by
Damien F. Mackey
of the
AUSTRALIAN MARIAN ACADEMY
OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
{This is a slightly updated version of the 1994 original}
Preface
Central to the inspiration for writing this book, The Five First Saturdays of Our Lady of Fatima, are three Marian initiatives all of which have their origin as well as their final fruition in the action of the Holy Spirit.
- The first of these initiatives is the series of six apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Fatima, Portugal, from May until October 1917, during which the request for the devotion that entitles this book was made.
- The second one is the unprecedented Marian apostolate of the pontificate of John Paul II (now being continued by Pope Benedict XVI).
- The third initiative lies in between these two: the Second Vatican Council which, according to a well-known book by Fr. William Most, Vatican II, Marian Council, fully deserves this great Marian accolade.
In the darkness and turbulence of the modern changes through which humanity is passing at the present time, these three beacons shed such an abundance of Catholic Light over every facet of human life, that setting one’s course in defiance of the safety that they provide would certainly mean a head long flight into the very disasters that they were designed by God to prevent.
How well the strands of the Fatima apparitions and the Conciliar teachings on Our Blessed Lady had, in time, been gradually interwoven into the dominant outlook of John Paul II can be gathered from his own words. When asked whether the changes in Russia and eastern Europe were those predicted by Our Lady of Fatima, Pope John Paul II answered:
“Certainly this belief, this trust of the people in the Blessed Virgin is theologically justified, because we know well that She is the Mother of men and nations. What is currently taking place in Russia and in the eastern or central part of Europe, certainly involves greater respect for human rights, the rights of the human person. So we can attribute this solicitude to Our Mother… The revelations of Fatima … are in agreement with the doctrine of the Faith. This agreement with the doctrine of the Faith does not enter into details. Even the greatest experts in the doctrine of the Faith are pleased, however, when they see that a certain word or a certain promise after many years is fulfilled in some way, in some measure”.
[Answer to Aura Meguel, journalist for Radio Renasçenca – Catholic radio station in Portugal – January 25, 1990].
Our absorbing interest in the midst of what the Vatican Council calls “the critical and swift upheavals spreading gradually to all corners of the earth” (Gaudium et Spes, #4), ought indeed to be focused on the powerful action of the Holy Spirit, seeking to bring to the whole world a profound awareness of His Immaculate Spouse, the Blessed Virgin Mary. In our age the Holy Spirit seems quite noticeably to have forged a nexus between what the Church directly teaches us about Our Lady and what we learn from Her from the Fatima apparitions; both aspects being entirely consonant with the scriptural image of her. It is for this reason that John Paul II, under the Divine influence of the Holy Spirit, could say at Fatima (on the 13th of May, 1982):
“If the Church has accepted the message of Fatima, it is above all because the message contains a truth and a call whose basic content is the truth and call of the Gospel itself”.
Fully alive to the Holy Spirit’s ardent desire in our own age to reveal the Blessed Virgin Mary with an intensity that is quite unprecedented, John Paul II would embark upon a Marian apostolate of global proportions. Whilst all of his well-publicised Marian initiatives, aimed at creating a world-wide interest in Our Lady’s role in the modern world, can be shown to have at least implicit reference to Fatima, certain of these are so directly Fatima-oriented that we can say that John Paul II would never have undertaken them had the famous series of apparitions of Our Lady of the Rosary never occurred. From the vast array of such Marian initiatives, we might select the following five global ones as having an important bearing on our subject.
1. The Collegial Consecration of 1984.
2. The Marian encyclical “Redemtoris Mater”.
3. The Marian Year of 1987/88.
4. The World-Wide Rosary of 1987.
5. Jacinta and Francisco Marto declared Blessed.
1. The Collegial Consecration of 1984
On the 25th of March, during the extraordinary Holy Year of 19983/84 that he had proclaimed to mark the Redemption, John Paul II solemnly fulfilled Our Lady of Fatima’s request that the Holy Father, in union with all the bishops of the world, consecrate Russia to Her Immaculate Heart. The consecration was in the context of a special Jubilee Holy Year Mass for the Christian Family. In preparation for this consecration John Paul II sent a letter to all the bishops of the world, asking them to join him in the collegial consecration of the world as a renewal of the two acts of consecration made by Pope Pius XII;
- one of these being a consecration of the world (1942),
- and one of Russia (1952).
Implicit therefore in the 1984 act of Entrustment to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was the consecration of Russia. This was a satisfactory fulfillment of what Our Lady of Fatima had asked for when, on the 13th of July 1917, She informed the three children (Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco):
“I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays”.
Thus in June of 1929, four years after She had come to ask for the latter (at Pontevedra in Spain), Our Lady again appeared to Sr. Lucia (at Tuy in Spain), telling her in regard to the former:
“The moment has come when God asks the Holy Father, in union with all the bishops of the world, to make the Consecration of Russia to My Heart, promising to save it by this means”.
So as to mark in a special way this singular moment in the history of the modern world, John Paul II had the original statue of Our Lady of Fatima, carved from the holm-oak over which the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to the children in 1917, flown from Portugal to Rome. The statue was placed on a flower covered podium, near the altar which had been set up in St. Peter’s Square for the Mass. At the end of Mass, John Paul II knelt before the statue to pronounce, before an immense crowd, his Act of Entrustment.
(For a more detailed discussion of this 1984 Act of Consecration, the reader is referred to chapter six).
2. The Marian Encyclical, “Redemptoris Mater”.
This glorious encyclical letter, dated on the Feast of the Annunciation, MAR 25, 1987,
(a) proclaimed, amongst other things, Our Lady as truly Mediatrix;
(b) encouraged as “authentic Marian spirituality” the practice of St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort’s “True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary”; a devotion that John Paul II practiced fervently;
(c) acknowledged Our Lady’s key role in bringing about Christian unity;
(d) placed a rather extraordinary emphasis on Russia.
Fatima, too, is specifically mentioned in this encyclical; being defined – along with Guadalupé, Lourdes and Jasna Góra – as one of the “great shrines where not only individuals or local groups, but sometimes whole nations and societies, even whole continents, seek to meet the Mother of the Lord, the One who is blessed because She believed, is the first among believers and therefore became the Mother of Emmanuel” (#28).
These “special places of pilgrimage” constituted, in the mind of John Paul II,
“‘a specific geography’ of Faith and Marian devotion … where the People of God seek to meet the Mother of God in order to find, within the radius of the maternal presence of her ‘who believed, a strengthening of their own Faith’ (Ibid.).
Now as John Paul II explicitly stated in parts of this encyclical on the ‘Mother of the Redeemer’, the document was intended to be for Catholics a preparation for what we select as his third universal Marian initiative:
3. The Marian Year of 1987/88
The Holy Father proclaimed an extended Jubilee Year of fourteen months’ duration in honour of Mary, the Mother of God, commencing on the Solemnity of Pentecost, 7th of June 1987, and concluding in 1988 n the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption into Heaven. According to John Paul II, this Marian Year was “meant to promote a new and more careful reading of what the Council said about the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the mystery of Christ and of the Church” (“Redemptoris Mater”, #48).
The Holy Father inaugurated the Marian Year by praying
4 A World-Wide Rosary
At 12 noon on the eve of the Marian Year, on the first Saturday (6th June), the Holy Father at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome (Our Lady’s primatial Church in the world), using live, global television linkage, joined with tens of millions of Catholics throughout the world, praying the holy Rosary. Via a newly programmed satellite hook-up, the faithful who were gathered at sixteen approved shrines of Our Lady throughout the world (Fatima being one of them), were able to hear, and respond to, the holy Father’s recitation of the first part of each ‘Pater Noster’ and ‘Ave Maria’, reciting the second part of those two prayers in their various languages. The five-decade Rosary was followed directly afterwards by the Mass of Pentecost Vigil, in St. Peter’s Square.
Commentators have noted how the whole ceremony on that day was replete with symbolic allusions to Fatima. Now, since John Paul II was a very prudent man, who did not embark upon any significant project without a great deal of prayer and apt planning, it must be no accident that to ponder his world-wide Rosary leads thoughtful Catholics to such a reconsideration of the message of Our Lady of Fatima. John Paul II ensured that this would be the case when he intentionally associated with his ambitious Rosary project the following ‘Fatima’ elements:
- the Rosary was prayed on a first Saturday;
- the first decade was recited in Portuguese, though it does not rate as an international language;
- the five-decade Rosary was a triple mixture of Joyful (Annunciation and Visitation), Sorrowful (Crucifixion) and Glorious (Resurrection and Descent of the Holy Spirit) mysteries; reminiscent of the triple tableaux of mysteries seen during the miracle of the Sun, at the Cova da Iria on the 13th of October 1917.
- The entire ceremony was devoted to Our Lady of the Rosary; it being reminiscent of the October apparition during which the Lady of Light finally identified Herself, saying: “I am Our Lady of the Rosary’.
Finally, for the fifth one in our selection of Marian initiatives of universal significance then taken by John Paul II, we point to the decision:
5. Jacinta and Francisco Declared Venerable [since Beatified]
On the 13th of May, 1989, on the seventy-second anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady to the little shepherds, at the beginning of the solemn celebration in the Vatican presided over by Cardinal Law of Boston, USA, the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima announced to the assembly – and by the media to the whole world – that Pope John Paul II had on that very day promulgated the decree of Heroic Virtues of the Servants of God in regard to Francisco and Jacinta Marto. The Holy Father’s approval meant that the two young shepherd children, brother and sister, were now both Venerable and that their causes for beatification – and eventual canonization, God willing – are progressing.
There can be no doubt that the above-mentioned Marian initiatives, the ones from heaven and those on earth, are clearly the interconnected parts of a gigantic whole, which has inspired innumerable local, national and global initiatives to preach and publish the Blessed Virgin Mary to the entire world (cf. Matthew 24:14). Prominent amongst these is the World Apostolate of Fatima, singled out here for its enduring strength as well as for a particular inspiration that would become an integral part of this book: the Queen Esther connection.
In 1986 the World Apostolate of Fatima set in motion its laudable program “to implement the First Saturday devotion” by asking that each country designate a coordinator for that purpose, which already in the middle of the following year produced the consoling result “that, for the first time in history, First Saturday Reparations would be observed in each of the 172 dioceses in the United States, and even aboard the U.S.S. America”.
To certain contributors of the World Apostolate of Fatima’s “SOUL” magazine belongs the credit for drawing attention to the many illuminating parallels between the Book of Esther and the story of Fatima. More than once we would read in “SOUL”: “if you want to understand the apparitions of Fatima, read the Book of Esther”. Hopefully, after the following introduction, the reader will have come to appreciate still more just how illuminating the story of Queen Esther is in regard to Fatima as a whole, but especially in regard to the devotion of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
However, no matter how important any individual detail of a devotion may be, the virtue of obedience – as will be brought out – has always been the one indispensable requirement demanded by Our Lord and His Blessed Mother underlying a proper practice of the devotion. Now the primary lesson in obedience from Our Lady of Fatima, echoing Her Son’s own words that ‘If you love Me, you will keep My commandments’ (John 14:15), is her demand from us that we first amend our lives. As the following pages will show, Our Lady’s program of Reparation is tailor-made to help us achieve that radical transformation.
It is here, in the shadow of this gigantic whole, that this modest effort of ours seeks its own little place. For it is to be hoped that this book, The Five First Saturdays of Our Lady of Fatima, will serve in some degree to satisfy what appears to be a very definite need; and that it will take its place, however humble, in the Holy Father’s global campaign to fulfil the wish of the Divine Child, that reparative devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, His beloved Mother, be spread throughout the entire world.
I had only just begun the preparatory work towards revising a previous article of mine on the same subject in the light of new global developments and, hopefully, in the light of a better appreciation of the significance of the book of Esther, when on the 30th of October 1989 my father William Ambrose Mackey died suddenly in Hobart (Tasmania).
Born in May 1917, his busy life spanned the same 72-year period as was the duration of the modern ‘Babylonian Captivity’ of the Church’s suppression by the Bolsheviks in what they called the Soviet Union.
May all who read this kindly pray for the repose of the soul of William Ambrose Mackey. It is with profound gratitude that I wish to dedicate to the memory of him this small book of
The Five First Saturdays of Our Lady of Fatima.
{His father, Private Francis Joseph Mackey, my grandfather, a Tasmanian, who was killed in action at Broodseinde, October 1917, was mentioned by Australia's Governor-General, Michael Jeffery, during a speech at the Tyne Cot memorial service, Belgium, 4 October 2007}.
http://www.gg.gov.au/governorgeneral/speech.php?id=281
For picture, see:
http://blog.awm.gov.au/1917/2007/04/04/private-francis-joseph-mackey/
The Author.
Solemnity of the Holy Mother of God.
JAN 1, 1994.
First Saturday.
Introduction
Queen Esther as a Biblical Type of Our Lady of Fatima
(For the historical supplement to this book, see http://bookofesther.blog.com/)
Queen Esther has rightly been recognised as a type of the Woman of Genesis who was to come (Genesis 3:15). But firstly in the Book of Esther we are told about the fate of another woman, Queen Vashti, the wife of the Persian king Ahasuerus and sharer of his throne. The king had provided, for all the people present in Susa his capital, a banquet lasting for a week, on the last day of which he summoned Queen Vashti to come before him “crowned with her royal diadem, in order to show the peoples and the princes her beauty; for she was fair to behold” (Esther 1:11)
The queen however, who was holding her own banquet in the king’s palace, blatantly ignore his command.
When we remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit is the true Author of the sacred Scriptures, we can hardly refrain here from turning our thoughts to Eve, the first woman whom God created. Truly regal were her endowments and destiny; for God wished Eve to be “mother of all the living”, as indicated by the meaning of her name (Genesis 3:20), and to serve as an exemplar to those of her own sex who would come after her. But as it was to be written of Vashti, so also was it tragically true of Eve: “But she refused …” (Esther 1:12).
In the decree of punishment subsequently issued against Vashti by Ahasuerus, it was laid down irrevocably that she would never again appear before the king, and that he instead “would confer her royal dignity on a worthier woman” (Esther 1:19).
Accordingly, the king arranged for beautiful young virgins to be selected throughout the one hundred and twenty-seven provinces of his kingdom, and to be brought to Susa where they would undergo twelve months of preparation. Outstanding amongst all of these young women was the Jewish maiden Hadassah – the future Queen Esther – who, because “she had found favour in the eyes of all who saw her”, was quickly advanced with her maids to the best place in the king’s harem (2:9,15).
“And when Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus … the king loved Esther more than all the other women, and she found grace and favour in his sight”” (2,16,17).
Thus king Ahasuerus chose Esther to replace Vashti as queen, and he placed the royal crown on her head. Of Esther, too, it was written that “the maiden was exceedingly fair and beautiful” (2:7).
Already in this ancient narrative centring on the obedient response of the Jewish maiden, Hadassah, the Holy Spirit has provided for His chosen people a glimpse of the Annunciation. Hadassah exemplifies the ever-faithful Virgin Mary, whom the Blessed Trinity would select – in place of the first, disobedient woman – to be the “Second Eve”. The Blessed Virgin Mary however, to a degree far greater than Hadassah, would find “more than all the other women, grace and favour” in the sight of the King of Heaven.
This superiority of Hers is even reflected in the new name given to Her at the Annunciation; a name which far surpasses in meaning the new name conferred upon Hadassah (that is ‘Esther’). For, as John Paul II explained, when the archangel Gabriel “greets Mary as ‘full of grace’; he calls Her thus as if it were Her real name. He does not call Her by Her proper earthly name: Miryam (= Mary), but by this new name: ‘full of grace’” (“Redemptoris Mater”, #8).
Her election by the King of Heaven is also of a far superior order. For if, as John Paul II went on to say, Her election as Mother of the Son of God “is fundamental for the accomplishment of God’s salvific designs for humanity … then the election of Mary is wholly exceptional and unique …: Mary is ‘full of grace’, because it is precisely in Her that the Incarnation of the Word, the hypostatic union of the Son of God with human nature, is accomplished and fulfilled” (Ibid., #9).
