You already know what it costs to kneel when no one’s watching. You’ve felt the pull to pray for souls who will never thank you, to sit an extra hour before the Tabernacle when the chapel is empty and it would be so easy to leave. That’s a form of reparation, and it’s an act of love toward Christ, our Heavenly Father, the Holy Spirit, our Blessed Mother, and all the angels and saints in heaven.
Our Church has a rich history of offering prayers of reparation for the sins of the world, and we’ve had many saints who heard this call directly, so your calling to pray is a noble one.
We know that making reparation is an offering of love and consolation to God in place of the offenses He receives—blasphemies, sacrileges, countless small and great indifferences— in a world that has grown used to wounding Him. It is not a private sorrow kept to ourselves. It is an act, deliberate and freely chosen, in which we stand in the breach on behalf of those who do not know what they do, or who know and no longer care.
This is not a new devotion invented to meet a modern crisis. It is as old as the Cross itself, where Christ made the one perfect reparation for sin, and it has been renewed again and again through the saints He has raised up to remind us: Our Lady at Fatima, asking for the Five First Saturdays; the Sacred Heart revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, asking for the First Fridays; the popes who granted indulgences to souls who would kneel before the Blessed Sacrament and say the words of the Act of Reparation. Each of these is an invitation, not a burden — a way of loving Jesus back.
“…Reparation may be made for the violated rights of Christ the supreme King…”
Miserentissimus Redemptor (Pius XI, May 8, 1928, Para. 21
Why Make Prayers of Reparation Now?
Every generation has had reason to make reparation, because every generation has sinned. But there is a particular urgency to this moment. Attacks on the Eucharist—the theft and desecration of consecrated Hosts, the public mockery of what we hold most sacred—are no longer rare stories from far away. Adoration itself, the quiet act of sitting before Christ truly present, has become for many the last defense against a culture that no longer believes He is there at all.
If you are one of the souls who comes to sit in the Adoration Chapel and pray, you already understand this in your body before you understand it in your head: reparation is not abstract theology. It is time given. It is a Holy Hour kept when it would be easier not to keep it. It is a rosary prayed for someone who will never know you prayed it.
Below you’ll find the prayers of reparation the Church has given us across the centuries — some centuries old, some given through more recent private revelation and approved for the devotion of the faithful. Pray them in the chapel, pray them at home, pray them for the world.
Devotions of Reparation
Saints Who Devoted Their Lives to Reparation:
- St. Margaret Mary Alacoque received the revelations of the Sacred Heart at Paray-le-Monial in the 1670s, in which Christ showed her His Heart wounded by ingratitude and asked for the devotion of the First Fridays and the Holy Hour as acts of reparation.
- St. Francisco and St. Jacinta Marto, with their cousin Servant of God Lucia dos Santos, were taught the reparation prayers of Fatima by the Angel of Portugal in 1916, and later by Our Lady herself in 1917, who asked specifically for reparation to her Immaculate Heart through the Five First Saturdays.
- Sister Mary of St. Peter, a Carmelite nun of Tours, received the “Golden Arrow” prayer and the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus in the 1840s, offered in reparation for blasphemy and the profanation of Sunday.
- St. Louis de Montfort wrote extensively on reparation as restoring to God the honor stolen by sin, and his hymns on the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Heart shaped much of the Church’s later reparative devotion.
- St. Peter Julian Eymard, the “Apostle of the Eucharist,” founded religious congregations dedicated to perpetual adoration and reparation for the neglect and irreverence shown to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.
- Pope Pius XI, in his 1928 encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor, taught that reparation is not only fitting but an obligation of justice and love owed by the whole Church to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Here are six devotions of reparation the Church has given us, drawn from these saints and approved apparitions. Each includes the prayers you’ll find on this site.
Reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Given to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, this devotion asks nine consecutive First Fridays of Mass and Communion in reparation for the coldness and ingratitude the Sacred Heart receives from those it loves most.
Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Requested by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, this devotion of five consecutive First Saturdays — confession, Communion, the Rosary, and fifteen minutes of meditation — makes reparation for the sins committed against her Immaculate Heart.
Reparation to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament
For the sacrileges and indifference Christ receives in the Eucharist, the Church gives us the Act of Reparation, traditionally recited in reparation for blasphemy committed against Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.
Reparation Through the Precious Blood
The Precious Blood of Jesus poured out for our redemption on Calvary continues to be met with indifference by a world that has forgotten its price. This prayer of repentance offers reparation for that neglect uniting our own sorrow to the Blood of Christ itself.
The Penitential Rosary of Our Lady of Akita
In 1970, Our Lord Himself taught this Penitential Rosary to Mother Maria Concepcion Zuniga Lopez, dictating that it be prayed with love, in remembrance of His Passion, in reparation for sin. Decades later, in 2019, Sr. Agnes Sasagawa called for a renewal of this devotion.
The Divine Praises Prayer for Reparation
Originally composed in 1797 by Jesuit Fr. Luigi Felici amid blasphemies in revolutionary Rome, the Divine Praises prayer was written to answer irreverence to God’s Holy Name with a litany of blessing, and later expanded by six popes to fourteen praises.
Prayers of Reparation PDF Downloads
Download the 8.5 x 11 double sided PDF Fatima Prayers of Reparation and Act of Reparation to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament for your adoration chapel.