ unawares. In a very real sense, it had been on God’s Mind from all eternity. The Virgin Mary had conceived a Victim. John hailed Him as the meek Lamb of God, destined for slaughter. Jesus Himself spoke often of His death; invited others to do what He was about to do - “take up the Cross”; then deliberately went up to Jerusalem to His earthly doom. But when that long-awaited suffering was only a sunrise away, Jesus Christ fell upon His face and bled at the thought of pain, and asked that, if it were possible, the chalice be withheld. To tremble at pain is Christ-like. Suffering is not a good thing that merely appears evil. It is an evil, which human nature shrinks from - and grace can sanctify.
2. The Scourging: “The men who held Jesus prisoner beat Him.” Christ shrank from pain, but He did not refuse it. Late morning saw Him flung against a praetorium pillar, while the hired men of Rome, giant barbarians with the muscle and moral sense of wild beasts, wore themselves out whipping and lashing Jesus near to death. Every thump of the iron-weighted cords tore fresh red rents in His Flesh. Jesus, who the night before had turned wine to Blood, now shed that Blood like wine poured out. His Body is the chalice of His spilt-out blood, the cup He no longer asks His Father to remove. When we ask God to relieve our sufferings, He sometimes answers our prayers with more wisdom by letting them continue. To accept pain as Jesus did, is to sanctify it - and myself.
3. The Crowning: “They put on His head a crown woven of thorns.” Jesus had been officially sentenced to death. But the soldiers were in no hurry to finish off their prey. Crucifying criminals was a dull business; so pleasure before business had become the cohort’s custom. Jesus, whom the Psalmist called a worm and no man, now resembled a mouse being worried to death by a horde of spitting, clawing cats. To the twisted wits of the soldiery, the praetorium courtyard suggested a mock court, and Jesus a mock King, and - injury added to insult - the King’s head clamped in a royal crown, studded with thorns. Jesus, “lily among thorns.” The innocence of a God is no proof against pain. How much less is my guilt.
4. The Way of the Cross: “Simon they forced to carry the Cross.” By God’s command, the Mosaic Law summoned every Jewish man to the Holy City for Passover. Simon, from faraway Cyrene, was only one poor, tired rustic among the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims dutifully thronging to Jerusalem. By chance, he crossed the path of the soldiers leading Jesus to Calvary; by chance, Jesus fell to His knees just then; by chance, the guards caught sight of Simon and bullied him into service. Simon was taking part in the solemn ritual for which he had come - the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb. It is characteristic of the Cross that it comes to us “by chance,” that is, not visibly from God. But it is from God. When we suffer, we carry the Cross of Jesus Christ.
5. The Crucifixion: “They offered Him wine mixed with myrrh, and He did not take it.” The bite of the whip kept Jesus conscious until He reached Calvary. There two soldiers tore away His clothing, which the drying blood had glued to His lashed Body; it was the morning’s endless scourging relived in a single moment. Jesus reeled from the sudden torture. A coarse narcotic of wine, myrrh and incense was put quickly to His lips - not to relieve His thirst, but to numb His senses and so to keep Him alive for the long, iron nails. Jesus did not take the drug. He had a world to redeem, and the price was untempered pain. The gate of Heaven has a cross for a key. My cross can be another’s key. To unite my sufferings to Christ’s for the salvation of souls is the highest form of apostolic zeal.

Glorious Mysteries [Hope]

1. The Resurrection: “He is risen!” Just before Jesus made His last journey to Jerusalem, He gathered His disciples about Him and said plainly: “The Son of Man is to be abandoned into the hands of men. They are going to kill Him. Three days later He will rise again.” These last words, which strike such a triumphant note, impressed the disciples not at all. “They were overcome with sorrow.” Their bitter grief proved their great love for Jesus, whom death would soon take from them; but it proved their utter lack of hope in His glorious Easter victory over sin and death. Christ’s Resurrection was not just a marvelous event. It drove despair out of the world. It was Christ’s way of promising that we too shall live forever.
2. The Ascension: “They returned to Jerusalem rejoicing.” When Jesus returned to His friends on Easter day, some were too incredulous, others too broken-hearted to recognize Him. Mary Magdalen, her sight blurred by a flow of tears, thought He was the gardener. Two disciples, meeting Him on the road to Emmaus, took Him for a stranger. When He appeared to the Apostles, they were terrified - “A ghost!” Yet on the day of His Ascension, when he left them, His disciples were filled with joy! They were beginning to understand God’s ways of doing things, and even Christ’s departure didn’t dampen their hopes for the future. Jesus told His disciples that He must leave them for their own good. In time of trouble, when God seems to leave me, it is for the same reason.
3. Pentecost: “They were filled with the Holy Spirit.” On Easter day Jesus met two of His disciples near Emmaus. They did not recognize Him; so (perhaps with a twinkle in His eye) He asked, “What makes you so gloomy?” At once they poured out the whole heartbreaking story of their disillusioned hopes. “We had hoped that it was Jesus who would deliver Israel; but now...” and they shook their heads. That was Easter, a day of sorrow for the Apostles. Pentecost was quite another day. Then Jesus, having ascended to Heaven, sent the Holy Spirit upon His disciples in the form of tongues of fire. Immediately they went forth to preach Jesus Christ - with fiery tongues. The Apostles, convinced of their own hopelessness, learned from the Holy Spirit to hope in Christ. Humility is the mother of perfect hope.
4. The Assumption: “Hail Holy Queen, our life, our sweetness, our hope!” From the moment of His conception in Mary’s womb, Jesus enjoyed the serene bliss of the Beatific Vision. Although He would live a very down-to-earth life, His earth was a Heaven because He always saw His Father face-to-face. This is why the soul of Christ did not have the virtue of hope. Hope is only the earth-covered root of Heavenly possession, and Jesus possessed His Father from the first. Mary’s hope then, is the most perfect ever bestowed on a human soul. The Church calls Mary the Mother of Sacred Hope. She is the most exalted model of perfect confidence in God. Hail Holy Queen, our life, our sweetness, and our hope! After this, our exile, show unto us the blessed Fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
5. The Coronation: “Jesus Christ, who is our hope...” At Her Immaculate Conception, Mary’s soul was endowed with an intense degree of Hope; but the full perfection of that Hope was crowned in Heaven only after a lifetime of trials. Her Hope, like all Her virtues and perfections, centered around Jesus. Jesus was the object of her Faith - her Baby, her Boy, her Son, was her God! Jesus was the object of her Love - her God was her Son! And Jesus was the object of her perfect Hope. As she stood near Him on Calvary - He with a lance in His side, she with a sword in her soul - only her boundless trust in God kept her from dying of sorrow. While there’s hope, there’s life. Mary was an optimist, even on Calvary, because she saw God’s will in everything. Hopeful optimism is a virtue God expects of me.