Tag Archives: 1917

July 13, 1917: the prophecy of World War II

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For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs (Mt. 24:7-8).

March 8, 2017

More than a year before the First World War ended the Lady of the Rosary was already warning the children of a second, and more terrible war if human beings did not repent from our evil and stupid ways.  Here again is what she said, again from Volume IV of Sister Lucia’s memoirs translated in 1998’s Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words:

If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.  The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate of Pius XI.  When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father.

1) An unknown light

Well, those of us who live in 2017 know what this worse war was.  She was speaking of the Second World War that was indeed far worse than the First.  Nations for whom chivalry and Christian charity had once been their guiding principle for centuries were handed over to bloodthirsty former vagabond streetwalkers who reduced ancient cities to rubble and attempted to murder in a most savage fashion whole races of peoples.  But was there a warning from Heaven before this happened?  Was there an unknown light in the sky?  Yes there was.

On the night of January 25-26, 1938 there was an incredible light show in the skies of Europe and the North Atlantic that left the heavens red.  The link below is to a PDF of The New York Times article from January 26, 1938:

fatima 1-26-1938

I will reproduce excerpts from the text of the article here:

LONDON, Jan. 25.-The most brilliant display of an aurora borealis in fifty years held Britons spellbound over a wide area of this country tonight.  From 6:30 to 8:30 P.M. the people of London watched two magnificent arcs rising in the east and west, from which radiated pulsating beams like searchlights in dark red, greenish blue and purple.

During this period all transatlantic radio communication was interrupted…  One of the novel features of tonight’s display was the vivid red glow…  Police stations, fire brigades and newspaper offices all over the country were inundated by calls tonight asking “Where is the fire?”…

The lights were clearly seen in Italy, Spain, and even Gibraltar.  The glow, bathing snow-clad mountaintops in Austria and Switzerland was a beautiful sight, but firemen turned out to chase non-existent fires.

Portuguese villagers rushed in fright from their homes, fearing the end of the world…

GRENOBLE, France, Jan. 25.-A huge blood-red beam of light which scientists said was an aurora borealis of exceptional amplitude tied up telephone systems in parts of France tongiht and spread anxiety in numerous Swiss Alpine villages.

Emblazoned in the northern sky the light brought thousands of telephone calls to Swiss and French authorities asking whether it was a fire, war, or the end of the world.

So the newspaper called it an aurora borealis.  What else would they call it?  When we see something strange and unprecedented we fall back on what we know even if what we know does us no good, and even makes things worse.  Lucia was not instructed at this point to make the warning public either, but she would insist for the rest of her life that the events of the night of January 25-26, 1938 were God’s warning that the Blessed Mother had foretold.

Notice the blood red color of the light.  Blood would shortly begin to flow in unprecedented rivers across the continent.  Notice the resemblance to searchlights streaking across the night sky of London that would in two and a half years become a horrifyingly regular occurrence as German bombers attempted to raze the city from the air.

It should be noted that these lights shone on a night of peace in Europe, or at least it appeared so.  The governments and peoples of Europe were as yet wholly ignorant of what would soon be unleashed on them.  But that would soon change.

2) The Blomberg-Fritsch Affair

I am personally indebted to William L. Shirer’s work on Nazi Germany The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to understand the significance of the days around the January 25-26 unknown light for the onset of the war which was soon to follow.  The nature of these events was only discovered after the war when researchers had a chance to comb through the Nazi archives.

On November 5, 1937 Adolf Hitler held a meeting with the commanders of the German army and high officials in his government to inform them that he was planning an expansionist war in Europe and that he wanted everything to be gotten ready.  The commanders of the German army were unenthusiastic.  They had just gotten out from under the shackles of the Versailles Treaty and were not anxious to see their treasured Wehrmacht destroyed in this madman’s war.

Hitler’s two chief opponents inside Germany were War Minister Field Marshall Werner von Blomberg and Commander in Chief of the Army Colonel General Werner von Fritsch.  The army was the only institution in Germany that still had the power to oppose the Nazi regime and if its commanders objected there would be no war.

On January 12, 1938 Blomberg married a woman, Erna Gruhn, and Hermann Goering served as his best man and Adolf Hitler was in attendance.  Very soon after the Berlin police discovered that well, Blomberg’s wife (God rest her soul) had a past: prostitution and pornography and that sort of thing.

