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The Third Secret and the Vatican documents

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The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council, and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs.  If we let him go on thus, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”…  So from that day on they took counsel how to put him to death. (John 11:47-48, 53)

May 12, 2017                                                                                                                                     The Memorial of Saints Nereus, Achilleus, & Pancras

Seventeen years ago now, in the late spring and early summer of the year 2000, there was a flurry of statements from some very notable Church officials concerning the Fatima Apparitions and the famous Third Secret.  These statements were all cobbled together by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and released on June 26, 2000 under the title The Message of Fatima and can be read here.  I urge you to read these documents because they have cast a shadow over the discussion of Fatima within the Church for almost two decades now.

First, these documents are not the product of a single author, but rather three men produced this thing, and Pope Saint John Paul II (who was reigning at the time) was not among them.  The authors were Archbishop (now Cardinal) Tarcisio Bertone, SDB, Archbishop Emeritus of Vercelli the then Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Angelo Cardinal Sodano the then Secretary of State of the Vatican City State, and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

These are strange documents issued by men who at that time had no authority to do what they were doing and it shows.

1) Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone

The first task of Archbishop Bertone seemed to be to convince Catholics that there was no longer any need for the Consecration of Russia.  In fact he went so far as to claim that Pope John Paul II had done it sixteen years before, even though the Holy Father had never made that claim himself.  To understand this we have to remember that in the year 2000 the Berlin Wall had been down for ten years and the world seemed to be at peace.  The Soviet Empire and indeed the Soviet Union itself had long since disappeared and there was not even any reason to think about Russia anymore.  These were the first days of Vladimir Putin’s presidency and the country seemed a basket case.

So Archbishop Bertone put the first dagger in the heart of the Fatima message: Russia had already been consecrated and the fall of the Berlin Wall proved it.  He cited a universal consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary that Pope Saint John Paul II conducted on March 25, 1984 and said that this was the long awaited consecration that everyone had been hoping for.  He even provided the text of that prayer and no one seemed to notice that there was one word that Pope Saint John Paul II never used when making that consecration that day: Russia.  Read the prayer at the above link to the CDF documents and tell me if you see that word anywhere.

Archbishop Bertone also produced a single sentence from a much ballyhooed letter from Sister Lucia to Pope John Paul II where she says: “Yes it has been done just as Our Lady asked, on 25 March 1984.”  The curious thing about that letter is that it is dated November 8, 1989.  Do you remember what was going on in the world on November 8, 1989?  Massive demonstrations in all the major cities of East Germany forced the government to resign that day.  The Soviet Union was refusing to intervene as she had done in past uprisings against the Eastern Bloc governments and the next day the Berlin Wall came down.  Possibly Sister Lucia was just as caught up in the euphoria as everyone else on the planet.  She was only human after all.

And everyone bought it.  But to understand why they were so easily convinced of this thing we have to remember what the world looked like in the spring of 2000.  We forget now how good things looked at that time. The Berlin Wall had been down for a decade and the September 11 attacks had not happened yet.  The global economy was booming in the first flush of globalization and the internet age.  The European Union was in the process of implementing the new common currency, the Euro, that promised to bind the nations of that continent so tightly together that war could never erupt there again.  Peace was even threatening to break out in the Middle East.  Israel had withdrawn from south Lebanon a month before, ending an 18 year long disastrous adventure there, and Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat were set to go to Camp David two weeks after the release of the Fatima documents to make a final peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Times were good, and they were going to stay that way.  We don’t need to worry about Fatima and all that doom and gloom stuff anymore.

