What is First Saturday Devotion?

Meditation Set #1:  (Month of September)

Joyful Mysteries [Humility]



1. The Annunciation: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” Humility has a bad name. Many dismiss it as a perpetual hanging of the head, the coward’s one claim to virtue. But humility is not that. The materialist who confesses he is only a soulless animal is not humbler than Mary of Nazareth, who knew she was a child of God. His thoughts are lowly, but he is proud; Mary’s thoughts are lofty, and she is humble. That is because her thoughts are true. She knew that her goodness, her greatness, came altogether from the great God, and she acted accordingly. Humility means acting upon the truth about God and ourselves. It is the proud man who hangs His head; otherwise, he would see God above him. Humble Mary became God’s Mother – the world’s greatest person. Something for me to meditate upon!
2. The Visitation: “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Pride would be proper, if, by an impossibility, there were no God. But our world is spun forth from His hand, and everything in it is His – beauty, goodness, harmonious ordering of events. Our own good deeds are God’s as well. Hence, pride is not only improper; it is impractical. A water faucet is useless if the reservoir is closed; so, too, a man is helpless when he tries to act independently from God. That is why, when Elizabeth cried out, “Blessed art thou among women,” Mary added the balancing truth: “He who is mighty has done great things for me.” Mary was practical, realistic, because she sincerely referred all her goodness to God. Her humility was, literally, “down to earth.” And I...?
3. The Nativity: “She brought forth her firstborn.” The newborn Christ Child in the arms of His Mother is the world’s tenderest thing; but a very awesome thing as well. God became man; divinity in dust! It is apt to frighten; humility is like that. But it was not humility at all; it was condescension. Condescension is a stooping down; humility is a straightening up. In the Incarnation, God, while remaining God, become something inestimably less - man. Humility has exactly the opposite effect: by stifling pride, it makes man truly man, a free creature keenly conscious that he can do nothing without God, thus freeing him for something inestimably more - a share in the very life of God. I am called to live God’s own life, by grace on earth, then in glory. Humility is the only threshold to such greatness.
4. The Presentation in the Temple: “This child is set for the fall and for the rise of many.” The proud man stands upon a pedestal, but so does the humble. The proud man is poised on the pedestal of inordinate self-esteem; the humble is borne upon Christ. A proud man will never climb down the pillar of self; egoism hugs the heights; he must be toppled off. That is the chief value of temptations and the remorse following sin: to strike away prides’ underpinning, and bluntly, to make the soul sprawl. One pillar only must remain - Christ. The humbled soul need not climb it; Christ will lift him up. Christ was set for the fall; He is set for the rise as well. To admit my weakness, my insufficiency, is to lose it - if I turn for strength to Jesus Christ.
5. The Finding of Jesus in the Temple: “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them.” The Incarnation was sheer divine condescension. But once “He bowed the Heavens and came down,” once He was made to our image and likeness, Jesus Christ was pre-eminently humble. As God, He knew perfectly, “what was in man”; as man, He confessed what He knew of His humanity: “Of Myself, I can do nothing.” Nothing rhetorical or exaggerated about it; simply, a man can do nothing good of himself, alone. That is in the nature of things. And it demands man’s recognition through His free obedience to God’s law. And Jesus, who came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it, went down to Nazareth to obey. Am I humble? My obedience to God’s law is my humility.

Sorrowful Mysteries [Patience]

