It is listed in one of my prayer books that we must receive Holy Communion on nine consecutive first Fridays. However it says in another place we should go to Mass and receive Holy Communion. This Friday (my eighth one) our priest was not there and one of our deacons held a communion service (instead of the Mass). 

I would like to know, did that count?

Yours truly, 

Nina

Calm down! God is merciful. 

Let us first discuss what is meant by the nine First Fridays. 

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a nun who live in France (1647-1690) had a series of visions in which Jesus asked her to spread devotion to His Sacred Heart ― in twenty-first century language we might call it His Overwhelming Love. God always speaks to the world in the terms that are appropriate to place and time. She said that He had made twelve promises to those who honored His Sacred Heart by worthily receiving communion on the first Friday of each month nine consecutive times.

This promise, as I understand it, is made to those devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and not simply to those who mechanically receive the sacrament.  God loves principle, He hates method. 

I repeat: God loves principle ― He hates method. 

Just when you think you've got God figured out and down to method, He will do something different. 

I have met so many people who think that they have nothing to worry about. They've made the nine first Fridays, they wear the scapular ― God has to let them into heaven. That’s just like the evangelical who thinks that having said the Sinner’s Prayer and saying with their lips that Jesus is Lord, that they can't possibly go to Hell. 

They are forgetting that St. Paul includes confession in the heart. And the Catholic equivalent is that we forget that the promises made to St. Margaret Mary are made to those who are fervently devoted to the Sacred Heart, not to those who want to use God’s love for their own ends. Both the Sinner’s Prayer that the evangelicals push and the nine first Fridays that Catholics push, or at least used to push, are about an intense love for Christ and a complete devotion to his mercy. 

Remember that the Catechism tells us in paragraph 2111 that "…to attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their merely external performance apart from the interior dispositions that they demand is to fall into superstition."

So, if you go to the nine First Fridays trying to draw closer to the Heart of our Lord Jesus, then I really believe that God will honor the promises made to St. Margaret Mary. They are a beautiful description of the spiritual life. Look them up on the web if you don't know them all. 

However if you focus on the mechanism and the externals you are committing the sin of superstition which would negate the promises.

On top of this, remember that the first Friday devotion is a PRIVATE REVELATION and thus is not part of Catholic doctrine, though it may be a beautiful practice pleasing to the Lord.  

So, in your particular case did the communion without Mass count? 

If you are in love with Jesus yes, it counted. If you are not in love with Jesus, then none of them counted.

I would counsel you to remember another more modern devotion that of the Divine Mercy:

It is the principle of trust (that is faith) that saves, not the method of some external mechanism. 

Yours truly,

Rev. Know-It-All