Catholic Devotions are nothing new.  The sincere piety of devout, religious and spiritual Catholics has manifested itself from the beginning. Many of these devotions have become popular because of the promises which Our Lord or Our Lady have attached to devotions to them, e.g. First Fridays, First Saturdays, devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Holy Rosary, etc.

Such pious, religious and spiritual practices have helped people to focus on living a holy life of virtue and sanctity in imitation of Christ, of Our Blessed Mother, of their patron Saint(s), and to be mindful of how Christ teaches us to be in the world but not of the world.

Many of these Spiritual helps are popular, not only because people can see how they have "worked" for them in their own personal lives, but also because they give those who perform these various devotions a kind of "foretaste", so to speak, of Heaven itself!

The Catholic Church, as a loving, kind, and merciful Mother, has carefully approved of a number of them to help Catholics in this life and even some in the next, e.g. that those who die wearing the Brown Scapular will not go to Hell and on the first Saturday after their death will be taken to Heaven if they have the misfortune to end up in Purgatory.