John Paul II marvelously links this New Testament beginning with the ‘Proto-Gospel’, or ‘First Gospel’ beginning of Genesis, when he explains that
“In the salvific design of the Most Holy Trinity, the mystery of the Incarnation constitutes the superabundant fulfilment of the promise made by God to man after original sin, after that first sin whose effects oppress the whole history of man (cf. Genesis 3:15). And so, there comes into the world a Son, ‘the seed of the Woman’ who will crush the evil of sin in its very origins: ‘He will crush the head of the serpent” (Ibid., #11).
Before ever Haman, the arch villain and “enemy of all the Jews” in the story of Esther, had “set his throne above all the princes” of Persia (cf. Esther 3:1 & 9:24), Lucifer his master, the enemy of all humankind, had said in his heart:
“I shall ascend to Heaven; above the stars of God, I shall set my throne on high” (Isaiah 14:12).
This was the beginning of the great prototypal enmity of which the Book of Genesis speaks. The Most holy Trinity has established this one enmity and none other; which means that all other enmities between the forces of good and evil – including the one to be found in the Book of Esther – must be part of that one, irreconcilable enmity between the race of the Woman of Genesis, on the one hand, and Satan and his seed on the other. The prototypal enmity thus rages unremittingly, but with ever increasing intensity, down through the ages. Is it not fitting, then, that the traitorous Haman – whom the king comes to regard with contempt, only finally, as “a Macedonian (really an alien to the Persian blood, and quite devoid of our kindliness) …” (Esther 16:10), should be identified firstly in the Book of Esther as a member “of the race of Agag” (3:1)? Israel’s most implacable enemy from time immemorial was the Amalekite race, whose kings were traditionally called Agag (cf. Numbers 24:7 & 1 Samuel 15:9,33). At the time of the Exodus the Amalekites, though fully cognizant of the miracles worked by God through His Prophet Moses, to deliver the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, had callously and recklessly attacked the children of Israel whilst they were languishing from thirst in the desert (Exodus 17:8). Because of this heinous crime, God promised Moses that he would
“utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven” (Exodus 17:14).
It was some four centuries after God had spoken these words to Moses that He provided Saul, king of Israel, with a golden opportunity to fulfil this stern prophecy, thus commanding him:
“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them” (1 Samuel 15:33).
Saul, as we know, did not fully obey God in this unequivocal matter, with the consequence that God tore the kingdom away from him and gave it instead to His obedient servant, David. The latter was so unrelenting in his pursuit of the Amalekites that their race soon disappears from the pages of history.
Amalek though, figuratively speaking, has continued to survive down through the ages, bobbing up again and again in each successive wave of assault against the upholders of righteousness. Thus, in the Book of Esther, we discover that the dread and age-long enmity prophesied by Moses, that
“The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16).
reaches a new crescendo of intensity with the rise to power of Haman the Agagite (Esther 3:1). John Paul II alludes to both the intensity, and the durability, of the conflict, when saying that
“the victory of the Woman’s Son will not take place without a hard struggle that is to extend throughout the whole of human history” (op. cit, ibid. ).
It finds its extension in human history, for instance, in the “hard struggle” between Queen Esther and Haman, which resolves itself only at the eleventh hour, in the shattering victory of the righteous seed (Queen Esther’s nation) over the forces of wickedness (Haman’s allies).
Even more especially, however, it is the “hard struggle” in the history of salvation itself, in the midst of which stands “the Woman” of Sacred Scripture. Compared to this bitter contest in which She, as the ‘new Esther’, is engaged – for quite obviously that is the guise in which “the Woman” has chosen to act today as Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima – even the dramatic saga of Queen Esther seems to fade to a mere ripple.
John Paul II himself made at least implicit reference to Our Lady of Fatima’s apocalyptic role in the ever-nearing, final solution of the great enmity, when he noted that:
“The ‘enmity’, foretold at the beginning, is confirmed in the Apocalypse (the book of the final events of the Church and the world), in which there recurs the sign of the ‘Woman’, this time ‘clothed with the sun’ (Revelation 12:1). Mary, Mother of the Incarnate Word, is placed at the very centre of that enmity, that struggle which accompanies the history of humanity on earth and the history of salvation itself. In this central place, She who belongs to the ‘weak and poor of the Lord’ bears in Herself, like no other member of the human race, that ‘glory of grace’ which the Father ‘has bestowed on us in His beloved Son’, and this grace determines the extraordinary greatness and beauty of Her whole being” (Ibid.).
“Mary”, as the Holy Father added, “thus remains before God, and also before the whole of humanity, as the unchangeable and inviolable sign of God’s election, spoken of in St. Paul’s Letter: ‘in Christ … He chose us … before the foundation of the world, … He destined us … to be His sons’ (Ephesians 1:4, 5)” (Ibid.).
It is because of the “unchangeable and inviolable” nature of Her unique election in God, that the Blessed Virgin Mary forever brings light and hope to our troubled world. The message of Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima, the Lady of Light, has always been about hope, “a ray of hope” (Our Lady’s words during the July 13th apparition) in the midst of a world filled with gloom and often bordering on despair. This is because of the special blessing that God has bestowed upon Her by reason of Her unique election. For, as John Paul II concluded:
“This election is more powerful than any experience of evil and sin, than all that ‘enmity’ which marks the history of man. In this history Mary remains a sign of sure hope” (Ibid.).
Chapter One
THE TITANIC STRUGGLE
“In the second year of the reign of Ahasuerus the Great, …. Mordecai … of the tribe of Benjamin, had a dream. He was a Jew in the city of Susa, a great man serving in the court of the king. He was one of the captives whom Nebuchednezzar king of Babylon had brought from Jerusalem with Jeconiah king of Judea. And this was his dream:
‘Behold, noise and confusion, thunders and earthquake, tumult upon the earth! And behold, two great dragons came forward, both ready to fight, and they roared terribly. And at their roaring every nation prepared for war, to fight against the nation of the righteous. And behold, a day of darkness and gloom, tribulation and distress, affliction and great tumult upon the earth! And the whole righteous nation was troubled; they feared the evils that threatened them, and were ready to perish. Then they cried to God; and from their cry, as though from a tiny spring, there came a great river, with abundant water; light came, and the sun rose, and the lowly were exalted and consumed those held in honour’.
Mordecai saw in this dream what God had determined to do, and after he awoke he had it on his mind and sought all day to understand it in every detail” (Esther 11:1-12).
According to the unusual arrangement of the Book of Esther, this section from chapter 11 is situated at the very beginning of the narrative. It is, however, a most fitting introduction to the story since it sets the scene for the main drama to follow, presenting a symbolic account of it to the reader in prophetic form. In the ‘denouement’, or resolution of the drama, at the end of the Book of Esther in chapter 10, Mordecai explains all the various parts of his dream, whose meaning had become fully known to him as the events unfolded. It depicts the titanic struggle between good and evil as a fight between “two great dragons”. More specifically, as Mordecai finally reveals to us in chapter 10,
“The two dragons are Haman and myself” (10:7).
Mordecai’s apocalyptic dream is also a perfect back-drop for the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima. She came upon the earth in 1917, when all nations were involved in the Great War (1914-1918). It was indeed a time of “darkness and gloom, tribulation and distress, affliction and great tumult upon the earth”. Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922), the then reigning Pontiff, had used all the diplomatic resources at his disposal to bring an end to the hostilities, the shock of whose advent may well have killed his holy predecessor, Pope St. Pius X (1903-1914). But seeing that his efforts were in vain, Pope Benedict XV turned his eyes to Heaven, and on the 5th of May 1917 he ordered that recourse be had to the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, adding to the Litany of Loreto a new invocation: “Regina pacis, ora pro nobis”, that is, “Queen of Peace, pray for us”. And thus again, as in the case of Mordecai’s dream, a great “dragon” had begun to “roar” loudly on behalf of “the whole righteous nation”. But in this case it was the Supreme Pontiff of the chosen nation of the holy Catholic Church who cried to God and who ordered that all Catholics do the same.
The response from Heaven was immediate. On the 13th of May, 1917, a mere eight days after the Holy Father had begun his plea to Heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary visited the troubled earth, appearing to three innocent children, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, at Fatima in Portugal. The precise place to which the Queen of Peace came at Fatima was one completely unknown, not only in Portugal and in the world, but even to the majority of the inhabitants of Fatima. Its name is Cova da Iria, a word which is derived from the Greek term eirene, meaning ‘peace’.
The graphic images of noise, tumult, affliction and wholesale confusion upon the earth, ‘with every nation preparing for war’, as described in Mordecai’s dream, anticipate not only the Great War during which Our Lady of Fatima first appeared, and the many wars that have followed, but even more significantly they recall to mind that relentless and on-going struggle for souls. The latter is, of course, a spiritual warfare between the forces of good and evil, the “two great dragons” of the Book of Esther. In the past two to three centuries this struggle has visibly assumed a more global aspect; a bitter fight to the death between the holy Catholic Church and the forces of a world-wide conspiracy for global conquest and the formation of a “One-World ‘Church’,” (Pope St. Pius X) masterminded by the Devil, and set in motion initially through the agency of the secret societies of Freemasonry.
The conspirators of evil were already in the midst of laying down their plans to unleash the “great red dragon” of Communism (Revelation 12:3) upon Russia in 1917, when Heaven went into action. With Lenin and Trotsky in Petrograd, preparing to give orientation to the Bolshevist revolution which they directed, there came from Heaven, from the east, a Lady of Light, to Fatima. She was the same “Woman clothed with the sun” who – as the Evangelist had predicted long ago – would be opposed to this great red dragon (Revelation 12:3-5). She came solemnly to remind us of the unique and infallible means of salvation, strengthening our Faith in God, inviting us to prayer and penance and to flee sin, asking us to recite the Rosary daily and to consecrate ourselves to Her Immaculate Heart.
It was only after Our Lady of Fatima’s six apparitions in 1917 had run their course from May to October that, on the 7th of November of that year, the Bolshevist faction triumphed first at Petrograd, then at Moscow, As Fr. DaCruz puts it, whilst at the eastern end of Europe the spirit of Antichrist was being
“unloosed, not only against true religion, but even against the very idea of God and against civil society, the most terrible onslaught in all history, at the same moment there appeared in splendour at the western extremity, the Great and Eternal Enemy of the infernal serpent!” [More about Fatima’, p. 54].
The Thirteenth Day of the Month
To appreciate why Heaven has placed such special emphasis on the 13th day of the month, making it the intended day of each of the six apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima, we need to refer again to the pages of the Book of Esther. It is an important point and one that has been made before.
Mordecai the Jew had been raised to prominence in the court of the King of Medo-Persia because, having become cognizant of a plot by two of the king’s eunuchs to assassinate their master, Mordecai duly informed the king and thus saved his life. We also learn about Mordecai that he had brought up Hadassah, that is Esther, the daughter of his uncle; for, after both her parents had died, Mordecai adopted the girl as his own daughter (Esther 11:3; 12:1; 2:7). This Mordecai is therefore a key player in the whole drama.
Into the midst of this tranquil scenario steps the sinister Haman. For reasons unexplained, the king so advances this foreign guest of his (16:10) as to set him above all the princes and make him second in the kingdom (cf. e.g. 3:1-2 & 16:11). This means that all the king’s servants were expected to bow down to Haman. The fact that Mordecai would not bow down filled Haman with fury; and, upon learning that Mordecai was of the Jewish race, the old historical antipathy revived within Haman to the extent that he thereupon resolved
“to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus. But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai himself” (3:1,6).
There is more to Haman than first metes the eye, and it gradually becomes apparent that his intentions are conspiratorial. Because of his extreme cunning, Haman has no difficulty insinuating his way into great prominence in the kingdom of Medo-Persia; his ultimate purpose being, as he speedily rises to become “the person second to the royal throne” (16:11), to get rid of the king. For, as it turned out, even the eunuchs’ plot to assassinate king Ahasuerus had been masterminded by Haman (12:16). A chastened king Ahasuerus would later testify that this Haman, who “was called our father and was continually bowed down to by all”.
had thought to “transfer the kingdom of the Persians to the Macedonians” (16:12,14).
No doubt Haman intended for himself (or perhaps one of his ten sons) to be the ruler over this united kingdom of east and west. Only one obstacle remained, and it was in the form of his rival colleague, Mordecai; the one man of rank in the kingdom who was neither deceived by Haman’s guile nor would bow down to him. Inasmuch as Mordecai had unmasked the plotting of the eunuchs to kill the king, and had made a written account of it (12:4), Haman had good reason to be wary of him. Unable, therefore, to vent his antagonistic spleen upon Mordecai directly, Haman felt that he could harm him through his race. Firstly destroy the Jews, he probably reasoned, and deal with Mordecai later, perhaps after king Ahasuerus himself had been dispatched.
It is here that we come across the significance of the 13th day of the month. It did not take much for the astute Haman to persuade Ahasuerus that the Jews, with their “different” laws and customs, and their flouting of the king’s laws – as Haman had claimed – were not profitable for the king to tolerate, and so ought to be destroyed (3:8). Haman’s offer to the king of the enormous sum of ten thousand talents of silver (3:9) was an added incentive.
“So the king took the signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman the Agagite … the enemy of the Jews. And the king said to Haman, ‘the money is given to you, the people also, to do with them as it seems good to you’.” (13:10-11).
Lots had been cast before Haman, “day after day” and “month after month till the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar” (3:7), presumably to determine the most propitious time to act. Next the king, after having agreed to Haman’s wicked counsel, summoned his secretaries
“on the thirteenth day of the first month, and an edict, according to all that Haman commanded, was written to the king’s satraps and to the governors over all the provinces and to the princes of all the peoples, to every province in its own script and every people in its own language; it was written in the name of king Ahasuerus and sealed with the king’s ring. Letters were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces, to destroy, to slay, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods”. (13:12-13).
That is the significance of the thirteenth day of the month. The central drama in the Book of Esther is played out in its entirety between that thirteenth day of the first month, when Haman persuaded the king that the Jews must be annihilated for the common good, and the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the intended date for the realisation of Haman’s terrible plan.
The Lady of Light
In the biblical story it is Queen Esther who comes to the rescue of her people. The “cry” of the whole righteous nation, praying that God might deliver it from the evils that were threatening to engulf it, is symbolized in Mordecai’s dream as no more than “a tiny spring”; for the small Jewish nation meant absolutely nothing to the king of Medo-Persia. The profound difference, in the eyes of the king, made by Esther’s intercession on behalf of her people, is exemplified in Mordecai’s retrospective explanation of this part of his dream (10:6):
“The tiny spring which became a river, and there was light and the sun and abundant water … the river is Esther whom the king married and made queen”.
For God’s chosen people of today, it is of course the Blessed Virgin Mary who makes all the difference to their feeble prayers of supplication. It is She who, as Mediatrix before the sublime King of Heaven, adds the necessary weight to these prayers to ensure that He will listen to them. Like Esther of old, the Queen of Peace entered into the midst of the fray, because again a righteous nation, led by its chief prince – in this case the Holy Father – had begun to implore Heaven to send down its peace and protection.
The First Apparition: 13th of May
On the 13th of May, 1917, the Immaculate Lady of Light first appeared at the Cova da Iria, in Fatima, to Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. The children, who already on three previous occasions had been visited by an “Angel of Peace”, had just finished their Rosary when they saw what they thought to be a blinding flash of lightning, and then a second one, appear out of a clear midday sky. The “beautiful Lady” who then stood before them, calls to our minds how Mordecai symbolically described Queen Esther in her splendour in terms of “abundant water”, “light”, rising “sun” (11:10-11). For, as Lucia recalled with regard to that first apparition in May:
“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”. (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, p. 156).