Now the Nazi regime was not necessarily high on moral scruples, several of Hitler’s supporters were active homosexuals, but Hitler now had his chance to get rid of the opposition since the Field Marshall had just violated the moral code for the German officer corps that he himself had put in place.  Adolf Hitler and Herman Goering threatened his War Minister and told him to either annul the marriage, resign, or everything would become a public scandal and a court martial.  Field Marshall Werner von Blomberg loved the woman, did not annul the marriage, and resigned as War Minister on January 27, 1938, one day after the unknown light in the sky.

After this Goering teamed up with Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, and Reinhard Heydrich (all three of these men would become infamous for mass murder in the not too distant future) his right hand man to destroy the reputation of General Fritsch by trumping up false accusations of homosexual acts against him which at this time were still regarded as barbarism throughout the world that still thought itself civilized.  He was forced to resign on February 4, 1938 barely a week after the unknown light.

Hitler now took the opportunity to reorganize command of the Army in order to make it entirely his personal instrument.  The same February 4, 1938 he created the OKW to which both the War Ministry and the German High Command were subject and he put his lackey General Wilhelm Keitel in command of it.  Keitel would remain in that post and carry out Adolf Hitler’s orders without question until the German surrender in May, 1945, and was later hung by the Allies after the Nuremburg trials the following year, God rest his soul.

With the German army firmly in his grip, Adolf Hitler, the former vagrant who had been aimlessly wandering the streets of Vienna a few decades before now launched his assault on Europe and on civilization.  The geopolitical situation across the continent began to deteriorate rapidly and on March 12, 1938, a bare six weeks after the unknown light, Nazi Germany annexed Austria.  World War II had begun, though it would be a year and a half before the shooting would start.

3) The Pontificate of Pius XI

Our Lady prophesied in 1917 that the coming war would start under the pontificate of Pius XI.  In 1917 the pope was Benedict XV, Pius XI would not become pope until 1922, five years after the Apparition.  Pius was easily the most common name for a pope between 1775 and 1958 (no less than seven popes took that name during the period) but there was no guarantee that the successor to Benedict XV would take that name, nor how long he would reign, nor what would happen during that reign.

And there is the matter that we read in the history books that World War II did not start until Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.  Since Pope Pius XI died on February 10, 1939 and Pius XII was pope when Germany invaded Poland how do we reconcile this?

Sister Lucia always insisted that the war started with the German occupation of Austria in March, 1938 under the Pontificate of Pius XI.  And history shows that for the Germans Austria was just a step to surrounding Czechoslovakia on three sides.  And once they got Czechoslovakia then Poland was surrounded on three sides.  Sister Lucia’s judgement about when the war started seems sound and since the Blessed Virgin endorses it who am I to disagree?

4) Pope Benedict XV’s warning

Our Lady never instructed Lucia to warn anyone about any of this.  In fact for Lucia this was all part of the Secret and she never told anyone about it until she wrote her memoir under obedience to the Bishop of Leira in 1941, long after the war had started.  Why didn’t Our Lady want Lucia to inform the world of this?

I don’t know.  But I do know that the Church and the Popes had been warning governments and their peoples at the top of their lungs since the days of Voltaire and the French Revolution in the eighteenth century that formerly Christian Europe was heading down a disastrous path which would lead them to ruin if they did not change their ways.  They never listened.  Why would they have listened to a nun with a story about a light in the sky?

But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.’ (Luke 16:29-31)”

Two and a half years before the Apparitions at Fatima during the first months of World War I Pope Benedict XV issued a stark and extremely prophetic warning of his own in his first encyclical  Ad beatissimi Apostolorum published on November 1, 1914:

For what could prevent the soul of the common Father of all being most deeply distressed by the spectacle presented by Europe, nay, by the whole world, perhaps the saddest and most mournful spectacle of which there is any record.   Certainly those days would seem to have come upon us of which Christ Our Lord foretold: “You shall hear of wars and rumours of wars-for nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (Matt. xxiv, 6, 7).  On every side the dread phantom of war holds sway: there is scarce room for another thought in the minds of men.  The combatants are the greatest and wealthiest nations of the earth; what wonder, then, if, well provided with the most awful weapons modern military science has devised, they strive to destroy one another with refinements of horror.  There is no limit to the measure of ruin and of slaughter; day by day the earth is drenched with newly-shed blood, and is covered with the bodies of the wounded and of the slain.