The second task of Archbishop Bertone was to dispense with the Third Secret.  This was really the third part of a single secret delivered to the children on July 13, 2017.  The first part was the vision of hell, and the second was the prophecy of the Second World War and the request for the consecration of Russia, and the third part– well nobody knew what the third part of the Secret was.  It was written down by Lucia on order of the Bishop of Leira in 1944 and placed in a sealed envelope which was kept by him until it was transferred to the Archive of the Holy Office in 1957.  Sister had by her own volition written not to open it before 1960 on the envelope.  Pope John XXIII looked at the envelope in 1959 and decided to send it back unopened.  Pope Paul VI read the contents in 1965 and decided not to release it.  Pope John Paul II read it after the attempt on his life in 1981 and again decided not to release it.  But in 2000 these men, ostensibly with the Pope’s approval, were going to release and interpret the thing.

The only hint to the contents of the Secret were two little tidbits that Lucia had written in her memoir.  Regarding the July 13, 1917 Apparition the only thing that she tells us that the Blessed Virgin said about that last part of the Secret was this: “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved; etc…  Do not tell this to anybody.  Francisco, yes, you may tell him.”  The ‘etc…’ would tend to indicate that the Blessed Virgin completed that statement with words, wouldn’t it?  Remember that.

I will save the second tidbit until after we see to the Third Secret.  By the year 2000 the Third Secret had long since acquired a mythological status among Catholics.  It was a great mystery known to every Catholic and every Catholic worth his salt had a theory about what it was.  If Fatima was ever going to be “part of the past,” as Cardinals Sodano and Ratzinger declared in these documents that it was, then the Third Secret had to be dispensed with.  So they mentioned several times, too many times if you ask me, in these documents that the Third Secret would therein be published in its entirety, and here is what they published:

“J.M.J.

The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima, on 13 July 1917.

I write in obedience to you, my God, who commanded me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine.

After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’.  And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’.  Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions.  Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.

Tuy-3-1-1944″

That is no secret.  By itself there was no need to keep it secret for more than half a century.   If this is all that it was then what precisely was it that stopped Pope Paul VI or Pope John Paul II from releasing this in 1965 or in 1981?

I confess that I was not much of a Catholic in the year 2000 and these things made little impression on me.  I am not entirely certain that I was even aware of this while it was going on.  However I do not doubt that there might have been people who were devoted to Our Lady of Fatima and, on seeing this, began to doubt whether the Message was really all that important after all and just threw up their hands and walked away.  And of course that was the whole idea of the people who perpetrated this thing.

I have no doubt that this vision formed a part of the Fatima Secret, but it wasn’t the whole thing; it simply could not have been the whole thing.  Lucia wrote in her memoir that the Virgin told them “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved; etc… Do not tell this to anybody.  Francisco, yes, you may tell him.”  She told them something.  Remember that Lucia and Jacinta could both hear the Virgin, but Francisco could only see her.  If this vision had been all that it was then Lucia would not have had to tell Francisco anything because he would have seen it himself.

And then there is the matter of the dogma of the Faith in Portugal.  That line is absolutely not commented on at all in any of these documents.  It is one of two glaring omissions.  The only reference to it is in footnote number 7 where the anonymous footnote writer says this:

In the “Fourth Memoir” Sister Lucia adds: “In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved, etc…”.

What do you mean ‘Sister Lucia adds’?  Were you there?  No.  You weren’t.  But Sister Lucia was most definitely there and she was the only one alive who knew exactly what the Virgin said.  Are you saying that Sister Lucia made this up and added it later?  Is that the idea you are trying to worm into peoples’ minds?  And if Sister Lucia made this part up then the whole thing is open to question isn’t it?  Oh this type is so clever…

So after all this we still do not know what the third part of the Secret is.  We know that there was that vision associated with it but we do not know the context.  We don’t know what the Virgin said save “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved; etc…”  But what does that mean?