Even the garden court of the king’s palace, as decked out on the day of festival – with its
“white cotton curtains and blue hangings caught up with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings” its “couches of gold and silver”, its “mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble mother-of-pearl and precious stones” and its “golden goblets, goblets of different kinds” (1:5-7).
- conjures up another picturesque tableau symbolising the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially as the luminous Lady of Fatima, more resplendent than the sun, holding Her glorious Rosary. For, we are told that:
“The Lady is all beautiful. She seems to be from fifteen to eighteen years of age. Her dress, white as snow, tied at the neck by a cord of gold, reaches down to her feet which are just visible barely touching the branches of the tree. A while veil embroidered with gold covers her head and shoulders and falls to her feet like the dress. Her hands are joined at the height of her breast in an attitude of prayer. A rosary of brilliant pearls with a silver cross hangs from her right hand. Her face, of an ineffable beauty, shines in a halo as bright as the sun, but seems to be veiled by a slight look of sorrow”. (“More About Fatima”, p. 14).
Undoubtedly the “sorrow” reflected on the face of the heavenly Virgin is due primarily to the offences and blasphemies that are committed against Almighty God, and against Her own Immaculate Heart, with the consequent loss of “many souls” that She will later lament with such pathos. Analogous to this, and a further contributing factor to the “sorrow” within Her maternal Heart, would be the savagery of the First World War, then raging with great fury, and causing the destruction of so many human lives.
She had come to Fatima with the message that all humanity must cease offending God, and that it make atonement and reparation for sins; a message which John Paul II summarized in the following biblical terms:
“Mary’s message at Fatima can be synthesised in these clear, initial words of Christ: ‘The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel’.”
(Mark 1:15). (General Audience of 15th May, 1991).
Our Lady of Fatima’s loving invitation to all of us is expressed in the following question that She posed to the seers on our behalf:
“Would you like to offer yourselves to God to make sacrifices and to accept willingly all the sufferings it may please Him to send you, in order to make reparation for so many sins, which offend the Divine Majesty, to obtain the conversion of sinners, and to make amends for all the blasphemies and offences committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary?”
In these words we have Our Lady of Fatima’s first allusion to the Gospel-based doctrine of reparation for sin, which will become the dominant theme throughout all of Her apparitions. It is prominent, pre-figuratively, in the Book of Esther, in the form of
“fasting, weeping and lamenting”, “sackcloth and ashes”, “prayer” and “garments of distress and mourning” (cf. ch’s. 4; 13 & 14).
But, as had already been intimated by the Angel of Peace during the preparatory apparitions, and would later be made abundantly clear by Our Lady herself, the reparation at the heart of the Fatima message is specifically of a Eucharistic orientation.
Hence it was no accident that Our Lady’s first apparition at Fatima took place on the 13th of May, which day then, in 1917, was the feast of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament. During that appartion the children,
“moved by an irresistible force”
as they said, threw themselves to their knees and prayed together the now familiar Eucharistic prayer:
“O most holy Trinity, I adore Thee! My God, my God, I love Thee in the most Blessed Sacrament!”
The Second Apparition: 13th of June
On the 13th of June, the feast of St. Anthony, Our Lady again asked the children to recite the Rosary:
“I want you to say the Rosary every day”.
During this apparition, the central massage of which was the need for reparative devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, there was no lack of symbolism of a biblical nature, nor lack even of miraculous phenomena. The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared as usual over the little holm-oak tree, with Her feet resting on a small cloud; but this time, as Lucia recalled, there was a star with points of intense brightness at Her feet. On statues of Our Lady of Fatima today, this star is always represented on Our Lady’s dress just above Her feet. We might recall that at Lourdes the Blessed Virgin Mary had appeared with golden roses on Her feet. “But why on Her feet?”, asks Fr. Smolenski. The answer that he gives to his own question, as follows, may also explain why Our Lady of Fatima had a star at Her feet: “Then I came across this passage in Isaiah: “how beautiful on the mountains, are the feet of one who brings good news, who heralds peace, brings happiness, proclaims salvation, and tells Sion ‘Your God is king!’” (Isaiah 52:7). So it seems that Mary chose scriptural imagery – like a window in a church – to explain Her purpose and identity”. (Immaculata magazine, May 1982, p. 10).
As for the star itself, even Lucia said that she did not know what it was meant to signify. But Francis Johnston (In Fatima: the Great Sign) has made the intriguing suggestion that this star may be meant to remind us of Queen Esther, whose name is thought to derive from the Persian word for “star”. Even more precisely, it is the morning star. And it is most appropriate therefore that the Lady of Light always came to the Cova da Iria, like the morning star from the east; and afterwards She disappeared in the light of the sun towards the east. She had come to signal the dispersion of darkness, and to herald light and peace”.
“Continue, my children, reciting the Rosary every day, to obtain peace for the world. (13th of May, 1917).
Given what we have already leaned about Fatima, there is a good likelihood that one may be on the right track in looking to discover the significance of the star by its having some symbolic connection with the Book of Esther. The legitimacy of such an approach may, in this case, receive some further support from the fact that, during the 13th of June apparition, even nature itself seemed under constraint to testify that a royal Person had come on that day to the Cova da Iria. For thus we read in More About Fatima (p. 20):
“The day was bright and hot as it usually is in Portugal in the month of June. Now, during the entire period of the apparition the light of the sun was dimmed in an exceptional manner, without any apparent cause. At the same time, the topmost branches of the tree were bent in the form of a parasol, and remained thus as if an invisible weight had come to rest upon them…”.
Then, during the departure of this royal Visitor from Heaven, this ‘New Queen Esther’, we read that:
“… the onlookers saw rise from the tree a beautiful white cloud which they could follow with their eyes for quite a while as it moved in the direction of the East. Further, at the Lady’s departure, the upper branches of the tree, without losing the curved shape of a parasol, leaned towards the East, as if in going away the Lady’s dress had trailed over them. And this double pressure which had bent the branches, first into a curve and then towards the East, was so great that the branches remained like this for long hours, and only slowly resumed their normal position”.
Even the bright day-star itself must remain dim in the presence of the Queen of Heaven, who is “more resplendent than the sun”. And the branches of the holm-oak must bow in Her honour as She passes by, on Her way towards the presence of the King. It is an image already evoked in Psalm 44, in the glorification of the royal princess:
“All the glory of the king’s daughter is within, clothed with gold-woven robes; in many-coloured robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions, her escort, in her train”. (vv. 13-14).
Almighty God chose to make the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary itself the very focal point of the 13th of June apparition. Lucia, later recalling the extraordinary grace that Heaven had deigned to bestow upon her and her little companions that day, said that the Lady, after speaking to them at some length about Her Immaculate Heart, then stretched forth Her hands, throwing on the children rays of immense light in which they saw themselves as if immersed in God.
“The Blessed Virgin held in Her right hand a Heart surrounded by thorns, which pierced it from all sides”.
The seers understood that it was the Immaculate Heart of Mary, afflicted by all the sins of the world, which demanded penance and reparation. Said Lucia:
“It seems to me, that on that day, the purpose of the light was to pour into us a special knowledge and love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as on other occasions it infused into us the knowledge and love of God, and the mystery of the Blessed Trinity. From that day, indeed, we experienced a more ardent love for the Immaculate Heart of Mary”. (“More About Fatima”, p. 88).
On this occasion Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, who had been called by Our Lady to the sublime vocation of making known to the world the devotion of reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, were even granted the privilege of gazing momentarily in vision upon Her most pure Heart – the very embodiment of the devotion. Jacinta and Francisco’s time though for spreading this devotion on earth, before being taken up into Heaven, would be short. But not so for Lucia; for, as Our Lady told her,
“You must remain longer on earth. Jesus wishes to use you in making Me known and loved. He wishes to spread in the world the devotion to My Immaculate Heart. I promise salvation to those who embrace this devotion. Their souls will be loved by God with a love of predilection, like flowers placed by Me before His throne”. (Ibid., p. 86).
An when Lucia appeared sad at the thought of having to remain alone on earth after the death of her two companions, Our Lady consoled Her by saying:
“No, my child, I shall never abandon you. My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God”. (Ibid.)
Further Comment on the May and June Apparitions
During those first two blissful months of May and June, the three children were showered with graces and great favours from Heaven; not least of which was Our Lady’s promise that all three would eventually go to Heaven (13th of May apparition). The many trials and tribulations that would later beset them from all directions – from family, clergy, doctors, reporters and civil authorities – had not yet had an impact. This first tranquil phase in the series of apparitions seems to correspond allegorically with the un-troubled early part of the story of Esther, before Haman’s fateful appearance on the scene. Then, Mordecai was secure in his high standing with the king; and Esther, chosen to be queen, was favoured by the king above all women in his realm. Their lives, and those of their people, were safe; and - apart from the persistent hardship of living in exile in a pagan kingdom (Esther 14:15-18) - they dwelt in relative peace and happiness.
But neither in the story of Esther, nor in the Fatima drama, will that initial state of serenity last for long. In the former instance it is the cruel edict of Haman, issued on the thirteenth of the month (3:12), which would rudely shatter the peace. In the case of the three children of Fatima, it will be the deadly opposition of the Haman-like sub-prefect of Ourem, Arturo d’Oliveira Santos. Santos will be prepared to press his diabolical malice against the Church, and against everything that pertains to it, even to the point of threatening the three young children with a horrible death. Still prior to that, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco – but Lucia mainly – would have to endure trials at home, would be jeered at in public, and would be interrogated by the pastor of Fatima. All of these trials and tribulations will cause Lucia and her two cousins the greatest suffering and anguish; leading – again most especially in the case of Lucia – to scrupulosity and temptations to doubt the supernaturality of the visions.
This brings us to the highly significant third apparition, that of the 13th of July, which will be the subject of our next chapter. Whilst during Her visit on the 13th of June the Queen of Heaven had placed before our eyes a series of marvellously symbolic tableaux, to ensure that the biblical foundation of Her message would not be overlooked, She, on the occasion of the 13th of July, will bring a dramatic increase to the tempo of Her message by going far beyond mere symbolism to graphic reality. The forces of darkness had set in motion their cruel edict calling for the universal destruction of souls and even of human lives. The Woman’s response to Satan’s malice would be, as usual, decisive and most efficacious. Like Queen Esther of old, Our Lady of Fatima would not be able to endure seeing Her people
“sold ... to be destroyed, to be slain, and to be annihilated” (7:4).
And so She would speedily come to their rescue, by personally entering into the very centre of the conflict and bringing with Her the strongest possible reinforcements.
Chapter Two
A RIVAL OPERATION
“Great are Thy judgements and hard to describe; therefore uninstructed souls have gone astray. For when lawless men supposed that they held the holy nation in their power, they themselves lay as captives of darkness and prisoners of long night, shut in under their roofs, exiles from eternal Providence. For thinking that in their secret sins they were unobserved behind a dark curtain of forgetfulness, they were scattered, terribly alarmed, and appalled by spectres. For not even the inner chamber that held them protected them from fear, but terrifying sounds rang out around them, and dismal phantoms with gloomy faces appeared ….
“Nothing was shining through to them except a dreadful, self-kindled fire, and in terror they deemed the things which they saw to be worse than that unseen appearance. The delusions of their magic art lay humbled, and their boasted wisdom was scornfully rebuked. For those who promised to drive off the fears and disorders of a sick soul were sick themselves with ridiculous fear. For even if nothing disturbing frightened them, yet, scared by the passing of beasts and the hissing of serpents, they perished in trembling fear, refusing to look even at the air, though it nowhere could be avoided.
“For wickedness is a cowardly thing, condemned by its own testimony; distressed by conscience, it has always exaggerated the difficulties. For fear is nothing but the surrender of the helps that come from reason; and the inner expectation of help, being weak, prefers ignorance of what causes the torment. But throughout the night, which was really powerless, and which beset them from the recesses of powerless Hades, they all slept the same sleep, and now were driven by monstrous spectres, and now they were paralysed by their souls’ surrender, for sudden and unexpected fear overwhelmed them”. (Wisdom 17:1-4, 6-15).
These verses from the Book of Wisdom give us a graphic insight into the abject terror and confusion that fell upon the Egyptians during that penultimate plague of the Three Days of Darkness (Exodus 10:22), which God, just prior to the Exodus, brought down upon unrepentant Egypt. They are also a most appropriate description of the eternal abode of the damned: that is, Hell. There, nothing makes sense. All is darkness and confusion, noise and terror. Rationality is nowhere to be found in this house of torture: reason has been surrendered to ignorance. It is a Hades of appalling grief and despair. The damned are ‘dismal phantoms with gloomy faces’. The faces of the demons, which prowl through the darkness in the form of hissing serpents, or of wild beasts, are miserific.
The Third Apparition: 13th of July
Our Lady of Fatima’s July apparition is a particuarly notable one for many reasons. It commenced in the usual way, with Our Lady insisting once again on the need for daily recitation of the Rosary:
“You must recite the Rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary to obtain peace for this world and the end of the war, for only She can obtain this”. (“More About Fatima”, p. 23).
Lucia then ventured to ask the Lady to say who She was, and to perform a miracle in order that all might believe in the reality of the apparitions. The Lady of Light graciously agreed to satisfy both of these requests, promising that She would do this on the occasion of Her final visit to the Cova da Iria:
“Continue to come here on the thirteenth of each month, and on October 13th I shall say who I am and what I want, and I shall work a great miracle in order that all may believe”. (Ibid., p. 24).
Then the tempo of the message increased dramatically. Our Lady’s face grew very grave as She reminded the three children of their important mission:
“Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say often, especially when you make sacrifices: O Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the offences committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary”. (Ibid.).
With these words She opened Her hands, projecting a beam of light into the bowels of the earth, where the children saw a vision of Hell. Lucia’s account of this terrible vision runs as follows:
“… we saw as it were a vast sea of fire, in which were plunged, all blackened and burnt, demons and souls in human form like transparent brands. Raised into the air by the flames they fell back in all directions, like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or poise, amidst loud cries and horrible groans of pain and despair which caused us to shudder and tremble with fear. The demons were distinguished by the horrible and repellent forms of terrible unknown animals, like brands of fire black yet transparent”. (Ibid., p. 62).
“This scene lasted an instant”, Lucia recalled, “and we must thank Our Heavenly Mother who had prepared us beforehand by promising to take us to Heaven with her; otherwise I believe that we should have died of fear and terror”. (ibid.).
The fact that the three children had seen a vision of Hell was never divulged by any of them whilst Jacinta and Francisco were still alive. It was not until ten years later that Lucia, in the chapel at Tuy (Spain), received permission from Heaven to speak about the vision. But to the onlookers in close proximity to the children during the apparition of the 13th of July, in 1917, Lucia’s gestures betrayed the fact that something very disturbing was happening on that occasion. They saw Lucia’s face take on an expression of great sorrow, whilst at the same time they heard her cry: “Oh!”
When, after the apparition, those who had seen Lucia’s great anguish wished to know the cause of it, she simply told them that it was a “secret”. And when pressed for more detail as to whether this secret was “good” or “bad”, Lucia told them that in regard to herself and her cousins, it was “good”, and that in regard to others:
“For some it is good, for others bad” (Ibid., p. 24).
It may be that there is even an echo of this again in the Book of Esther. King Ahasuerus, having been won over to the Jewish cause by Queen Esther, thereupon gave permission for Mordecai to dictate to the king’s secretaries a new edict, whose purpose would be to counteract the cruel edict of Haman (cf. 8:9-14 & ch. 16). Now it is in the latter part of this benign edict that we seem to find a ringing echo of Lucia’s own phrase: “For some it is good, for others bad”. Thus we read in Mordecai’s words to the rulers of all the king’s provinces that the 13th of the month Adar, the date set down formerly by Haman for the destruction of all the Jews, would now instead become
“a notable day amongst [the Jewish] commemorative festivals, so that both now and hereafter it may mean salvation for us and the loyal Persians, but that for those who plot aganst us it may be a reminder of destruction” (16:22, 23);
in other words, “good” for some, “bad” for others.