Those lines were published on November 1, 1914.  French and British and German soldiers had only a few weeks before begun to dig the first trenches that would scar the landscape of France and drench it with blood for the next three and a half years.  When Pope Benedict XV was composing these words many people still harbored the illusion that the war could be short.  Read his words again.  Meditate on them.  They were prophetic not only for the First World War, but for the Second as well, and for the massacres the Bolsheviks committed in Russia and the Nazis throughout occupied Europe and of the massive bombings of British, German, and Japanese cities.

The years 1914-45 were a hurricane and a vortex of death in Europe.  And it didn’t stop there, and it hasn’t stopped yet.  People had been warned and they didn’t want to listen.  The light in the sky seems to have been meant for Lucia alone, though why I cannot say.

I would like to point to something else that Pope Benedict said.  He made an extremely stark statement about what time it is with regard to the Second Coming of the Lord, and I have never heard anyone comment on this (italics mine): “Certainly those days would seem to have come upon us of which Christ Our Lord foretold: ‘You shall hear of wars and rumours of wars- for nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.'”

Those words are taken from Our Lord’s discourse on his own Second Coming that He gave to Peter, James, John, and Andrew on the Mount of Olives, looking at the soon to be destroyed Jerusalem Temple, a few days before his Crucifixion.  Jesus states that the time of nations rising against nations and kingdoms against kingdoms was only the beginning of the sorrows, or the beginning of the birth pangs.

And the Holy Father spoke with certainty about what time it was.  This encyclical was written more than a hundred years ago now: if that was the beginning then, where are we at now?  This explains the urgency of Fatima for right now, for this very moment.  She prophesied World War II.  There is no reason to expect that everything else she prophesied will not come to pass.

Go to Confession.  And pray the Rosary every day.

The Apparition of May 13, 1917

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For just as the lightning comes from the east, and flashes even to the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be (Matthew 24: 27).

February 15, 2017

I will recount here the first apparition of Our Lady of the Rosary to the three young children as recounted by the Servant of God Venerable Sister Lúcia of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart in her fourth memoir composed in 1941 using the English version published in 1998.

Just one word in advance.  The primary witnesses of the Apparitions were the children Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Blessed Francisco and Blessed Jacinta Marto.  During the Apparitions Francisco only saw the Blessed Virgin, but did not hear what she said while both Jacinta and Lucia heard the words of Our Lady.  Lucia however was the only one who ever spoke to the Virgin.  Now on to the account of the Apparition of May 13, 1917:

High up on the slope in the Cova da Iria, I was playing with Jacinta and Francisco at building a little stone wall around a clump of furze.  Suddenly we saw what seemed to be a flash of lightning.

“We’d better go home,” I said to my cousins, “that’s lightning; we may have a thunderstorm.”

“Yes, indeed!” they answered.

We began to go down the slope, hurrying the sheep along toward the road.  We were more or less half-way down the slope and almost level with a large holmoak tree that stood there, when we saw another flash of lightning.  We had only gone a few steps further when, there before us on a small holmoak, we beheld a Lady all dressed in white.  She was more brilliant than the sun, and radiated a light more clear and intense than a crystal glass filled with sparkling water, when the rays of the burning sun shine through it.

We stopped, astounded, before the Apparition.  We were so close, just a few feet from her, that we were bathed in the light which surrounded her, that we were bathed in the light which surrounded her, or rather, which radiated from her.  Then Our Lady spoke to us:

“Do not be afraid.  I will do you no harm.”

“Where are you from?”

“I am from heaven.”

“What do you want of me?”

“I have come to ask you to come here for six months in succession, on the 13th day, at this same hour.  Later on, I will tell you who I am and what I want.  Afterwards, I will return here yet a seventh time.”

“Shall I go to heaven too?”

“Yes, you will.”

“And Jacinta?”

“She will go also.”

“And Francisco?”

“He will go there too, but he must say many Rosaries.”

Then I remembered to ask about two girls who had died recently.  They were friends of mine and used to come to my home to learn weaving with my eldest sister.

“Is Maria das Neves in heaven?”

“Yes, she is.”  (I think she was about 16 years old).

“And Amelia?”

“She will be in purgatory until the end of the world.”  (It seems to me that she was between 18 and 20 years of age).  “Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and of supplication for the conversion of sinners?”

“Yes, we are willing.”

“Then you are going to have much to suffer, but the grace of God will be your comfort.”

