Sacrifice beads are not just for the season of Lent, but for the whole year round. They consist of a piece of string on which are a medal, a crucifix and ten beads. You use the beads to count your “gifts to God” - sacrifices. Every time you have to do something you don’t want to or can’t do something you like, you can pull a bead. Even the simplest things can be offered up to God if you do it for love of Him. Whenever you take the trash out, pull a bead. Have to do the dishes? Say a prayer and pull a bead. If you can’t have some candy when you’d like to you can a offer it as a sacrifice to God.

When Mary appeared to 3 children, ages 10, 9, and 7, at Fatima, Portugal, she said “Pray! Pray a great deal and make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls go to Hell for not having someone to pray and make sacrifices for them.” God desires these gifts of love so intensely, especially now, when hardly anyone cares about saving sinners by suffering. Show God and Mary how much you love them. All they want is for you to offer the little crosses. Things that happen every day which get on your nerves or make you unhappy can be given to Mary’s Immaculate Heart and help save sinners.

At the end of each day, when you say your night prayers talk to God and Our Lady and show them what you did. Imagine, as a sinner is standing before God and has merited no mercy from any of his deeds, Mary suddenly appears surrounded by angels. She steps forward and your Guardian Angel presents the sacrifices that you did. Your ordinary deeds - now done for the Love God - outweigh the scale loaded down with the poor soul’s sins. Still, you are in your room by your bed and you can’t see any of this. That doesn’t stop any of it from happening. Your Guardian Angel knows and prays you will be generous tomorrow and every day of your life.