“Salvation” apparently is the key word in this concluding part of Mordecai’s edict, linking it with Lucia’s own veiled comment on the vision of Hell, Since the word “salvation” has an unequivocal meaning in any context dealing with the ultimate destiny of human souls, there can be little doubt that Lucia’s, “For some it is good, for others bad”, is meant to be taken in the eschatological sense: “good” for those who will embrace salvation, “bad” for those who won’t, and who are therefore destined for everlasting “destruction”.
In regard to the three famous “secrets” of Fatima – all made known to Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, during the 13th of July apparition – Our Lady began by first presenting to the children what might well be called the negative aspect of Her message: the “secret” of the vision of Hell. Since, as the greatest philosophers have told us, evil is to be defined as a “privation”, or a “lack of something” – “a lack of due good”, or “a lack of being” – it can be talked about only in negative terms. There is nothing intrinsically positive about evil. This applies most especially (a fortiori) to Hell, which must therefore be regarded as the most abysmal of all privations or lackings, since it means for those who go there to be deprived for all eternity of having possession of the ultimate Good - the Beatific Vision of the God-head.
But it was fitting that Our Lady of Fatima should, in Her heavenly dialogue with the twentieth century, first put forward the antithesis of Her case, in order to show the ultimate end of those who willingly choose ignorance and error in preference to wisdom and right reason. For it is only in stark contrast to the negative part of their argument, the anti-thesis, that the great philosophers have been able to demonstrate the validity, the strength, of the positive side of their argument, known as the thesis. From this dialectical process there should emerge a synthesis: a progression in reasoning, new ideas, a system of new knowledge.
We might say that Our Lady, on the 13th of July at Fatima, used the dialectical method on a cosmic scale, to impress our modern world the total justifiability of Her heavenly message. And the Marian synthesis, realized at Fatima in regard to the dialectical extremes of good and evil, appears to have been well understood by John Paul II, when, during, his 1982 visit of thanksgiving to Fatima – “the altar of the world”, “the new Mount Sinai”, the “city of Mary” – he told his audience:
“Consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means returning beneath the Cross of the Son. It means consecrating this world to the pierced Heart of the Saviour, bringing it back to the very source of its Redemption”.
“Redemption”, said John Paul II, “is always greater than sin, individual or collective, is infinitely superior to the whole range of evil in man and the world. The Heart of Mary, the Mother, is more aware of this, more than any other heart in the whole universe, visible and invisible”. (SOUL Magazine, May-June, 1986, p. 12).
As John Paul II’s words attest, and as we are going to discover again and again in this book, never – throughout each successive phase of salvation history – has Heaven permitted Satan to promulgate anew his cruel edict for the “destruction” of souls without Itself immediately coming to the rescue with a benign, and “infinitely superior”, edict of “salvation”.
Nor would things be any different at Fatima in the twentieth century. For on no account would the Blessed Virgin Mary have taken the unprecedented step of allowing three young children to see a vision of Hell – the very embodiment of Satan’s cruel edict of “destruction” – had She not intended immediately to counteract this horrific reality with Heaven’s “infinitely superior” remedy. Had not Our Lady already in fact, during Her previous apparition in June, promised eternal salvation – and therefore avoidance of Hell – to all those who would faithfully practice the devotion which she was now, for the first time, going to name in full? And so just as Mordecai, “in the third month” (8:9), had issued his own counteracting edict, thereby enabling for “the lowly” Jews to be “exalted” and to consume “those held in honour” (11:11), so would Our Lady on the 13th of July, “in the third month” of the Fatima series, come to the aid of Her poor and lowly children by proclaiming, in the very face of Satan as it were, the second phase of God’s great Plan for the salvation of the modern world:
“Communion of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary”.
The Fourth Apparition: 13th of August
About eighteen thousand persons turned up at the Cova da Iria for Our Lady’s August apparition. Word had got out that in the July apparition a famous secret had been revealed, and that the Lady had promised to perform a miracle in October. The 13th of August, however, is known as “the frustrated apparition”, because the three children were not there. They had been kidnapped by the local administrator, Arturo d’Oliveira Santos, an embittered anti-clerical man bent on crushing what he considered to be “Church reaction against the Government” (“Fatima, Way of Peace”, p. 7).
On the 13th of August, not long before the usual time of the apparitions, Santos seized the three little shepherds and carried them off to the municipal, seat at Vila Nova de Ourem. This callous action would infuriate the crowd at the Cova da Iria, as news of the kidnapping filtered through to them. They began to murmur and to grow extremely restless. Some were even speaking of going to Ourem to demand an explanation from Santos.
However, the crowd calmed down when, at the time that Our Lady was due, certain mysterious phenomena which had already been observed in the previous months, indicated to those present that the Lady had come to the meeting-place.
At Ourem, however, things were far less pleasant. There, Santos attempted to draw the secret from the children firstly with seductive promises of gold pieces. When they remained steadfast in their account of the Lady, he threw them into the town gaol, in a filthy common room with local criminals. Later in the day Santos took the children out of gaol, again demanding their secret, and, when again he was refused, he announced that he would throw them into a cauldron of boiling oil. This was a veritable martyrdom for Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. Santos had them separated; each one was told that the other had died in agony. It seems that they believed it. In the words of the Book of Esther, “their death was before their eyes” (13:18). But it was all in vain. The three seers – like the three children in the Book of Daniel (chapter 3) who refused to worship the golden image of king Nebuchednezzar of Babylon, and who were thrown into the fiery furnace – remained as form as a rock and never faltered. They were ten, nine and seven years old. Finally, they were subjected to a medical-psychiatric examination by a Dr. Rodrigues de Oliveira, and were released on the 15th of August, the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady. Santos had been forced to admit defeat and he sent them home.
{Excursus: Did Fatima come to Tasmania?
Report in the ‘Mercury” newspaper on August 13, 1917 /352/.
Aurora Australis
In these strenuous and exciting times when one is always expecting to hear or read of some new or startling thing, the nerves of the many are ever on the alert, for something to shy at, like a restive steed. We hear and read of signs and portents concerning the end of the war, and what, to many, was accepted as such was visible in the heavens on Thursday night. The “southern lights” (Aurora Australis) have been frequently seen and admired by us all, but the exhibition of the phenomenon referred to was accompanied by most awe-inspiring effects, which will not readily be forgotten by any who saw them. The usual ruddy glow in the south was visible shortly before seven o’clock, the changing and shooting coloured rays being more distinct than for some time. Suddenly there appeared on the south-east horizon a large luminous while ball, or cloud, of dazzling brightness, and this advanced rapidly towards the south-west. As it apparently neared the spectators, it took the form of a huge comet, its “tail” spreading out half way across the southern heavens, and passing swiftly, it vanished in the south-west, being visible for some minutes. Those folk privileged to see this marvellous sight had scarcely recovered their breath, and were wondering what it could be when a luminous mist appeared in the south-south-west, and growing larger and more dense, it moved in a northerly direction, assumed a long feather shape of glowing brightness, and swerved to the west, where it disappeared. A third band of light of the same character then seemed to emerge from the south-west, but was visible for a shorter period. Presumably these immense bands of light, resembling huge meteors in their flight, were in some way due to or were part of the aurora display, but if so they were certainly a new feature, for no one seems to have seen or heard of anything of the sort before. More than a few hazarded the opinion that the phenomena were a sign or portent concerning the war, but none was bold enough to attempt to solve the riddle. Speaking no doubt as they wished, some opined the “white feather” was typical of the dove of peace, and said that we should have good war news very soon. One peculiarity about these luminous bands was that they appeared to be so near the onlooker when passing over, that it seemed as if one could grasp them. Even children remarked that they could have touched the clouds, which shed such a brilliant light around}.
Fatima, 1917
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For picture, see:
http://blog.awm.gov.au/1917/2007/04/04/private-francis-joseph-mackey/
The Author.
Solemnity of the Holy Mother of God.
JAN 1, 1994.
First Saturday.
Introduction
Queen Esther as a Biblical Type of Our Lady of Fatima
(For the historical supplement to this book, see http://bookofesther.blog.com/)
Queen Esther has rightly been recognised as a type of the Woman of Genesis who was to come (Genesis 3:15). But firstly in the Book of Esther we are told about the fate of another woman, Queen Vashti, the wife of the Persian king Ahasuerus and sharer of his throne. The king had provided, for all the people present in Susa his capital, a banquet lasting for a week, on the last day of which he summoned Queen Vashti to come before him “crowned with her royal diadem, in order to show the peoples and the princes her beauty; for she was fair to behold” (Esther 1:11)
The queen however, who was holding her own banquet in the king’s palace, blatantly ignore his command.
When we remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit is the true Author of the sacred Scriptures, we can hardly refrain here from turning our thoughts to Eve, the first woman whom God created. Truly regal were her endowments and destiny; for God wished Eve to be “mother of all the living”, as indicated by the meaning of her name (Genesis 3:20), and to serve as an exemplar to those of her own sex who would come after her. But as it was to be written of Vashti, so also was it tragically true of Eve: “But she refused …” (Esther 1:12).
In the decree of punishment subsequently issued against Vashti by Ahasuerus, it was laid down irrevocably that she would never again appear before the king, and that he instead “would confer her royal dignity on a worthier woman” (Esther 1:19).
Accordingly, the king arranged for beautiful young virgins to be selected throughout the one hundred and twenty-seven provinces of his kingdom, and to be brought to Susa where they would undergo twelve months of preparation. Outstanding amongst all of these young women was the Jewish maiden Hadassah – the future Queen Esther – who, because “she had found favour in the eyes of all who saw her”, was quickly advanced with her maids to the best place in the king’s harem (2:9,15).
“And when Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus … the king loved Esther more than all the other women, and she found grace and favour in his sight”” (2,16,17).
Thus king Ahasuerus chose Esther to replace Vashti as queen, and he placed the royal crown on her head. Of Esther, too, it was written that “the maiden was exceedingly fair and beautiful” (2:7).
Already in this ancient narrative centring on the obedient response of the Jewish maiden, Hadassah, the Holy Spirit has provided for His chosen people a glimpse of the Annunciation. Hadassah exemplifies the ever-faithful Virgin Mary, whom the Blessed Trinity would select – in place of the first, disobedient woman – to be the “Second Eve”. The Blessed Virgin Mary however, to a degree far greater than Hadassah, would find “more than all the other women, grace and favour” in the sight of the King of Heaven.
This superiority of Hers is even reflected in the new name given to Her at the Annunciation; a name which far surpasses in meaning the new name conferred upon Hadassah (that is ‘Esther’). For, as John Paul II explained, when the archangel Gabriel “greets Mary as ‘full of grace’; he calls Her thus as if it were Her real name. He does not call Her by Her proper earthly name: Miryam (= Mary), but by this new name: ‘full of grace’” (“Redemptoris Mater”, #8).
Her election by the King of Heaven is also of a far superior order. For if, as John Paul II went on to say, Her election as Mother of the Son of God “is fundamental for the accomplishment of God’s salvific designs for humanity … then the election of Mary is wholly exceptional and unique …: Mary is ‘full of grace’, because it is precisely in Her that the Incarnation of the Word, the hypostatic union of the Son of God with human nature, is accomplished and fulfilled” (Ibid., #9).
John Paul II marvelously links this New Testament beginning with the ‘Proto-Gospel’, or ‘First Gospel’ beginning of Genesis, when he explains that
“In the salvific design of the Most Holy Trinity, the mystery of the Incarnation constitutes the superabundant fulfilment of the promise made by God to man after original sin, after that first sin whose effects oppress the whole history of man (cf. Genesis 3:15). And so, there comes into the world a Son, ‘the seed of the Woman’ who will crush the evil of sin in its very origins: ‘He will crush the head of the serpent” (Ibid., #11).
Before ever Haman, the arch villain and “enemy of all the Jews” in the story of Esther, had “set his throne above all the princes” of Persia (cf. Esther 3:1 & 9:24), Lucifer his master, the enemy of all humankind, had said in his heart:
“I shall ascend to Heaven; above the stars of God, I shall set my throne on high” (Isaiah 14:12).
This was the beginning of the great prototypal enmity of which the Book of Genesis speaks. The Most holy Trinity has established this one enmity and none other; which means that all other enmities between the forces of good and evil – including the one to be found in the Book of Esther – must be part of that one, irreconcilable enmity between the race of the Woman of Genesis, on the one hand, and Satan and his seed on the other. The prototypal enmity thus rages unremittingly, but with ever increasing intensity, down through the ages. Is it not fitting, then, that the traitorous Haman – whom the king comes to regard with contempt, only finally, as “a Macedonian (really an alien to the Persian blood, and quite devoid of our kindliness) …” (Esther 16:10), should be identified firstly in the Book of Esther as a member “of the race of Agag” (3:1)? Israel’s most implacable enemy from time immemorial was the Amalekite race, whose kings were traditionally called Agag (cf. Numbers 24:7 & 1 Samuel 15:9,33). At the time of the Exodus the Amalekites, though fully cognizant of the miracles worked by God through His Prophet Moses, to deliver the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, had callously and recklessly attacked the children of Israel whilst they were languishing from thirst in the desert (Exodus 17:8). Because of this heinous crime, God promised Moses that he would
“utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven” (Exodus 17:14).
It was some four centuries after God had spoken these words to Moses that He provided Saul, king of Israel, with a golden opportunity to fulfil this stern prophecy, thus commanding him:
“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them” (1 Samuel 15:33).
Saul, as we know, did not fully obey God in this unequivocal matter, with the consequence that God tore the kingdom away from him and gave it instead to His obedient servant, David. The latter was so unrelenting in his pursuit of the Amalekites that their race soon disappears from the pages of history.
Amalek though, figuratively speaking, has continued to survive down through the ages, bobbing up again and again in each successive wave of assault against the upholders of righteousness. Thus, in the Book of Esther, we discover that the dread and age-long enmity prophesied by Moses, that
“The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16).
reaches a new crescendo of intensity with the rise to power of Haman the Agagite (Esther 3:1). John Paul II alludes to both the intensity, and the durability, of the conflict, when saying that
“the victory of the Woman’s Son will not take place without a hard struggle that is to extend throughout the whole of human history” (op. cit, ibid. ).
It finds its extension in human history, for instance, in the “hard struggle” between Queen Esther and Haman, which resolves itself only at the eleventh hour, in the shattering victory of the righteous seed (Queen Esther’s nation) over the forces of wickedness (Haman’s allies).
Even more especially, however, it is the “hard struggle” in the history of salvation itself, in the midst of which stands “the Woman” of Sacred Scripture. Compared to this bitter contest in which She, as the ‘new Esther’, is engaged – for quite obviously that is the guise in which “the Woman” has chosen to act today as Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima – even the dramatic saga of Queen Esther seems to fade to a mere ripple.
John Paul II himself made at least implicit reference to Our Lady of Fatima’s apocalyptic role in the ever-nearing, final solution of the great enmity, when he noted that:
“The ‘enmity’, foretold at the beginning, is confirmed in the Apocalypse (the book of the final events of the Church and the world), in which there recurs the sign of the ‘Woman’, this time ‘clothed with the sun’ (Revelation 12:1). Mary, Mother of the Incarnate Word, is placed at the very centre of that enmity, that struggle which accompanies the history of humanity on earth and the history of salvation itself. In this central place, She who belongs to the ‘weak and poor of the Lord’ bears in Herself, like no other member of the human race, that ‘glory of grace’ which the Father ‘has bestowed on us in His beloved Son’, and this grace determines the extraordinary greatness and beauty of Her whole being” (Ibid.).
“Mary”, as the Holy Father added, “thus remains before God, and also before the whole of humanity, as the unchangeable and inviolable sign of God’s election, spoken of in St. Paul’s Letter: ‘in Christ … He chose us … before the foundation of the world, … He destined us … to be His sons’ (Ephesians 1:4, 5)” (Ibid.).