If the Blessed Mother is speaking about the preservation of dogma in one place it can be taken as a clear indication that it will not be preserved in others.  Some sort of general apostasy seems to be being prophesied here.  This should not be surprising since all the groundwork for such a thing has been laid up and down various Church institutions throughout all of our lives.  In fact a soft apostasy is the day to day experience of most Catholics in the world.  But it has not yet reached the point where anyone is threatening to chop off your head if you do not fall down on your face before their false god or their false christ.  And the notion of apostasy helps make sense of the vision.  The Church is often described as a city in Sacred Scripture.  A half ruined city, corpses (i.e. souls dead in sin), bishops and priests and even the Holy Father himself being taken out.  You do the math.  Such a thing is prophesied to happen before the end with the rise of the great false prophet, the second beast rising up from the earth, who is helpmate to the antiChrist in the Book of Revelation.

Many people take the line “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved;” as an indication that somehow Portugal will be kept safe from whatever is to come.   I wouldn’t be so quick to do that.  Sister Lucia was very irregular with her punctuation and it would be unwise to take that semicolon as a full stop.  We do not know what the conclusion to that thought was.  It could have been “In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved in such and such a town or such and such a monastery,” or it could have been “In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved among people who pray the Rosary every day or people who consecrate themselves to my Immaculate Heart” or a million other possibilities.

2) Angelo Cardinal Sodano

Cardinal Sodano was called upon at an address he gave following the Papal Mass at Fatima on May 13, 2000 to make the interpretation that the above related vision was fulfilled in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981.  It pains me to say this about a Prince of the Church, but that is ridiculous.

As if the Queen of Heaven would come to earth to prophesy and to warn of a terrible World War, show a vision of Hell, warn of the annihilation of nations, but the real reason that she came and what she told the children must at all costs be kept secret from anybody and everybody was that sixty four years later some one would attempt to assassinate the Pope.

Popes have often been assassinated.  During the first three centuries every Pope was martyred.  Pope Pius VI was kidnapped by the armies of the French Revolution who were sacking Rome and trying to destroy the Papacy as an institution in 1798 and marched off to France where he died of maltreatment in captivity at Valence a year and a half later.  That did not merit a special warning from Heaven.  Why should this merit one, and sixty four years in advance?

This sold at the time because John Paul II was very highly regarded by many Catholics who thought he showed great courage during that ordeal and believed he was instrumental in the fall of the Berlin Wall.  We all felt that it was providential that he hadn’t been killed that day in Saint Peter’s Square, so the ground had already been prepared for many people to buy into something like this.  But, in the vision the Pope dies, which John Paul II did not.  End of story.

3) Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

I was a big fan of Pope Benedict XVI and was very sorry to see his papacy end the way it did.  I am forever grateful to him for Summorum Pontificum and for the restoration of the ancient Latin liturgy to the life of the Church.  I do not like what he did on this day when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger though.

He meanders through an overly long discourse on private vs. public revelation touching on Church History and psychology and the interior lives of children while ignoring the most important aspects of the events at Fatima.  He speaks as if the events at Fatima were simply interior experiences of the three children.  He speaks as if no one was standing on that holmoak, even though eyewitnesses saw the boughs bend.  He never in his entire discussion mentions the abundance of evidence that 70,000 people saw the sun dance on the Cova da Iria.

Even though his helpmate Archbishop Bertone stated at the outset of these documents that

Fatima is undoubtedly the most prophetic of modern apparitions.  The first and second parts of the “secret”– which are here published in sequence so as to complete the documentation– refer especially to the frightening vision of hell, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Second World War, and finally the prediction of the immense damage that Russia would do to humanity by abandoning the Christian faith and embracing Communist totalitarianism.

Cardinal Ratzinger discounts the prophetic nature of the vision reported as part of the Third Secret saying that “The purpose of the vision is not to show an irrevocably fixed future.  Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to mobilize the forces of change in the right direction.”  Fine, but what are these “forces of change”?  Communion of Reparation, Consecration of Russia, Penance.  Everything that your cronies in this enterprise are trying to drive people away from.

I have been overly long on this topic and I will conclude here on the saddest note.  Commenting on the vision the future Pope Benedict XVI states that

The concluding part of the “secret” uses images which Lucia may have seen in devotional books and which draw their inspiration from long-standing intuitions of faith.

