The Hail Mary and Devotion to the Immaculate Heart – VL190

J.M.J.

May 2018
The Month of Holy Mary

Dear Friend of our Lady,

The Month of May is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is a month traditionally filled with practices to venerate Our Lady in Her images.

To honor Our Heavenly Mother, May is the month when Catholic churches have a special coronation ceremony placing a crown – often made with beautiful flowers – on a statue of Our Lady. It is a time of honoring Our Lady with processions while praying the Rosary and singing hymns focusing on Her.

Her special month is also the month Our Lady chose to appear for the first time at Fatima, Portugal in 1917 and give us a message more important than any other given to mankind since Our Lord was here on earth teaching us the one way to eternal salvation.

Her Fatima Message was a simple one, yet there seems to be a lack of understanding of just how great a gift the Fatima Apparitions were and still are, and of how critical they are for our eternal salvation.

In our efforts to spread this message, if we were to try to impress upon others just one thing, that is, the most important component of the Message, it is the words of Our Lady Herself to the 3 child seers (Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta) – “God wills to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart”.

Teach people about Our Lady and Her importance for our salvation, and She will do the rest. Teach people the words of the Hail Mary, and get them to love the prayer, and She will take over from there.

Enclosed with this letter is a reprint of a beautiful bookmark with the prayer Hail Mary. The Hail Mary – or Ave Maria in Latin – is often the first prayer taught to Catholic children by their parents – after the Sign of the Cross. It is one of the two primary trademark prayers that identifies and unites Catholics – the other being the Our Father.

If for some reason a child is not taught this prayer at home, it is one of the first ones taught in Catholic schools and a requirement for a child to know by heart before he makes his First Holy Communion.

It would be a shame for Catholic children not to have been taught at the earliest possible age at home. I have seen and heard children at age 3 able to lead a decade of the Rosary when praying with others. That is one of the most beautiful and edifying things to witness.

The Hail Mary is integral to Marian devotion. Even the first two words alone are a prayer – something that a child just learning to speak can be taught or that someone near death can say with suggestion or prompting, if the dying person is unable to do or say anything else.

And in reaching out to a protestant, were he to utter those infamous, misguided and tiring 8 words we have all had to endure listening to at one time or other: “Where does it say that in the Bible?” – just tell him to read Luke 1:28,42.

Please reach out to a child, reach out to the sick, the dying and all those crossing your path with Our Lady’s Fatima Message. Begin with the first and most important step of spreading devotion to Her Immaculate Heart. Pray and teach the Hail Mary.

The enclosed Hail Mary bookmark has the prayer in English and Latin. The picture on the front is that of the Immaculate Conception – the Holy Virgin looking up to Heaven and surrounded by angels. Our Lady’s title, the Immaculate Conception, is one that She is most pleased with. Offenses against Her Immaculate Conception are one of the five blasphemies that we make reparation for on the First Saturdays by our Communion of Reparation.

For more copies of the enclosed bookmark, Hail Mary, call us at 1-800-263-8160 or 1-800-845-3047 or email info@fatima.org

In the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts,


Joanna Swords

P.S. For copies of our leaflets, How to Say the Rosary (pocket, prayer book and purse sized) and Pray the Rosary Every Day to Obtain Peace in the World (prayer book and purse sized), call us at 1-800-263-8160.