It is because of the “unchangeable and inviolable” nature of Her unique election in God, that the Blessed Virgin Mary forever brings light and hope to our troubled world. The message of Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima, the Lady of Light, has always been about hope, “a ray of hope” (Our Lady’s words during the July 13th apparition) in the midst of a world filled with gloom and often bordering on despair. This is because of the special blessing that God has bestowed upon Her by reason of Her unique election. For, as John Paul II concluded:
“This election is more powerful than any experience of evil and sin, than all that ‘enmity’ which marks the history of man. In this history Mary remains a sign of sure hope” (Ibid.).
Chapter One
THE TITANIC STRUGGLE
“In the second year of the reign of Ahasuerus the Great, …. Mordecai … of the tribe of Benjamin, had a dream. He was a Jew in the city of Susa, a great man serving in the court of the king. He was one of the captives whom Nebuchednezzar king of Babylon had brought from Jerusalem with Jeconiah king of Judea. And this was his dream:
‘Behold, noise and confusion, thunders and earthquake, tumult upon the earth! And behold, two great dragons came forward, both ready to fight, and they roared terribly. And at their roaring every nation prepared for war, to fight against the nation of the righteous. And behold, a day of darkness and gloom, tribulation and distress, affliction and great tumult upon the earth! And the whole righteous nation was troubled; they feared the evils that threatened them, and were ready to perish. Then they cried to God; and from their cry, as though from a tiny spring, there came a great river, with abundant water; light came, and the sun rose, and the lowly were exalted and consumed those held in honour’.
Mordecai saw in this dream what God had determined to do, and after he awoke he had it on his mind and sought all day to understand it in every detail” (Esther 11:1-12).
According to the unusual arrangement of the Book of Esther, this section from chapter 11 is situated at the very beginning of the narrative. It is, however, a most fitting introduction to the story since it sets the scene for the main drama to follow, presenting a symbolic account of it to the reader in prophetic form. In the ‘denouement’, or resolution of the drama, at the end of the Book of Esther in chapter 10, Mordecai explains all the various parts of his dream, whose meaning had become fully known to him as the events unfolded. It depicts the titanic struggle between good and evil as a fight between “two great dragons”. More specifically, as Mordecai finally reveals to us in chapter 10,
“The two dragons are Haman and myself” (10:7).
Mordecai’s apocalyptic dream is also a perfect back-drop for the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima. She came upon the earth in 1917, when all nations were involved in the Great War (1914-1918). It was indeed a time of “darkness and gloom, tribulation and distress, affliction and great tumult upon the earth”. Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922), the then reigning Pontiff, had used all the diplomatic resources at his disposal to bring an end to the hostilities, the shock of whose advent may well have killed his holy predecessor, Pope St. Pius X (1903-1914). But seeing that his efforts were in vain, Pope Benedict XV turned his eyes to Heaven, and on the 5th of May 1917 he ordered that recourse be had to the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, adding to the Litany of Loreto a new invocation: “Regina pacis, ora pro nobis”, that is, “Queen of Peace, pray for us”. And thus again, as in the case of Mordecai’s dream, a great “dragon” had begun to “roar” loudly on behalf of “the whole righteous nation”. But in this case it was the Supreme Pontiff of the chosen nation of the holy Catholic Church who cried to God and who ordered that all Catholics do the same.
The response from Heaven was immediate. On the 13th of May, 1917, a mere eight days after the Holy Father had begun his plea to Heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary visited the troubled earth, appearing to three innocent children, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, at Fatima in Portugal. The precise place to which the Queen of Peace came at Fatima was one completely unknown, not only in Portugal and in the world, but even to the majority of the inhabitants of Fatima. Its name is Cova da Iria, a word which is derived from the Greek term eirene, meaning ‘peace’.
The graphic images of noise, tumult, affliction and wholesale confusion upon the earth, ‘with every nation preparing for war’, as described in Mordecai’s dream, anticipate not only the Great War during which Our Lady of Fatima first appeared, and the many wars that have followed, but even more significantly they recall to mind that relentless and on-going struggle for souls. The latter is, of course, a spiritual warfare between the forces of good and evil, the “two great dragons” of the Book of Esther. In the past two to three centuries this struggle has visibly assumed a more global aspect; a bitter fight to the death between the holy Catholic Church and the forces of a world-wide conspiracy for global conquest and the formation of a “One-World ‘Church’,” (Pope St. Pius X) masterminded by the Devil, and set in motion initially through the agency of the secret societies of Freemasonry.
The conspirators of evil were already in the midst of laying down their plans to unleash the “great red dragon” of Communism (Revelation 12:3) upon Russia in 1917, when Heaven went into action. With Lenin and Trotsky in Petrograd, preparing to give orientation to the Bolshevist revolution which they directed, there came from Heaven, from the east, a Lady of Light, to Fatima. She was the same “Woman clothed with the sun” who – as the Evangelist had predicted long ago – would be opposed to this great red dragon (Revelation 12:3-5). She came solemnly to remind us of the unique and infallible means of salvation, strengthening our Faith in God, inviting us to prayer and penance and to flee sin, asking us to recite the Rosary daily and to consecrate ourselves to Her Immaculate Heart.
It was only after Our Lady of Fatima’s six apparitions in 1917 had run their course from May to October that, on the 7th of November of that year, the Bolshevist faction triumphed first at Petrograd, then at Moscow, As Fr. DaCruz puts it, whilst at the eastern end of Europe the spirit of Antichrist was being
“unloosed, not only against true religion, but even against the very idea of God and against civil society, the most terrible onslaught in all history, at the same moment there appeared in splendour at the western extremity, the Great and Eternal Enemy of the infernal serpent!” [More about Fatima’, p. 54].
The Thirteenth Day of the Month
To appreciate why Heaven has placed such special emphasis on the 13th day of the month, making it the intended day of each of the six apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima, we need to refer again to the pages of the Book of Esther. It is an important point and one that has been made before.
Mordecai the Jew had been raised to prominence in the court of the King of Medo-Persia because, having become cognizant of a plot by two of the king’s eunuchs to assassinate their master, Mordecai duly informed the king and thus saved his life. We also learn about Mordecai that he had brought up Hadassah, that is Esther, the daughter of his uncle; for, after both her parents had died, Mordecai adopted the girl as his own daughter (Esther 11:3; 12:1; 2:7). This Mordecai is therefore a key player in the whole drama.
Into the midst of this tranquil scenario steps the sinister Haman. For reasons unexplained, the king so advances this foreign guest of his (16:10) as to set him above all the princes and make him second in the kingdom (cf. e.g. 3:1-2 & 16:11). This means that all the king’s servants were expected to bow down to Haman. The fact that Mordecai would not bow down filled Haman with fury; and, upon learning that Mordecai was of the Jewish race, the old historical antipathy revived within Haman to the extent that he thereupon resolved
“to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus. But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai himself” (3:1,6).
There is more to Haman than first metes the eye, and it gradually becomes apparent that his intentions are conspiratorial. Because of his extreme cunning, Haman has no difficulty insinuating his way into great prominence in the kingdom of Medo-Persia; his ultimate purpose being, as he speedily rises to become “the person second to the royal throne” (16:11), to get rid of the king. For, as it turned out, even the eunuchs’ plot to assassinate king Ahasuerus had been masterminded by Haman (12:16). A chastened king Ahasuerus would later testify that this Haman, who “was called our father and was continually bowed down to by all”.
had thought to “transfer the kingdom of the Persians to the Macedonians” (16:12,14).
No doubt Haman intended for himself (or perhaps one of his ten sons) to be the ruler over this united kingdom of east and west. Only one obstacle remained, and it was in the form of his rival colleague, Mordecai; the one man of rank in the kingdom who was neither deceived by Haman’s guile nor would bow down to him. Inasmuch as Mordecai had unmasked the plotting of the eunuchs to kill the king, and had made a written account of it (12:4), Haman had good reason to be wary of him. Unable, therefore, to vent his antagonistic spleen upon Mordecai directly, Haman felt that he could harm him through his race. Firstly destroy the Jews, he probably reasoned, and deal with Mordecai later, perhaps after king Ahasuerus himself had been dispatched.
It is here that we come across the significance of the 13th day of the month. It did not take much for the astute Haman to persuade Ahasuerus that the Jews, with their “different” laws and customs, and their flouting of the king’s laws – as Haman had claimed – were not profitable for the king to tolerate, and so ought to be destroyed (3:8). Haman’s offer to the king of the enormous sum of ten thousand talents of silver (3:9) was an added incentive.
“So the king took the signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman the Agagite … the enemy of the Jews. And the king said to Haman, ‘the money is given to you, the people also, to do with them as it seems good to you’.” (13:10-11).
Lots had been cast before Haman, “day after day” and “month after month till the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar” (3:7), presumably to determine the most propitious time to act. Next the king, after having agreed to Haman’s wicked counsel, summoned his secretaries
“on the thirteenth day of the first month, and an edict, according to all that Haman commanded, was written to the king’s satraps and to the governors over all the provinces and to the princes of all the peoples, to every province in its own script and every people in its own language; it was written in the name of king Ahasuerus and sealed with the king’s ring. Letters were sent by couriers to all the king’s provinces, to destroy, to slay, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods”. (13:12-13).
That is the significance of the thirteenth day of the month. The central drama in the Book of Esther is played out in its entirety between that thirteenth day of the first month, when Haman persuaded the king that the Jews must be annihilated for the common good, and the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the intended date for the realisation of Haman’s terrible plan.
The Lady of Light
In the biblical story it is Queen Esther who comes to the rescue of her people. The “cry” of the whole righteous nation, praying that God might deliver it from the evils that were threatening to engulf it, is symbolized in Mordecai’s dream as no more than “a tiny spring”; for the small Jewish nation meant absolutely nothing to the king of Medo-Persia. The profound difference, in the eyes of the king, made by Esther’s intercession on behalf of her people, is exemplified in Mordecai’s retrospective explanation of this part of his dream (10:6):
“The tiny spring which became a river, and there was light and the sun and abundant water … the river is Esther whom the king married and made queen”.
For God’s chosen people of today, it is of course the Blessed Virgin Mary who makes all the difference to their feeble prayers of supplication. It is She who, as Mediatrix before the sublime King of Heaven, adds the necessary weight to these prayers to ensure that He will listen to them. Like Esther of old, the Queen of Peace entered into the midst of the fray, because again a righteous nation, led by its chief prince – in this case the Holy Father – had begun to implore Heaven to send down its peace and protection.
The First Apparition: 13th of May
On the 13th of May, 1917, the Immaculate Lady of Light first appeared at the Cova da Iria, in Fatima, to Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. The children, who already on three previous occasions had been visited by an “Angel of Peace”, had just finished their Rosary when they saw what they thought to be a blinding flash of lightning, and then a second one, appear out of a clear midday sky. The “beautiful Lady” who then stood before them, calls to our minds how Mordecai symbolically described Queen Esther in her splendour in terms of “abundant water”, “light”, rising “sun” (11:10-11). For, as Lucia recalled with regard to that first apparition in May:
“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”. (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, p. 156).
Even the garden court of the king’s palace, as decked out on the day of festival – with its
“white cotton curtains and blue hangings caught up with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings” its “couches of gold and silver”, its “mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble mother-of-pearl and precious stones” and its “golden goblets, goblets of different kinds” (1:5-7).
- conjures up another picturesque tableau symbolising the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially as the luminous Lady of Fatima, more resplendent than the sun, holding Her glorious Rosary. For, we are told that:
“The Lady is all beautiful. She seems to be from fifteen to eighteen years of age. Her dress, white as snow, tied at the neck by a cord of gold, reaches down to her feet which are just visible barely touching the branches of the tree. A while veil embroidered with gold covers her head and shoulders and falls to her feet like the dress. Her hands are joined at the height of her breast in an attitude of prayer. A rosary of brilliant pearls with a silver cross hangs from her right hand. Her face, of an ineffable beauty, shines in a halo as bright as the sun, but seems to be veiled by a slight look of sorrow”. (“More About Fatima”, p. 14).
Undoubtedly the “sorrow” reflected on the face of the heavenly Virgin is due primarily to the offences and blasphemies that are committed against Almighty God, and against Her own Immaculate Heart, with the consequent loss of “many souls” that She will later lament with such pathos. Analogous to this, and a further contributing factor to the “sorrow” within Her maternal Heart, would be the savagery of the First World War, then raging with great fury, and causing the destruction of so many human lives.
She had come to Fatima with the message that all humanity must cease offending God, and that it make atonement and reparation for sins; a message which John Paul II summarized in the following biblical terms:
“Mary’s message at Fatima can be synthesised in these clear, initial words of Christ: ‘The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel’.”
(Mark 1:15). (General Audience of 15th May, 1991).
Our Lady of Fatima’s loving invitation to all of us is expressed in the following question that She posed to the seers on our behalf:
“Would you like to offer yourselves to God to make sacrifices and to accept willingly all the sufferings it may please Him to send you, in order to make reparation for so many sins, which offend the Divine Majesty, to obtain the conversion of sinners, and to make amends for all the blasphemies and offences committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary?”
In these words we have Our Lady of Fatima’s first allusion to the Gospel-based doctrine of reparation for sin, which will become the dominant theme throughout all of Her apparitions. It is prominent, pre-figuratively, in the Book of Esther, in the form of
“fasting, weeping and lamenting”, “sackcloth and ashes”, “prayer” and “garments of distress and mourning” (cf. ch’s. 4; 13 & 14).
But, as had already been intimated by the Angel of Peace during the preparatory apparitions, and would later be made abundantly clear by Our Lady herself, the reparation at the heart of the Fatima message is specifically of a Eucharistic orientation.
Hence it was no accident that Our Lady’s first apparition at Fatima took place on the 13th of May, which day then, in 1917, was the feast of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament. During that appartion the children,
“moved by an irresistible force”
as they said, threw themselves to their knees and prayed together the now familiar Eucharistic prayer:
“O most holy Trinity, I adore Thee! My God, my God, I love Thee in the most Blessed Sacrament!”
The Second Apparition: 13th of June
On the 13th of June, the feast of St. Anthony, Our Lady again asked the children to recite the Rosary:
“I want you to say the Rosary every day”.
During this apparition, the central massage of which was the need for reparative devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, there was no lack of symbolism of a biblical nature, nor lack even of miraculous phenomena. The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared as usual over the little holm-oak tree, with Her feet resting on a small cloud; but this time, as Lucia recalled, there was a star with points of intense brightness at Her feet. On statues of Our Lady of Fatima today, this star is always represented on Our Lady’s dress just above Her feet. We might recall that at Lourdes the Blessed Virgin Mary had appeared with golden roses on Her feet. “But why on Her feet?”, asks Fr. Smolenski. The answer that he gives to his own question, as follows, may also explain why Our Lady of Fatima had a star at Her feet: “Then I came across this passage in Isaiah: “how beautiful on the mountains, are the feet of one who brings good news, who heralds peace, brings happiness, proclaims salvation, and tells Sion ‘Your God is king!’” (Isaiah 52:7). So it seems that Mary chose scriptural imagery – like a window in a church – to explain Her purpose and identity”. (Immaculata magazine, May 1982, p. 10).
As for the star itself, even Lucia said that she did not know what it was meant to signify. But Francis Johnston (In Fatima: the Great Sign) has made the intriguing suggestion that this star may be meant to remind us of Queen Esther, whose name is thought to derive from the Persian word for “star”. Even more precisely, it is the morning star. And it is most appropriate therefore that the Lady of Light always came to the Cova da Iria, like the morning star from the east; and afterwards She disappeared in the light of the sun towards the east. She had come to signal the dispersion of darkness, and to herald light and peace”.
“Continue, my children, reciting the Rosary every day, to obtain peace for the world. (13th of May, 1917).