As she pronounced these last words “…the grace of God will be your comfort”, Our Lady opened her hands for the first time, communicating to us a light so intense that, as it streamed from her hands, its rays penetrated our hearts and the innermost depths of our souls, making us see ourselves in God, Who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in the best of mirrors.  Then, moved by an interior impulse that was also communicated to us, we fell on our knees, repeating in our hearts:

“O most Holy Trinity, I adore You!  My God, My God, I love you in the most Blessed Sacrament!”

After a few moments, Our Lady spoke again:

“Pray the Rosary every day, in order to obtain peace for the world, and the end of the war.”

Then she began to rise serenely, going up towards the east, until she disappeared in the immensity of space.  The light that surrounded her seemed to open up a path before her in the firmament, and for this reason we sometimes said that we saw heaven opening.

There are a lot of things I want to say about this apparition, but I will let them be for a moment.

Pray the Rosary every day.  Pray for the five lost Sees.  Pray for the conversion of the Muslim peoples.  Pray for the Holy Father.  Pray for Pope Francis.  He is our only pope and he is surrounded by men who are not his friends, and they are not your friends either.

The Apparitions of the Angel

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February 9, 2017

I will recount here the beginning of the story: the apparitions of the Angel that were to prepare the children for the later apparitions of the Θεοτόκος, the Mother of God.  The Angel appeared first to Lucia in a series of brief manifestation in 1915 and then three times to Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco together in 1916 that contained messages from Heaven.  The text I am using here is from Sister Lucia’s fourth memoir completed under the orders of the Bishop of Leira on December 8, 1941.  The English translation is from the volume published under the title Fatima in Lucia’s own words the 10th edition published on November 13, 1998 under the Imprimatur of the Bishop of Leira-Fatima.  Here is Sister Lucia’s account of the apparitions of the Angel:

Although I cannot give the exact date, it seems to me that it was in 1915 that the first Apparition took place.  As far as I can judge, it was the Angel, although at that time he did not venture to make himself fully known.  From what I can recall of the weather, I think that this must have happened between the months of April and October in the year 1915.

My three companions from the Casa Velha, by name Teresa Matias and her sister Maria Rosa, and Maria Justino, were with me on the southern slope of the Cabeço.  We were just about to start praying the Rosary when I saw, poised in the air above the trees that stretched down to the valley which lay at our feet, what appeared to be a cloud in human form, whiter than snow and almost transparent.  My companions asked me what it was.  I replied that I did not know.  This happened on two further occasions, but on different days.

This Apparition made a certain impression upon me, which I do not know how to explain.  Little by little, this impression faded away, and were it not for the events that followed, I think I would have forgotten it completely.

The dates I cannot set down with certainty, because, at that time, I did not know how to reckon the years, the months, or even the days of the week.  But I think it must have been in the spring of 1916 that the Angel appeared to us for the first time in our Loca do Cabeço.

As I have written in my account of Jacinta, we climbed th hillside in search of shelter.  After having taken our lunch and said our prayers, we began to see, some distance off, above the trees that stretched away towards the east, a light, whiter than snow, in the form of a young man, transparent, and brighter than crystal pierced by the rays of the sun.  As he drew nearer, we could distinguish his features more and more clearly.  We were surprised, absorbed, and struck dumb with amazement.

On reaching us he said:

“Do not be afraid.  I am the Angel of Peace.  Pray with me.”

Kneeling on the ground, he bowed down until his forehead touched the earth.  Led by a supernatural impulse, we did the same, and repeated the words which we heard him say:

“My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love You!  I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love You!”

Having repeated these words three times, he rose and said:

“Pray thus.  The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of your supplications.”  Then he disappeared.

The supernatural atmosphere which enveloped us was so intense, that we were for a long time scarcely aware of our own existence, remaining in the same posture in which he had left us, and continually repeating the same prayer.  The presence of God made itself felt so intimately and so intensely that we did not even venture to speak to one another.  Next day, we were still immersed in this spiritual atmosphere, which only gradually began to disappear…

The second Apparition must have been at the height of summer, when the heat of the day was so intense that we had to take the sheep home before noon and only let them out again in the early evening.

We went to spend the siesta hours in the shade of the trees which surrounded the well that I have already mentioned several times.  Suddenly, we saw the same Angel right beside us.

“What are you doing?” he asked.  “Pray! Pray very much!”  The Hearts of Jesus and Mary have designs of mercy on you.  Offer prayers and sacrifices constantly to the Most High.”

How are we to make sacrifices?” I asked.