1. The Agony: “He found them sleeping.” Jesus once told the story of a poor man who owed His employer a large sum of money. “Be patient with me,” he begged; and His master cancelled the debt. Jesus was that master, and the servant represented His disciples. Time after time Jesus asked more of His disciples than they were ready to give. He asked faith of Peter, and Peter sank beneath the waves; He asked humility of James and John, and they requested the first places in His Kingdom. And in the Garden, He asked His disciples to pray, and they slept. But Jesus was patient. He knew that, in time to come, they would “pay Him all.” Patience is the art of suffering. Do I give way to annoyance, exasperation, anger, when others fall short of my expectations?
2. The Scourging: “Jesus was silent.” Whenever the Pharisees put Christ to the test, He put them to open shame. They led an adulteress to Him; He must command her to be stoned, and so appear heartless, or demand her release and so break the Mosaic Law. Instead, to the Pharisees’ horror, He invites the sinless ones among them to stone her, and they all depart. To the Pharisees He said: “Render Caesar’s things to Caesar, God’s to God”; “straining the gnat, you swallow the camel”; “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” And the Gospel adds, “The Pharisees sat there in silence.” But in His Passion, while the Pharisees calumniated Him, Jesus was silent. Silence is the language of patience. Jesus was silent in His sufferings because He saw God’s will in them. And I...”
3. The Crowning: “Hail, King!” Jesus was always master of His enthusiasm. When He drove the marketers out of the Temple, He was careful not to break the cages of the doves and pigeons, lest they be lost to their owners. The crowd exulted when He raised a dead girl to life, but Jesus calmly ordered her to be fed. When the people hailed Him King, Jesus was especially unimpressed; once He hid in a mountain, and once He wept. He knew He was a King, but a king in exile. “My Kingdom is not of this world.” And so, when His royalty was made sport of in His Passion, Jesus bore the humiliation patiently. Jesus knew He had only to wait a little while, and then He would enter His Kingdom. The thought of Heaven should make me patient, too.
4. The Way of the Cross: “They forced Simon to carry the Cross.” It has been a long, slow journey from His home in the country to Jerusalem, and Simon was tired at the end of it. Occupied with His own idle thoughts, he hardly noticed the stream of soldiers and citizens coming out through the city gate. But the soldiers noticed him. A moment later, the astonished Simon found himself helping Jesus Christ carry His cross. Simon didn’t like it at all, but he did as he was told; and it was not long before God enlightened His soul. Simon of Cyrene was the first to discover that the yoke of Christ is sweet, and His burden light. When I am given difficult or thankless jobs, I must work at them patiently. Every troublesome employment is a share in the cross of Christ.
5. The Crucifixion: “It is consummated.” These words are the key to the incredible patience of Christ. For years He had allowed Himself to be imposed upon by others, to be misunderstood, misrepresented; He had worked a thousand miracles, but few men gave Him thanks; His wonderful sermons, full of divine wisdom and love, often fell upon deaf ears; and at the end of a life of utter self-giving, He was betrayed, deserted, condemned to death and crucified. But it was not just His “bad luck”; it was His vocation, given Him by His Father. That is why Jesus was patient until His last breath, when the world’s salvation was consummated. “In patience you will possess your souls,” Jesus once said. In His patience Christ possessed the souls of others. I can do the same, by uniting my silent endurance to His.

Glorious Mysteries [The Second Coming of Christ]

1. The Resurrection: “They will see the Son of Man coming.” For many people, the Christian belief in the End of the World is a fairy-tale, or an escape mechanism born of chaotic world conditions. For a Catholic, it is neither a myth nor a sedative. The world’s dissolution, and Christ’s second coming, are as much a part of His faith as the world’s creation and Christ’s first coming at Nazareth. The Glorified Savior who made the earth tremble at His Resurrection, will shake the firmament on the Last Day, “the day of terror.” He was born at Bethlehem humble and meek; in the last times He will appear as the God of inexorable justice. I may not live to see the Last Day; still, Jesus will be my Judge. Am I ready for His coming?
2. The Ascension: “Jesus will return as you have seen Him going to Heaven.” For the Apostles, Ascension Day was one of subdued joy. Joy, because Jesus was going to the Father; subdued, because He was leaving them. There was about Olivet an air of quiet peacefulness. The Apostles were silent as Jesus blessed them, silent as He rose out of sight. They remained there in silence until two angels sent them off. And though the Last Day will not be one of quiet and peace but of terror and war, “Jesus will come again, just as He ascended,” in glory, in the clouds of Heaven, surrounded by angelic armies. By the promise of Christ’s second coming, I am assured of the triumph of God over evil. By a virtuous life, I am assured of my triumph over Hell.
3. Pentecost: “The beast shall be tormented.” In God’s Providence, “It’s always darkest just before dawn.” When the world was morally corrupt, the Christ-Child came to save it. When the letter of the Law had stifled the spirit of Jewish piety, Jesus came “that they might have life.” While the Apostles huddled together in an upper room, all their hopes in Jesus dashed by His death, the risen Lord appeared in the midst of them. And in the last days of the world, when “charity will grow cold” under the persecutions of Anti-Christ, Jesus “will slay him with the breath of His mouth, and the brightness of His coming,” and restore all things to God. “When it was dark, Jesus came unto them.” When my soul is in darkness, God is at hand.
4. The Assumption: “He did battle with the Woman.” The first book of the Old Testament tells of a woman who will crush Satan’s head. In the last book of the New, St. John describes the great battle between a Woman and Satan. The woman of Genesis is Mary; the sun-robed woman of the Apocalypse is the Catholic Church. But it was Mary whom St. John had in mind as he described the Church in the last days. The Church with a Child in her womb is Mary at the Annunciation; the Church in travail is Mary on Calvary; the Church with twelve stars about her head is Mary at Pentecost, surrounded by the Apostles. And the Church with the moon at her feet is Mary assumed to Heaven. Mary is the Church’s Mother. I should ask her every day to protect the Mystical Body of her Son.
5. The Coronation: “Power, strength, honor, glory to the Lamb that was slain.” Unspeakable terror for sinners on the day of Christ’s second coming - but praise and honor and glory for Christ. While those who have damned themselves depart to their eternal torment, all the souls of the saved, in numbers past reckoning, will assemble before the Holy One who redeemed them with His Blood. At long last shall the day have come which the Prophet wrote of, and sighed for, but did not see; the day when “the moon shall blush and the sun shall be put to shame; when the Lord shall reign over Mount Sion and in Jerusalem, and shall be glorified before the eyes of His ancients.” Will you “rejoice with Christ” on the Last Day? Then “suffer with Him” now.