Given what we have already leaned about Fatima, there is a good likelihood that one may be on the right track in looking to discover the significance of the star by its having some symbolic connection with the Book of Esther. The legitimacy of such an approach may, in this case, receive some further support from the fact that, during the 13th of June apparition, even nature itself seemed under constraint to testify that a royal Person had come on that day to the Cova da Iria. For thus we read in More About Fatima (p. 20):
“The day was bright and hot as it usually is in Portugal in the month of June. Now, during the entire period of the apparition the light of the sun was dimmed in an exceptional manner, without any apparent cause. At the same time, the topmost branches of the tree were bent in the form of a parasol, and remained thus as if an invisible weight had come to rest upon them…”.
Then, during the departure of this royal Visitor from Heaven, this ‘New Queen Esther’, we read that:
“… the onlookers saw rise from the tree a beautiful white cloud which they could follow with their eyes for quite a while as it moved in the direction of the East. Further, at the Lady’s departure, the upper branches of the tree, without losing the curved shape of a parasol, leaned towards the East, as if in going away the Lady’s dress had trailed over them. And this double pressure which had bent the branches, first into a curve and then towards the East, was so great that the branches remained like this for long hours, and only slowly resumed their normal position”.
Even the bright day-star itself must remain dim in the presence of the Queen of Heaven, who is “more resplendent than the sun”. And the branches of the holm-oak must bow in Her honour as She passes by, on Her way towards the presence of the King. It is an image already evoked in Psalm 44, in the glorification of the royal princess:
“All the glory of the king’s daughter is within, clothed with gold-woven robes; in many-coloured robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions, her escort, in her train”. (vv. 13-14).
Almighty God chose to make the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary itself the very focal point of the 13th of June apparition. Lucia, later recalling the extraordinary grace that Heaven had deigned to bestow upon her and her little companions that day, said that the Lady, after speaking to them at some length about Her Immaculate Heart, then stretched forth Her hands, throwing on the children rays of immense light in which they saw themselves as if immersed in God.
“The Blessed Virgin held in Her right hand a Heart surrounded by thorns, which pierced it from all sides”.
The seers understood that it was the Immaculate Heart of Mary, afflicted by all the sins of the world, which demanded penance and reparation. Said Lucia:
“It seems to me, that on that day, the purpose of the light was to pour into us a special knowledge and love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as on other occasions it infused into us the knowledge and love of God, and the mystery of the Blessed Trinity. From that day, indeed, we experienced a more ardent love for the Immaculate Heart of Mary”. (“More About Fatima”, p. 88).
On this occasion Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, who had been called by Our Lady to the sublime vocation of making known to the world the devotion of reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, were even granted the privilege of gazing momentarily in vision upon Her most pure Heart – the very embodiment of the devotion. Jacinta and Francisco’s time though for spreading this devotion on earth, before being taken up into Heaven, would be short. But not so for Lucia; for, as Our Lady told her,
“You must remain longer on earth. Jesus wishes to use you in making Me known and loved. He wishes to spread in the world the devotion to My Immaculate Heart. I promise salvation to those who embrace this devotion. Their souls will be loved by God with a love of predilection, like flowers placed by Me before His throne”. (Ibid., p. 86).
An when Lucia appeared sad at the thought of having to remain alone on earth after the death of her two companions, Our Lady consoled Her by saying:
“No, my child, I shall never abandon you. My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God”. (Ibid.)
Further Comment on the May and June Apparitions
During those first two blissful months of May and June, the three children were showered with graces and great favours from Heaven; not least of which was Our Lady’s promise that all three would eventually go to Heaven (13th of May apparition). The many trials and tribulations that would later beset them from all directions – from family, clergy, doctors, reporters and civil authorities – had not yet had an impact. This first tranquil phase in the series of apparitions seems to correspond allegorically with the un-troubled early part of the story of Esther, before Haman’s fateful appearance on the scene. Then, Mordecai was secure in his high standing with the king; and Esther, chosen to be queen, was favoured by the king above all women in his realm. Their lives, and those of their people, were safe; and - apart from the persistent hardship of living in exile in a pagan kingdom (Esther 14:15-18) - they dwelt in relative peace and happiness.
But neither in the story of Esther, nor in the Fatima drama, will that initial state of serenity last for long. In the former instance it is the cruel edict of Haman, issued on the thirteenth of the month (3:12), which would rudely shatter the peace. In the case of the three children of Fatima, it will be the deadly opposition of the Haman-like sub-prefect of Ourem, Arturo d’Oliveira Santos. Santos will be prepared to press his diabolical malice against the Church, and against everything that pertains to it, even to the point of threatening the three young children with a horrible death. Still prior to that, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco – but Lucia mainly – would have to endure trials at home, would be jeered at in public, and would be interrogated by the pastor of Fatima. All of these trials and tribulations will cause Lucia and her two cousins the greatest suffering and anguish; leading – again most especially in the case of Lucia – to scrupulosity and temptations to doubt the supernaturality of the visions.
This brings us to the highly significant third apparition, that of the 13th of July, which will be the subject of our next chapter. Whilst during Her visit on the 13th of June the Queen of Heaven had placed before our eyes a series of marvellously symbolic tableaux, to ensure that the biblical foundation of Her message would not be overlooked, She, on the occasion of the 13th of July, will bring a dramatic increase to the tempo of Her message by going far beyond mere symbolism to graphic reality. The forces of darkness had set in motion their cruel edict calling for the universal destruction of souls and even of human lives. The Woman’s response to Satan’s malice would be, as usual, decisive and most efficacious. Like Queen Esther of old, Our Lady of Fatima would not be able to endure seeing Her people
“sold ... to be destroyed, to be slain, and to be annihilated” (7:4).
And so She would speedily come to their rescue, by personally entering into the very centre of the conflict and bringing with Her the strongest possible reinforcements.
Chapter Two
A RIVAL OPERATION
“Great are Thy judgements and hard to describe; therefore uninstructed souls have gone astray. For when lawless men supposed that they held the holy nation in their power, they themselves lay as captives of darkness and prisoners of long night, shut in under their roofs, exiles from eternal Providence. For thinking that in their secret sins they were unobserved behind a dark curtain of forgetfulness, they were scattered, terribly alarmed, and appalled by spectres. For not even the inner chamber that held them protected them from fear, but terrifying sounds rang out around them, and dismal phantoms with gloomy faces appeared ….
“Nothing was shining through to them except a dreadful, self-kindled fire, and in terror they deemed the things which they saw to be worse than that unseen appearance. The delusions of their magic art lay humbled, and their boasted wisdom was scornfully rebuked. For those who promised to drive off the fears and disorders of a sick soul were sick themselves with ridiculous fear. For even if nothing disturbing frightened them, yet, scared by the passing of beasts and the hissing of serpents, they perished in trembling fear, refusing to look even at the air, though it nowhere could be avoided.
“For wickedness is a cowardly thing, condemned by its own testimony; distressed by conscience, it has always exaggerated the difficulties. For fear is nothing but the surrender of the helps that come from reason; and the inner expectation of help, being weak, prefers ignorance of what causes the torment. But throughout the night, which was really powerless, and which beset them from the recesses of powerless Hades, they all slept the same sleep, and now were driven by monstrous spectres, and now they were paralysed by their souls’ surrender, for sudden and unexpected fear overwhelmed them”. (Wisdom 17:1-4, 6-15).
These verses from the Book of Wisdom give us a graphic insight into the abject terror and confusion that fell upon the Egyptians during that penultimate plague of the Three Days of Darkness (Exodus 10:22), which God, just prior to the Exodus, brought down upon unrepentant Egypt. They are also a most appropriate description of the eternal abode of the damned: that is, Hell. There, nothing makes sense. All is darkness and confusion, noise and terror. Rationality is nowhere to be found in this house of torture: reason has been surrendered to ignorance. It is a Hades of appalling grief and despair. The damned are ‘dismal phantoms with gloomy faces’. The faces of the demons, which prowl through the darkness in the form of hissing serpents, or of wild beasts, are miserific.
The Third Apparition: 13th of July
Our Lady of Fatima’s July apparition is a particuarly notable one for many reasons. It commenced in the usual way, with Our Lady insisting once again on the need for daily recitation of the Rosary:
“You must recite the Rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary to obtain peace for this world and the end of the war, for only She can obtain this”. (“More About Fatima”, p. 23).
Lucia then ventured to ask the Lady to say who She was, and to perform a miracle in order that all might believe in the reality of the apparitions. The Lady of Light graciously agreed to satisfy both of these requests, promising that She would do this on the occasion of Her final visit to the Cova da Iria:
“Continue to come here on the thirteenth of each month, and on October 13th I shall say who I am and what I want, and I shall work a great miracle in order that all may believe”. (Ibid., p. 24).
Then the tempo of the message increased dramatically. Our Lady’s face grew very grave as She reminded the three children of their important mission:
“Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say often, especially when you make sacrifices: O Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the offences committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary”. (Ibid.).
With these words She opened Her hands, projecting a beam of light into the bowels of the earth, where the children saw a vision of Hell. Lucia’s account of this terrible vision runs as follows:
“… we saw as it were a vast sea of fire, in which were plunged, all blackened and burnt, demons and souls in human form like transparent brands. Raised into the air by the flames they fell back in all directions, like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or poise, amidst loud cries and horrible groans of pain and despair which caused us to shudder and tremble with fear. The demons were distinguished by the horrible and repellent forms of terrible unknown animals, like brands of fire black yet transparent”. (Ibid., p. 62).
“This scene lasted an instant”, Lucia recalled, “and we must thank Our Heavenly Mother who had prepared us beforehand by promising to take us to Heaven with her; otherwise I believe that we should have died of fear and terror”. (ibid.).
The fact that the three children had seen a vision of Hell was never divulged by any of them whilst Jacinta and Francisco were still alive. It was not until ten years later that Lucia, in the chapel at Tuy (Spain), received permission from Heaven to speak about the vision. But to the onlookers in close proximity to the children during the apparition of the 13th of July, in 1917, Lucia’s gestures betrayed the fact that something very disturbing was happening on that occasion. They saw Lucia’s face take on an expression of great sorrow, whilst at the same time they heard her cry: “Oh!”
When, after the apparition, those who had seen Lucia’s great anguish wished to know the cause of it, she simply told them that it was a “secret”. And when pressed for more detail as to whether this secret was “good” or “bad”, Lucia told them that in regard to herself and her cousins, it was “good”, and that in regard to others:
“For some it is good, for others bad” (Ibid., p. 24).
It may be that there is even an echo of this again in the Book of Esther. King Ahasuerus, having been won over to the Jewish cause by Queen Esther, thereupon gave permission for Mordecai to dictate to the king’s secretaries a new edict, whose purpose would be to counteract the cruel edict of Haman (cf. 8:9-14 & ch. 16). Now it is in the latter part of this benign edict that we seem to find a ringing echo of Lucia’s own phrase: “For some it is good, for others bad”. Thus we read in Mordecai’s words to the rulers of all the king’s provinces that the 13th of the month Adar, the date set down formerly by Haman for the destruction of all the Jews, would now instead become
“a notable day amongst [the Jewish] commemorative festivals, so that both now and hereafter it may mean salvation for us and the loyal Persians, but that for those who plot aganst us it may be a reminder of destruction” (16:22, 23);
in other words, “good” for some, “bad” for others.
“Salvation” apparently is the key word in this concluding part of Mordecai’s edict, linking it with Lucia’s own veiled comment on the vision of Hell, Since the word “salvation” has an unequivocal meaning in any context dealing with the ultimate destiny of human souls, there can be little doubt that Lucia’s, “For some it is good, for others bad”, is meant to be taken in the eschatological sense: “good” for those who will embrace salvation, “bad” for those who won’t, and who are therefore destined for everlasting “destruction”.
In regard to the three famous “secrets” of Fatima – all made known to Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, during the 13th of July apparition – Our Lady began by first presenting to the children what might well be called the negative aspect of Her message: the “secret” of the vision of Hell. Since, as the greatest philosophers have told us, evil is to be defined as a “privation”, or a “lack of something” – “a lack of due good”, or “a lack of being” – it can be talked about only in negative terms. There is nothing intrinsically positive about evil. This applies most especially (a fortiori) to Hell, which must therefore be regarded as the most abysmal of all privations or lackings, since it means for those who go there to be deprived for all eternity of having possession of the ultimate Good - the Beatific Vision of the God-head.
But it was fitting that Our Lady of Fatima should, in Her heavenly dialogue with the twentieth century, first put forward the antithesis of Her case, in order to show the ultimate end of those who willingly choose ignorance and error in preference to wisdom and right reason. For it is only in stark contrast to the negative part of their argument, the anti-thesis, that the great philosophers have been able to demonstrate the validity, the strength, of the positive side of their argument, known as the thesis. From this dialectical process there should emerge a synthesis: a progression in reasoning, new ideas, a system of new knowledge.
We might say that Our Lady, on the 13th of July at Fatima, used the dialectical method on a cosmic scale, to impress our modern world the total justifiability of Her heavenly message. And the Marian synthesis, realized at Fatima in regard to the dialectical extremes of good and evil, appears to have been well understood by John Paul II, when, during, his 1982 visit of thanksgiving to Fatima – “the altar of the world”, “the new Mount Sinai”, the “city of Mary” – he told his audience:
“Consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means returning beneath the Cross of the Son. It means consecrating this world to the pierced Heart of the Saviour, bringing it back to the very source of its Redemption”.
“Redemption”, said John Paul II, “is always greater than sin, individual or collective, is infinitely superior to the whole range of evil in man and the world. The Heart of Mary, the Mother, is more aware of this, more than any other heart in the whole universe, visible and invisible”. (SOUL Magazine, May-June, 1986, p. 12).
As John Paul II’s words attest, and as we are going to discover again and again in this book, never – throughout each successive phase of salvation history – has Heaven permitted Satan to promulgate anew his cruel edict for the “destruction” of souls without Itself immediately coming to the rescue with a benign, and “infinitely superior”, edict of “salvation”.
Nor would things be any different at Fatima in the twentieth century. For on no account would the Blessed Virgin Mary have taken the unprecedented step of allowing three young children to see a vision of Hell – the very embodiment of Satan’s cruel edict of “destruction” – had She not intended immediately to counteract this horrific reality with Heaven’s “infinitely superior” remedy. Had not Our Lady already in fact, during Her previous apparition in June, promised eternal salvation – and therefore avoidance of Hell – to all those who would faithfully practice the devotion which she was now, for the first time, going to name in full? And so just as Mordecai, “in the third month” (8:9), had issued his own counteracting edict, thereby enabling for “the lowly” Jews to be “exalted” and to consume “those held in honour” (11:11), so would Our Lady on the 13th of July, “in the third month” of the Fatima series, come to the aid of Her poor and lowly children by proclaiming, in the very face of Satan as it were, the second phase of God’s great Plan for the salvation of the modern world:
“Communion of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary”.
But before we examine in fuller detail Heaven’s perfect antidote against the Devil’s malice, - which Divine remedy is indeed what this book is all about – we need to go back again briefly to the very beginning of the prototypal enmity, in order to understand better the nature of the role that God has assigned to the Woman in salvation history; for She is God’s most effective Agent – the One whom He has elected to play a special part, in collaboration with Her Divine Son, in unmasking and bringing to naught each subtle conspiracy that the Devil has devised, successively, down through the ages.
The Rise and Fall of Lucifer
In the biblical unfolding of Haman’s conspiracy against the crown, the Holy Spirit allows us distantly to glimpse what must have been the basic pattern of Lucifer’s own revolt against the Godhead. Lucifer undoubtedly, because of his amazing attributes and talents, was already accorded by the Triune God a place of highest honour amongst the angelic hosts of Heaven. But, as Sacred Scripture says, the more that some
“are honoured by the too great kindness of their benefactors, the more proud do [they] become” (Esther 16:2).
That such sadly had become the case with Lucifer is revealed to us, allegorically, through the inspired testimony of the prophet Isaiah. Lucifer, so Isaiah informs us, had allowed arrogant pride to take possession of him so completely that he was now consumed with the following ambitious desire:
‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars [that is, ‘the angels’] of God, I will set my throne on high; I will … ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:13-14).