“Make of everything you can a sacrifice, and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners.  You will thus draw down peace upon your country.  I am its Angel Guardian, the Angel of Portugal.  Above all, accept and bear with submission, the sufferings which the Lord will send you.”

These words were indelibly impressed upon our minds.  They were like a light which made us understand who God is, how He loves us and desires to be loved, the value of sacrifice, how pleasing it is to Him and how, on account of it, He grants the grace of conversion to sinners.  It was for this reason that we began, from then on, to offer to the Lord all that mortified us, without, however, seeking out other forms of mortification and penance, except that we remained for hours on end with our foreheads touching the ground, repeating the prayer the Angel had taught us.

It seems to me that the third Apparition must have been in October, or towards the end of September, as we were no longer returning home for siesta.

As I have already written in my account of Jacinta, we went one day from Pregueira (a small grove belonging to my parents) to the Lapa, making our way along the slope of the hill on the side facing Aljustrel and Casa Velha.  We said our Rosary there and the prayer the Angel had taught us at the first Apparition.

While we were there, the Angel appeared to us for the third time, holding a chalice in his hands, with a host above it from which some drops of blood were falling into the sacred vessel.  Leaving the chalice and the host suspended in the air, the Angel prostrated on the ground and repeated this prayer three times:

“Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly, and I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference with which He Himself is offended. And, through the infinite merits of his most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of You the conversion of poor sinners.”

Then, rising, he once more took the chalice and the host in his hands.  He gave the host to me, and to Jacinta and  Francisco he gave the contents of the chalice to drink saying as he did so: “Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men.  Repair their crimes and console your God.”  Once again, he prostrated on the ground and repeated with us three times more, the same prayer “Most Holy Trinity…”, and then disappeared.

Impelled by the power of the supernatural that enveloped us, we imitated all that the Angel had done, prostrating ourselves on the ground as he did and repeating the prayers that he said.  The force of the presence of God was so intense that it absorbed us and almost completely annihilated us.  It seemed to deprive us even of the use of our bodily senses for a considerable length of time.  During those days, we performed all our exterior actions as though guided by that same supernatural being who was impelling us thereto.  The peace and happiness which we felt were great, but wholly interior, for our souls were completely immersed in God.  The physical exhaustion that came over us was also great.

Thus ends sister Lucia’s account of the Apparitions of the Angel of Portugal.  Just the act of copying this account and typing these words have strangely lightened my soul.  I want to say a few things about this apparition but I will leave that be until the next post.  For the moment I would just suggest reading and meditating on this wonderful passage.

Pray the Rosary daily.  Go to Confession.  Make reparation for the crimes committed against your outraged Lord and Savior by ungrateful men.  Pray and keep watch.

The minefield of Fatima

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February 8, 2017                                                                                                                            The Memorial of Saint Jerome Emiliani

A few words before I begin at the beginning.  When I studied the accounts of Sister Lucia the message of Fatima seemed to me to be extremely clear and the requests of Our Lady seemed to me to be incredibly specific and precise.  Genuine penance and reparation were and are what Heaven demands, and if we follow this course we cannot fail.

I will detail the requests that Our Lady made of all of us and of the Holy Father and of his bishops, God willing, as I recount the individual apparitions but I do want to make one point very clear at the outset.  The message of Fatima has been incredibly muddied over during the last century.  Heaven made very clear and specific and easy to understand requests but the designs of men have confused things as we are always wont to do.  Fatima has been turned into a minefield.  How so?

Some misguided men have sought to distract people from the message or to subtly discredit it.  Others have sought to use it for their own personal gain and have therefore chosen to emphasize one portion of the message to the detriment of the other parts.  And this spreading of ignorance has confused almost everyone within the Church.

Fatima contains a clear and simple message that is crucially important for the human race that the Church herself has declared worthy of belief yet it is rarely spoken of, or if it is the prophetic import of the message is relegated to being a “part of the past” as one notable in the Church stated not so long ago.  But it is not part of the past.

Fatima is more important in 2017 than it was in 1917, much more important, and a simple run through the message, the message itself not what people say about  the message, will show that.  I will be expressing my opinions and those of others throughout this series of posts but I will always be clear that it is an opinion and not a fact.  Too many times in my research of this topic I have discovered that opinions are stated as if they were facts and unsourced claims are treated as if they were the Gospel truth.  So there we have it.  My little preamble is done.  In the next post, God willing, I will start with the apparitions of the Angel to three young shepherd children.

Please continue to pray the Rosary every day and join the Rosary Confraternity.