He didn’t believe.  If Lucia got any part of these Apparitions from devotional books, and she was questioned repeatedly on that subject as a child, then the whole thing is open to question.  If this is what Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger really thought about Fatima, if he thought that it was somehow or other the product of childish imagination, then that might explain why Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy ended the way it did.

While all of these high Church officials were saying these strange things about her Sister Lucia remained silent in her convent in Coimbra, always obedient to the Church.  She died in peace five years later and Our Lady took her to Heaven; while these three men linger on in a world that is darkening by the hour.

Blessed Jacinta Marto

But as to that second little tidbit that was recorded in Sister Lucia’s memoir about the Secret it goes like this.  She records in her first volume this exchange between herself, Jacinta’s mother and Jacinta after Blessed Jacinta had fallen ill on p. 45 of Fatima in Lucia’s own words

One day my aunt made this request: “Ask Jacinta what she is thinking, when she covers her face with her hands and remains motionless for such a long while.  I’ve already asked her, but she just smiles and does not answer.”  I put the question to Jacinta.

“I think of Our Lord,” she replied, “of Our Lady, of sinners, and of… (and she mentioned certain parts of the Secret).  I love to think.”

This may be the greatest revelation we will ever get about the Third Secret of Fatima outside of its fulfillment: there was something in that Secret that made soon to be Saint Jacinta Marto smile.

The Request for the Consecration of Russia

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But tidings from the east and the north shall alarm him, and he shall go forth with great fury to exterminate and utterly destroy many.  And he shall pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, with none to help him (Daniel 11:44-45).

May 11, 2017

On July 13, 1917 the Blessed Virgin informed the children that the day would come when she would ask the Holy Father to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart.  Eleven years and eleven months later on June 13, 1929 she came to Sister Lucia in the Dorothean convent in Tuy, Spain to make this request.

The text here was copied from her notes by her confessor at the time Rev. Fr. José Bernardo Gonçalves, S.J. and is reported in Appendix II of Fatima in Lucia’s own words pp. 201-02:

Rev. Fr. Gonçalves sometimes came to our chapel to hear confessions.  I went to confession to him and, as I felt at ease with him, I continued to do so for the three years that he remained here as Assistant to the Fr. Provincial.

It was at this time that Our Lady informed me that the moment had come in which she wished me to make known to Holy Church her desire for the Consecration of Russia, and her promise to convert it.  The communication was as follows:

13-6-1929. I had sought and obtained permission from my superiors and confessor to make a Holy Hour from eleven o’clock until midnight, every Thursday to Friday.  Being alone one night, I knelt near the altar rails in the middle of the chapel and, prostrate, I prayed the prayers of the Angel.  Feeling tired, I then stood up and continued to say the prayers with my arms in the form of a cross.  The only light was that of the sanctuary lamp.  Suddenly the whole chapel was illumined by a supernatural light, and above the altar appeared a cross of light, reaching to the ceiling.  In a brighter light on the upper part of the cross, could be seen the face of a man and his body as far as the waist, upon his breast was a dove also of light and nailed to the cross was the body of another man.  A little below the waist, I could see a chalice and a large host suspended in the air, on to which drops of blood were falling from the face of Jesus Crucified and from the wound in His side.  These drops ran down on to the host and fell into the chalice.  Beneath the right arm of the cross was Our Lady and in her hand was her Immaculate Heart.  (It was Our Lady of Fatima, with her Immaculate Heart in her left hand, without sword or roses, but with a crown of thorns and flames).  Under the left arm of the cross, large letters, as if of crystal clear water which ran down upon the altar, formed these words: “Grace and Mercy.”

I understood that it was the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity which was shown to me, and I received lights about this mystery which I am not permitted to reveal.