Lucifer’s entire conversation, as he moved about in the angelic realm, had apparently degenerated into a monologue of blatant egotism: ‘I will …, I will …, I will …. [etc]’, showing no hint of gratitude whatsoever for the marvels that God had so generously worked on his behalf. Obviously he had completely lost contact with the fact that he, despite his immense attributes, was merely a contingent being: one of God’s creatures.
So inveterate had Lucifer become in regard to doing his own thing that he no longer bothered to consider what might be God’s will for him. The foolish creature, having become utterly mesmerised by his own magnificence and exaltation, must now begin to fancy himself as being on a par, virtually, with the Creator. ‘I will make myself like the Most High’. The good angels realised that this was intolerable blasphemy. Some, no doubt, would have tried to ‘reason’ with him. It is not hard for us to believe, for instance, that the mighty Archangel who now leads the heavenly armies, must have dome everything in his power to try to divert his reckless colleague away from the path of destruction. And whilst that Archangel failed in the end to save the obdurate Lucifer, he nevertheless, because of his profound humility and gratitude to God, earned for himself the glorious name Micha-el: ‘Who is like the Most High God?’
Since Lucifer was not alone in his rebellious pride, but had willing partners who shared in his lofty ambitions, John Paul II could rightly say that the Devil, who is truly a person – as indeed Holy Scripture testifies – “is not only that but a togetherness of evil spirits” (SOUL magazine, Jan-Feb, 1987).
Theologians have spent a lot of time speculating as to the kind of trial that God must have put before His angels, to test their humility and their loyalty. Most likely, they think, in view of the tremendous plan of the Incarnation and the supreme dignity to be accorded to the human nature of Christ Our Lord, the test of the angels’ humility might have been for example a Divine command that they be prepared to worship God in the lowly human form. Indeed, if the Book of Esther has any sort of bearing on this particular matter, such an opinion – as we shall see below – might seem to receive support from the possibly parallel scenario of the rise and fall of Haman.
Presuming for the time being that the test of the angles was indeed this command to worship the Word in human flesh, then such an act demanding from the angels the profoundest humility would have been, in the case of Lucifer and his followers, utterly unthinkable and abhorrent. It was then that the clandestine rebellion of the unfaithful angels suddenly erupted into open revolt, and everywhere throughout their ranks was heard the defiant cry: ‘I will not serve’. And Lucifer, because he had done this thing (Genesis 3:14) of masterminding the primeval conspiracy against the Godhead, also acquired a new name; but in his case it was the unflattering one of ‘Satan’, the ‘Adversary’.
Since the same pattern of pride re-emerges in the case of Haman the Agagite, we might refer once more to the scriptural account of his rise and fall, in order to glean – by way of parallel again – some further possible insight into what might have been the particular stumbling-block that stood in the way of Lucifer and his mighty ambitions.
Haman, who was aspiring to the very kingship, could not endure to see a mere palace official – and even worse, a member of the despised Jewish race – one Mordecai, refusing to bow down and to do obeisance to him. That Mordecai’s defiance rankled more in Haman’s psyche than anything else is apparent from an illuminating conversation – really, as in the case of Lucifer, a monologue – that Haman, then at the height of his prestige and power, spoke before his wife and friends (Esther 5:10-13). This, Haman’s autobiography of self-adulation, presented in the Book of Esther in the third person, would have come from the lips of Haman, of course, in the first person. Translating it back into its original form, therefore, we get the following egotistical sequence of boasts:
‘I am now an extremely wealthy man, I have many sons, I have had promotion upon promotion from the king. I have been advanced by the king above all his princes and his servants. And to cap it all off, this very day, I, and I alone, accompanied the king to the banquet that Queen Esther herself prepared. I have even been invited to do the same again tomorrow’.
But then comes the crunch line:
‘Yet all this does me no good, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate’ (5:11-13).
Little did the conceited Haman realise at that stage that even the banquets to which Queen Esther had recently invited him, far from being intended as occasions for any further exaltation of the man, were in actual fact part of an intricate web that she was spinning, to bring about Haman’s downfall. Esther who, even as queen, had remained obedient to her uncle Mordecai (2:20), had gone into action immediately in response to the latter’s urgent cry for help on behalf of the Jewish people, when, with Haman’s edict before his eyes, Mordecai begged Queen Esther:
‘Beseech the Lord and speak to the king concerning us and deliver us from death’ ( 4:8).
One and the Same Decree of Predestination
The life and death struggle against Haman, in which Esther and Mordecai had become engaged on behalf of the Jewish people, is reminiscent of what Pope Pius XII had called
“that struggle which was common to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Her Divine Son … against the infernal foe”. (“Munificentissimus Deus”, #39).
Mordecai and Esther, therefore, are types of the Woman and Her Divine Son in their everlasting conflict with the infernal Serpent. Thus it is fitting that Mordecai will be designated by the king as “our saviour and perpetual benefactor” (16:13); and by one of the king’s chief eunuchs as “Mordecai, whose word saved the king” (7:9), whilst the king will refer to Esther as “the blameless partner of our kingdom” (16:13).
In the scriptural narrative, Mordecai and Esther precede Haman in time. For Mordecai had already won fame in the king’s sight by saving his life, and Esther had already found favour with the king, who married her, when – “after these things”, as we read – Haman the Agagite makes his appearance as the rising star in the kingdom (3:1). Because of Mordecai’s foresight, the king apparently had no idea that Esther was Jewish; for we read that Queen Esther
“had not made known her kindred or her people, as Mordecai had charged her; for Esther obeyed Mordecai just as when she was brought up by him” (2:20).
Reading between the lines here, we get the distinct impression that Mordecai, from the very outset, knew about Haman and had anticipated the trouble that the latter was capable of causing.
In like fashion, the Woman and Her Son precede Lucifer in the mind of God. Both could say, in the words of the book of Proverbs, that:
“The Lord created Me at the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of old” (8:2).
Pope Pius XII, quoting Pius IX, also described the common and eternal bond that exists between the Mother and Her Son, when he said that
“… there revered Mother of God, ‘from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same Decree of Predestination’ …” (Ibid., #40). .
Just as Mordecai had from the outset anticipated the threat to his people that Haman would pose, so did the Word Incarnate have the measure of Lucifer right from the start.
It was Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh and born of the Virgin Mary, Who would prove therefore to be the definitive stumbling-block for Lucifer and the rebel angels. These purely spiritual beings could not endure the thought of bowing down to a God clothed in weak human flesh. That thought must have rankled sorely in Lucifer’s mind until he could bear it no longer. We can picture him in his state of restless agitation, moving about in the midst of other wicked spirits. Though habitually boastful, Lucifer must also have felt constrained often, like Haman, to punctuate his boorish speech with the protest:
“Yet all this does me no good, so long as I see Jesus Christ the Jew sitting at the King’s gate”.
And just as in the story of Esther, “Haman, son of Hammedatha”, forced to forfeit his title of “father” in the kingdom of Persia (cf. 3:1 & 16:11), and seen “falling” (7:8), would soon be slain along with his ten sons (cf. 7:10 & 9:7-10), so Lucifer, “son of dawn” (Isaiah 14:12), for the same reason forced to forfeit his glorious name so as to be known thereafter as “the father of lies”, and seen “falling … from Heaven” (Luke 10:18), was also ‘slain’ in the sense of his becoming spiritually dead, he and his army of demons.
Satan and his followers were not so much driven out of Heaven, as fled of their own accord. St. Jude says as much when he informs us that:
“The angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day” (v. 6).
But God has not yet confined Satan and his cohorts to the most dreadful fate that finally awaits them: inactivity. Fr. Paine has provided, in the context of St. Luke’s account of the Gerasene swine, the following explanation of the state in which Satan and his demons now find themselves since their departure from Heaven:
“In the place of hell [meaning here the “Abyss” referred to by St. Luke], the demons are frozen face to face with their own despair. They have none of the welcome distractions of wreaking havoc elsewhere or of winning human souls as miserable companions in damnation. So just like the legion of demons driven by Our Lord from the Gerasene demoniac, they are willing to live even in a pig rather than be exorcized all the way down. “They begged Him not to command them to depart into the Abyss” (Luke 8:31). That final exorcism is reserved for the end of time, and only Our Lord can perform it. But till then, the demons are falling through our world. The only variables are how fast they fall, where they are able to hang on the longest, and when the will of God ordains their definitive banishment”. (“His Time is Short”), p. 16).
A Rival Operation
All the way through the history of salvation, since sin fist entered into the universe, the Triune God has employed what Tertullian called “a rival operation”, to turn the Devil’s own schemes upon himself. This dramatic change of fortune against the forces of evil, just when these had appeared to have the upper hand, always leaves them stranded, trapped at their own game, and an easy target for God. It is a process that is wonderfully demonstrated in the Book of Esther, where it is consciously used by the sacred writer to create a dramatic tension. That this same process of “rival operation” runs throughout the entire Scriptures in fact, is attested by Fr. Papali, when he says that: “There is no parallelism in the Scriptures so pronounced and so perfect as between the drama of the fall of man and that of his restoration. St. Paul has emphasised the essential and central point of that contrasting parallel:
“Therefore, as by the offence of one, unto all men to condemnation; so also by the justice of one, unto all men to justification of life. For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just’ (Rom. 5:18-19)”. (“Mother of God”).
Now what is the role of the Woman in this parallel scheme of things? With this question we touch on the heart of the Fatima message. And, as we are going to discover, this role is a central one.
Already, in the Introduction, we briefly considered how Queen Vashti and Queen Esther typify, respectively, the First Eve and the Second Eve. Now, Tertullian used this very example of the Virgin Mary as the ‘Second Eve’, to illustrate exactly what he meant by his term “rival operation”. Thus he wrote (in De Carn. Christ., 17):
“For into Eve, as yet a virgin, had crept the word which was the framer of death, equally into a Virgin was to be introduced the Word of God which was the builder-up of life”.
Now, considering that the hero and heroine in the Book of Esther – that is, Mordecai and Queen Esther – typify (and only typify) respectively Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, then we shall have to go to the New Testament where the final details of their true relationship lie revealed. We may expect Mordecai, even more than Esther, to be the drama’s chief protagonist on the side of good. And whilst it is indeed Mordecai who initiates the action, and who conveys vital instructions to the ever-obedient Queen Esther, it was nevertheless she alone amongst the Jewish race who had any hope of access to the king. If then it is Esther who will stand before the royal presence – though it may mean her life – and plead for mercy:
‘I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish’ (4:16).
then the final answer to this profound mystery, “Why this preference for the Woman as the central figure in the drama?”, cannot be given until They whom Mordecai and Queen Esther typify have made their appearance: namely, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His holy Mother.
We begin our search for the only answer that can completely satisfy us (as far as the limitations of our earthly existence will allow) at the level where two Popes (Pius IX in “Ineffabilis Deus”, 1854, and Pius XII in “Munificentissimus Deus, 1950) have instructed us to look for it: in eternity ….
A little earlier on we had displayed the important text which appears in both of these papal documents:
“… the revered Mother of God, ‘from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same Decree of Predestination’ …”..
Central to the answer is the unbelievable power of an ‘instrument’ in the Divine Mind; power associated with being a ‘causa instrumentalis’ in God’s Hands. To understand fully what is to follow, it is absolutely essential that the truth be accepted as proposed by the holy Catholic Church: that Mary is not only the Mother and the Model, but also the beginning of the Church.
Central in the Mind of God as to this whole Mystery of Fall and Redemption is this Revealed Truth: that Mary, as the New Eve, was at one stage the whole Church when, on that momentous occasion of the Annunciation, She gave Christ the two instruments that he needed under the Divine Decree of Redemption: the physical Body that made Him human and the Mystical Body that made Him Head. And by this simple act of being the singular instrument that Christ needed to redeem the world in the form of a “rival operation” paralleling the Fall, the world became inundated with the Flood of the Incarnation and Redemption; an unleashing of Grace out of all proportion to the status of being a mere human instrument. And the whole core of what this present book is about is that now, by that same decree, this tremendous power of being a ‘causa instrumentalis’ has flowed from Christ the Head, through Mary, through the holy Church to each of its members, i.e. to each of this Mother’s children ….
“Many souls go to Hell because there is no one to pray or to bring sacrifices for them ….”.
Christ prayed and died for these souls. Mary prayed and suffered for them. The holy Church prays and suffers. Yet, according to St. Paul [Col. 1:24] and the above-quoted words of our Lady at Fatima, there is still something lacking, there is still more to be done! Locked up in God’s inscrutable Decree of Predestination lies the decision that other instruments have been set aside and have been given the power to obtain the very special grace equally won by Christ: the removal of individual obstructions to this ‘flood of Grace’; obstructions which, due to fallen human nature, remain present in each parched soul. And unless a substitute can be found in case the instruments, chosen initially, refuse to pass on this flow and secure this individual grace, “many souls go to Hell” ….
We can now appreciate that if Queen Esther’s importance is compared only with Mordecai in the absence of any other point of reference, the result would be that the latter finds himself overshadowed by the queen and put discreetly somewhere in the background. But then, when Mordecai is typified with Jesus Christ, it becomes clear immediately that this ‘hovering somewhere in the background’ is untenable and makes manifest that the true comparison does not lie between Esther and Mordecai, but between Queen Esther and Our Lady. And here again the concept of ‘being an instrument’ is the one that gives the fullest possible explanation to the roles played by the two pairs of participants and so to Our Lady’s true importance.
From Our Blessed Lord’s position in the Drama of the Redemption we learn of the central role played by Mordecai in the drama of the Jewish deliverance. Looking at Jesus, we see that neither He nor Mordecai was in the background, so to speak, waiting in a kind of passive capacity for their respective ‘instruments’ to make up their minds, as appears to have been the state of Adam. No, long before these decisive moments came to pass, both had fully fashioned their chosen instruments for their respective roles. And it is because of this that both Mordecai and Jesus Christ remained the chief operators in their life’s work, since it was through their instruments that they themselves remained at work. It belongs to the essence of a good instrument that the one who uses it remains the chief operator, for no instrument operates by itself. Both Jesus Christ and Mordecai were successful because the instruments they used were fashioned by means of the best possible training: obedience and prayerfulness.
And this way of fashioning a good instrument, and the resulting power that flows from it, are undiminished and are central to this book.
We are now in the best possible position to complete the answer to our original query: ‘Why this preference for the Woman as the central figure in these two dramas?’
The beginning of that answer is that, in God’s Eternal Decree, he had made it the central condition that initially an intelligent female instrument should freely offer her services to the ‘man’ who fashioned her for His work. Thus it is very necessary that Catholics, and so most readers of this book, be fully exposed to the reality of the tremendous power that is unleashed from this position of ‘instrumental status’, either for evil (Eve) or for good (Our Blessed Lady, prefigured by Queen Esther).
Obviously Eve was initially fashioned by God to be fit for that position of tremendous ‘instrumental power’, so as to unleash natural as well as supernatural life on earth. Yet, being an intelligent creature, she had to choose freely to submit to that position of being a powerful instrument.
Thus her ‘fashioning’ had to be completed by obedience and prayer. That is where her ‘head’, her husband Adam, should have stepped in, like Mordecai did with Esther when she was entrusted to him for that very purpose. Should Adam have been aware of the dark doubts and the secret restlessness of his wife’s spiritual make-up; signs that the Devil recognized only too well, from the lead-up to his own downfall, as foreboding the release of tremendous power for evil? So, at the forbidden tree, who took over the ‘crash-course’ for the ‘fashioning of Eve’ …? As Fr. Papali puts it:
“We know it was essentially the sin of Adam that ruined mankind, and yet the fact remains that it was in the power of Eve to bring it about or to avert it. And she brought it about. As it was, her sin constituted the total occasion and cause without which the fall actually would not have taken place. … By Eve Adam fell and through Eve he propagates the consequences of his fall. [And we may add here: ‘Through Mary, Christ redeemed, and it is through Mary that He propagates His Redemption’!] Eve is at once the cause and complement of the sin of Adam [in the same sense that Mary is the cause and complement of the Redemption]. The parallel [with the New Adam and the New Eve] holds good here. It is the merit of Christ that saves us. But the infinite goodness of God has planned it all in such a way that the whole redemptive work of Christ was so conditioned by Mary’s will and complemented by her merits, that, in a marvellous manner, the work has become her doing as well. Though it is Christ who redeems us and her, she truly works redemption with Him”. (Mother of God, p. 72).