Our Lady then said to me:

The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father, in union with all the Bishops of the world, to make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means.  There are so many souls whom the Justice of God condemns for sins committed against me, that I have come to ask for reparation: sacrifice yourself for this intention and pray.”

I gave an account of this to the confessor, who ordered me to write down what Our Lady wanted done.

Later, in an intimate communication, Our Lord complained to me, saying:

“They did not wish to heed my request!… Like the King of France, they will repent and do it, but it will be late.  Russia will have already spread her errors throughout the world, provoking wars, and persecutions of the Church: the Holy Father will have much to suffer.”

First a word about the setting.  It is interesting to see that this occurred during while Sister Lucia was making a Holy Hour on Thursday night from 11pm to midnight at the start of Friday.  This practice was introduced, or perhaps reintroduced, into the life of the Church by the revelations to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque of the Sacred Heart a quarter of a millennium before.  The saint was instructed to practice this devotion in honor of Our Lord’s Agony in Gethsemane between the close of the Last Supper and his arrest in that garden: the start of his Passion.  And if you check you will find that June 13, 1929 was a Thursday.  Just an interesting little tidbit for our contemplation.

What is being requested here is an Act of Faith, a very pronounced, very public Act of Faith.  And in this age that we live in which is almost universally godless that is not easy.  But the question is ultimately very simple: do we believe or do we not believe?

This request once it was handed to the Holy Father Pope Pius XI by whatever intermediary brought it must have produced a knot in his gut, a shaking in his joints, and a confusion in his mind similar to that which we experience when we are called upon to make the Sign of the Cross and bless ourselves before a meal in a crowded restaurant at a table full of our carousing friends or acquaintances or business associates, except that it would have been to the power of about twelve million.

The world was in crisis in 1929.  Russia had been in the hands of the Bolsheviks for more than a decade and reports from inside that country must have been flowing to Pius XI for a long time about the atrocities they were committing and the general annihilation of the Church in that country since 1917.  The Bolsheviks were also setting up advance guards and revolutionary cells across Europe and threatening to overthrow governments in every country on earth.  As a result fascist movements rose up from the gutter of society promising to defend the people from Communism and to fight terror with terror.  The flock was under serious threat and what was left of Christian civilization seemed like it was about to be laid waste.

The Church was now looked upon as nothing more than a superstitious laughingstock by the governments and societal elites and large segments of the urbanized working class in those countries that she founded so long ago and had sustained through so many grievous trials in the past.  And now here comes this Portuguese nun telling the Pope that she had a vision at a convent in Spain referring her back to something that had happened in a field when she was ten years old and oh by the way he was now supposed to get all of the bishops of the world together to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and all of our problems would be solved.  Just like that.

Fine, but what if she is making this up, or is delusional, or doesn’t remember right.  Sure Pius XI must have heard something about the sun dancing in October, 1917 but that was twelve years ago, and it wasn’t widely known outside of Portugal.  For some curious reason the international press never decided to cover it.  So fine, what if I, Pope Pius XI, decide to unite with all of the bishops of the world to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary– and nothing happens?

What if all  I hear is laughter from Moscow and from Berlin and from Mussolini’s Blackshirts in Rome?  What kind of position would the Church be in then?  And then once Pope Pius XI makes the decision not to do it why would any of his successors want to make him look bad by contradicting him?

These are the games the devil can play with your mind, you know it and I know it.  Pray for the Holy Father.  Pray that he unite with all the bishops of the world to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  The hour is late, very late: we need to pray and sacrifice for this intention and we need to start yesterday.

The Great Promise of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

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He who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, I will give him the morning star. (Rev. 2:26, 28)

May 10, 2017                                                                                                                                 The Memorial of Saint Damien Joseph de Veuster of Molokai

Time passed after the Miracle of the Sun and the world went through its revolutions.  Blessed Jacinta and Blessed Francisco were swept up in the Spanish flu epidemic in late 1918 and as Our Lady had told the children on June 13, 1917 both of them were soon gone to Heaven: Francisco in April, 1919 and Jacinta in February, 1920.  They were beatified by Pope Saint John Paul II in 2000 and will be canonized by Pope Francis this Saturday May 13, 2017 to mark the 100th anniversary of Our Lady’s first Apparition.

Lucia was now alone in the world.  But Our Lady did not leave her.  The young Lucia would become a religious sister in the early 1920s joining the Sisters of St. Dorothy.  After beginning her life in the convent at Pontevedra, Spain she recorded further Apparitions of Our Lord and Our Lady.  Remember that on July 13, 1917 Our Lady informed the children that she would be coming to ask for the Communion of Reparation and for the Consecration of Russia.  She was not asking for them that day, but she was informing the children, and Lucia most especially that she would be coming in the future to ask for these things.

I give here Lucia’s account of how this came about, in this post it will be specifically relating to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Communion of Reparation.  Sister Lucia chose to write this account largely in the third person i.e. she uses ‘she’ to refer to herself.  So here it is from Appendix I of Sister Lucia’s memoir, pp. 196-97 of Fatima in Lucia’s own words:

On December 17th, 1927, she went before the tabernacle to ask Jesus how she should comply with what had been asked of her, that is, to say if the origin of the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was included in the Secret that the most holy Virgin had confided to her.

Jesus made her hear very distinctly these words: “My daughter, write what they ask of you.  Write also all that the most holy Virgin revealed to you in the Apparition, in which she spoke of this devotion.  As for the remainder of the Secret, continue to keep silence.”

What was confided on this subject in 1917, is as follows:

She asked for them to be taken to heaven, and the most holy Virgin answered: “Yes.  I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon.  But you are to stay here some time longer.  Jesus wishes to make use of you to make me known and loved.  He wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.  I promise salvation to those who embrace it, and these souls will be loved God, like flowers placed by me to adorn His throne.”

“Am I to stay here all alone?” she asked, sadly.

“No, daughter.  I shall never forsake you.  My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.”

On December 10th, 1925, the most holy Virgin appeared to her, and by her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was a child.  The most holy Virgin rested her hand on her shoulder, and as she did so, she showed her a heart encircled by thorns, which she was holding in her other hand.  At the same time, the Child said:

“Have compassion on the Heart of your most holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.”

Then the most holy Virgin said:

“Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude.  You at least try to console me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.”

Herein lies the Great Promise of the greatest and most marvelous and most wondrous thing in all Creation: the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  This is the way that will lead you to God.  This is the dwelling place that God created for Himself and it is our refuge in this perilous time as we traverse these darkening and storm tossed seas.

Practice the First Saturday devotion to the extent you can.  It is a simple and easy thing that we can do to warm the Divine Heart of our Savior and to make reparation to the wounded Heart of his most holy Mother.

Some questions may arise on how to practice this devotion.  First, you do not have to make Confession on the First Saturday.  Jesus told Sister Lucia in a later Apparition on February 15th, 1926 that it was possible to confess eight days before or after the First Saturday, provided that one is not conscious of any mortal sin when they receive Him on the First Saturday and the first bishop of Fatima Dom Jose Correia da Silva confirmed this in 1940.

Second, the last bit about keeping the Blessed Mother company “for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary” is open to interpretation as to how one might practice it.  First, this Apparition took place in 1925, almost eighty years before Pope Saint John Paul II made his recommendation about the new Luminous Mysteries so quite understandably the Blessed Virgin did not mention twenty, but fifteen.

But as to how to practice this aspect of the devotion Bishop da Silva stated in 1940 that “it is preferable to meditate on one mystery each month.”  And this makes sense.  My own personal practice is to select a portion of the Gospel or the Acts of the Apostles or some other part of Sacred Scripture that pertains to a different Mystery each month.

The promises of Our Lady are great indeed to those who faithfully practice this devotion.  Do it.

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.