Is it not in her role as Mordecai’s obedient, intelligent, willing and courageous instrument that Queen Esther is such a powerful prefiguration of Our Blessed Lady? Not, that is, of Our Lady as endowed with the privileges of Her Immaculate Conception and Her Divine Motherhood, but of Our Lady as instrument, i.e. Our Lady as Woman, the ‘New Eve’, whose Head, the New Adam, after His slumber on the Cross, works throughout humanity by means of His Mystical Body the Church, the instrument with which She provided Him from Her own substance.
And is this not Her unique role through Her apparitions at Fatima: to fashion such children ‘after Her own Heart and after the Heart of Her Son, obedient for us unto death’? This provides us all with an opportunity as the obedient, intelligent, willing and courageous children of the Church (i.e. as Her instruments!), to allow Her to continue her own role as instrument, and to unleash, throughout the length and breadth of humanity, all the graces for which She has earned the title ‘Mediatrix’. What greater glory can we give to our Blessed Mother than to allow Her to continue, and so to complete, Her own calling in and through us!
Going still deeper, this means of course allowing Her Head to do what, according to the Eternal Decree, He was sent to do: to save the world by means of instruments, especially through that particular instrument, His Mother. Which finally means honouring the Most Blessed Trinity by allowing Its Decree safe passage through us, giving full reign to its results: the unleashing of all its saving powers through the Humanity of the Son and His ‘New Eve’: Mary-as-the-Church, the first chosen instruments.
With all this in mind, we should have a better understanding of the way in which the ‘rival operation’ in the Esther story sheds light on the essence of its counterpart: the Fatima story. It will also considerably enhance our understanding of Our Heavenly Mother’s insistence on obedience later on.
There was an intrinsic peculiarity to ancient Medo-Persian law that – as king Ahasuerus explains it in the Book of Esther:
“an edict written in the name of the king and sealed with the king’s ring cannot be revoked” (8:7-8).
This meant that once a king of the Medes and Persians had promulgated a law in this fashion, he too was completely bound by it. He could do nothing whatsoever to reverse it, even if afterwards he had some to realise that it was full of dire ramifications. He must sit idly by and let the edict run its full course. That so ridiculous and irrational a law was open to exploitation by unscrupulous subordinates is attested in Daniel’s time, when king Darius the Mede was tricked in this way by the governors and prefects of his kingdom into consigning his friend Daniel to the den of lions; and was powerless afterwards to do anything about it (cf. Daniel 6:6-18). [In my Daniel and Esther series, I actually identify this Darius the Mede with Ahasuerus, and Daniel, with Mordecai: http://bookofdaniel.blog.com and http://bookofesther.blog.com]. Nor was someone as wily as Haman ever going to overlook this foible in Medo-Persian law, but would exploit it to the full. From the point of view of the Jews, on the other hand, this peculiar interpretation of the law would mean that their intercessor Queen Esther, despite being promised by the king whatever she requested, could not however have the first edict annulled. Her only option would be to persuade the king to write another, counteracting edict.
This brings us back to God’s Decree in the brilliant context of a “rival operation”. The impossibility of countermanding a Medo-Persian decree reflects ‘the impossibility of countermanding a Divine Decree’ [Pope Pius XII in 1948, quoting St. Augustine]. So ‘death as punishment’ stands.
But the ingenious “rival operation” set in motion by the Medo-Persian king - since its description in Sacred Scripture was inspired by God Himself - gives us a unique insight into the Divine Rival Operation: to work everywhere alongside the original one until it has been nullified. In the Divine scenario this leads, through the death on the Cross of the Rival Operation’s Chief Protagonist, to turning ‘inevitable death’ into the necessary gateway into Life in Heaven.
A “rival operation” always leaves Satan defeated and empty-handed. Throughout Salvation history, his losing streak is continually being exposed by the crushing defeats that his “seed” must endure at the hands of the Woman and Her offspring. The case of Haman is a classic example of this; and while it would take too long for us to describe here all the wonderful array of parallel situations to be found throughout the story of Esther, it will suffice to know that Haman’s complete downfall is accomplished through the very means by which he had intended to achieve total victory.
We may now find our way back to Fatima on the 13th of July, and to the vision of Hell. Nowhere are the Devil’s empty promises, to those who would be seduced by him, shown up for what they really are as in the ultimate futility of Hell. This fact has already been made patently clear in the terrifying description of Hell given by Lucia. It may be worthwhile to reinforce the impression of that vision with the graphic account by a Saint, Anthony Mary Claret, of the “Pains of Hell”, in the hope that the total picture might serve as a strong deterrent to any who may be thinking, like Eve, that there are benefits to be gained by succumbing to the Devil’s seductive proposals. Here is a brief part of the Saint’s account:
“First the fire is all-extensive and tortures the whole body and the whole soul. A damned person lies in hell forever in the same spot which he was assigned by divine justice, without being able to move, as a prisoner in stocks. The fire in which he is totally enveloped, as a fish in water, burns around him, on his left, his right, above and below. His head, his breast, his shoulders, his arms, his hands, and his feet are all penetrated with fire, so that he completely resembles a glowing hot piece of iron which has just been withdrawn from a oven. The roof beneath which the damned person dwells is fire; the food he takes is fire; the drink he tastes is fire; the air he breathes is fire; whatever he sees and touches is all fire … But this fire is not merely outside him; it also passes within the condemned person. It penetrates his brain, his teeth, his tongue, his throat, his liver, his lungs, his bowels, his belly, his heart, his veins, his liver, his nerves, his bones, even to the marrow, even to his blood” (Soul magazine, July-August, 1990).
Given what occurred at the Cova da Iria on the 13th of July, there can be no entertaining the suggestion sometimes made that, since Hell is such a frightening prospect, it should not be spoken about to children. Almighty God, through the agency of Our Lady of Fatima, did not hesitate to show Hell to three children; even though one of them, Jacinta, was only seven, and despite the fact that He knew that the vision would so terrify Jacinta that Lucia could say (as quoted by Baker, “The Finger of God is Here”, p. 59):
“I almost guarantee to the point of wasting away through fear”. And again: “The sight of hell horrified Jacinta to such an extent, that all the penances and the acts of mortification that she could do, seemed a mere nothing to save souls from damnation”.
Nor was John Paul II averse to making explicit and lengthy statements about the Devil and Hell. At Fatima in 1982 for instance, in a speech directed especially against the atheistic tendencies of the C20th, he explained that the greatest obstacle to man’s journey towards God is sin, perseverance in sin, and finally denial of God: “The deliberate blotting out of God from the world of human thought. The detachment from Him of the whole of man’s earthly activity. The rejection of God by man”. In reality, he added, “the eternal salvation of man is only in God. Man’s rejection of God, if it becomes definitive, leads logically to God’s rejection of man (cf. Matthew 7:23, 10:33), to damnation” (“L’Osservatore Romano”, May 17 & 24, 1982).
Again during 1986, not long after he had given a series of talks on the rôle of the angels, John Paul II delivered what Vatican experts think to have been the longest discourse on Satan by a modern Pope; long because – according to their explanation of it:
“The Holy Father thinks civilization is living in one of its most critical moments because of the evil among men”.
In the midst of this discourse, John Paul II suddenly raised his head, surprising his audience as he shouted: “Watch out for the Devil!”
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Filled with fear after seeing the vision of Hell, the three children raised their eyes beseechingly to Our Lady, who said to them with words of unspeakable tenderness:
“You have just seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go. In order to save them, God wishes to establish in the word DEVOTION TO MY IMMACULATE HEART. If people do what I shall tell you, many souls will be saved and there will be peace” (“More About Fatima”, p. 62).
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, about which Our Lady would have more to say shortly, is therefore the “second secret” revealed by Her to the three children during Her apparition of the 13th of July. It is Heaven’s new edict, proclaimed by Our Lady of the Rosary so as to counteract the “first secret”: Satan’s ‘edict’ of Hell and damnation. Our Lady was also about to apprise the three children of a “third secret” – hitherto unrevealed to the public, as She proceeded to make the following staggering predictions:
“The War [1914-1918] will end soon. But if men do not stop offending God, it will not be long before another and worse one begins: that will be in the reign of Pius XI. When you see the night illuminated by an unknown light know that it is the great sign which God is giving you, indicating that the world, on account of its innumerable crimes, will soon be punished by war, famine, and persecutions against the Church and the Holy Father” (“More About Fatima”, pp. 62-63).
Then, for the first time, Our Lady named in full the devotion to her Immaculate Heart, presenting it – as well as the Consecration of Russia to Her Heart – as the means to prevent these impending chastisements:
“In order to stop it, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, as well as COMMUNION OF REPARATION ON THE FIRST SATURDAYS OF THE MONTH. If My wishes are fulfilled, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, then Russia will spread errors throughout the world, bringing new wars and persecution of the Church; the good will be martyred and the Holy Father will have much to suffer; several entire nations will be annihilated” (Ibid., p. 63).
It was at this stage that Our Lady revealed the famous “third secret”, which Lucia later wrote down and sealed in an envelope to be opened in 1960, or on her death, whichever should be sooner. Later on we shall have a bit more to say about the fate of that “secret” [the Vatican in fact revealed this secret to the public on May 13 of 2000, since this book was originally written]. Our Lady went on:
“The outlook is therefore gloomy, but there is a ray of hope. In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me. Russia will be converted, and the world will enjoy a period of peace. In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved. Remember, you must not tell this to anyone except Francisco”.
It should be noted that, whilst all three children could see the lady, Francisco could not hear what She was saying. And only Lucia ever spoke to her. Finally Our Lady added:
“When you recite the Rosary, say at the end of each decade:
‘O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fire of Hell, and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who most need thy mercy” (Ibid.).
Obviously, since the punishments which Our Lady of Fatima foretold were preceded by the conditional “If …”, the degree of alleviation from the suffering to be meted out to the world would be proportional to the degree of response to Her requests for the amendment of lives and the practice of the First Five Saturdays. As early as 1919 Jacinta, whilst stating that:
“Our Lady could no longer uphold the arm of Her Divine Son which will strike the world”, added that: “If people amend their lives, Our Lord will even now save the world, but if they do not, punishment will come” (Johnston, op. cit., p. 84).
We have only to recall the terrifying and unforgettable circumstances accompanying the 13th of July apparition, to realise that Our Lady of Fatima meant Her new program – Her new edict – to be taken very seriously. The scene on that day at Fatima, sometimes described as “the new Sinai”, was truly reminiscent of that occasion when Moses received the Ten Commandments from the hand of God on Mount Sinai. St. Paul has described it vividly in terms of:
“… a blazing fire, the darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them … Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear’” (Hebrews 12:18-21).
But this time, at Fatima, three small children would be the trembling recipients of Heaven‘s proclamation of the Communion of Reparation devotion; a proclamation which was prefaced by a vision far more fearful even than anything that Moses experienced on Mount Sinai. This was the electrifying vision of Hell! Despite its brief duration, the vision of Hell etched itself so profoundly into the hearts and minds of Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, that it would never be effaced.
The Rise and Fall of Lucifer
In the biblical unfolding of Haman’s conspiracy against the crown, the Holy Spirit allows us distantly to glimpse what must have been the basic pattern of Lucifer’s own revolt against the Godhead. Lucifer undoubtedly, because of his amazing attributes and talents, was already accorded by the Triune God a place of highest honour amongst the angelic hosts of Heaven. But, as Sacred Scripture says, the more that some
“are honoured by the too great kindness of their benefactors, the more proud do [they] become” (Esther 16:2).
That such sadly had become the case with Lucifer is revealed to us, allegorically, through the inspired testimony of the prophet Isaiah. Lucifer, so Isaiah informs us, had allowed arrogant pride to take possession of him so completely that he was now consumed with the following ambitious desire:
‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars [that is, ‘the angels’] of God, I will set my throne on high; I will … ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:13-14).
Lucifer’s entire conversation, as he moved about in the angelic realm, had apparently degenerated into a monologue of blatant egotism: ‘I will …, I will …, I will …. [etc]’, showing no hint of gratitude whatsoever for the marvels that God had so generously worked on his behalf. Obviously he had completely lost contact with the fact that he, despite his immense attributes, was merely a contingent being: one of God’s creatures.
So inveterate had Lucifer become in regard to doing his own thing that he no longer bothered to consider what might be God’s will for him. The foolish creature, having become utterly mesmerised by his own magnificence and exaltation, must now begin to fancy himself as being on a par, virtually, with the Creator. ‘I will make myself like the Most High’. The good angels realised that this was intolerable blasphemy. Some, no doubt, would have tried to ‘reason’ with him. It is not hard for us to believe, for instance, that the mighty Archangel who now leads the heavenly armies, must have dome everything in his power to try to divert his reckless colleague away from the path of destruction. And whilst that Archangel failed in the end to save the obdurate Lucifer, he nevertheless, because of his profound humility and gratitude to God, earned for himself the glorious name Micha-el: ‘Who is like the Most High God?’
Since Lucifer was not alone in his rebellious pride, but had willing partners who shared in his lofty ambitions, John Paul II could rightly say that the Devil, who is truly a person – as indeed Holy Scripture testifies – “is not only that but a togetherness of evil spirits” (SOUL magazine, Jan-Feb, 1987).
Theologians have spent a lot of time speculating as to the kind of trial that God must have put before His angels, to test their humility and their loyalty. Most likely, they think, in view of the tremendous plan of the Incarnation and the supreme dignity to be accorded to the human nature of Christ Our Lord, the test of the angels’ humility might have been for example a Divine command that they be prepared to worship God in the lowly human form. Indeed, if the Book of Esther has any sort of bearing on this particular matter, such an opinion – as we shall see below – might seem to receive support from the possibly parallel scenario of the rise and fall of Haman.
Presuming for the time being that the test of the angles was indeed this command to worship the Word in human flesh, then such an act demanding from the angels the profoundest humility would have been, in the case of Lucifer and his followers, utterly unthinkable and abhorrent. It was then that the clandestine rebellion of the unfaithful angels suddenly erupted into open revolt, and everywhere throughout their ranks was heard the defiant cry: ‘I will not serve’. And Lucifer, because he had done this thing (Genesis 3:14) of masterminding the primeval conspiracy against the Godhead, also acquired a new name; but in his case it was the unflattering one of ‘Satan’, the ‘Adversary’.
Since the same pattern of pride re-emerges in the case of Haman the Agagite, we might refer once more to the scriptural account of his rise and fall, in order to glean – by way of parallel again – some further possible insight into what might have been the particular stumbling-block that stood in the way of Lucifer and his mighty ambitions.
Haman, who was aspiring to the very kingship, could not endure to see a mere palace official – and even worse, a member of the despised Jewish race – one Mordecai, refusing to bow down and to do obeisance to him. That Mordecai’s defiance rankled more in Haman’s psyche than anything else is apparent from an illuminating conversation – really, as in the case of Lucifer, a monologue – that Haman, then at the height of his prestige and power, spoke before his wife and friends (Esther 5:10-13). This, Haman’s autobiography of self-adulation, presented in the Book of Esther in the third person, would have come from the lips of Haman, of course, in the first person. Translating it back into its original form, therefore, we get the following egotistical sequence of boasts:
‘I am now an extremely wealthy man, I have many sons, I have had promotion upon promotion from the king. I have been advanced by the king above all his princes and his servants. And to cap it all off, this very day, I, and I alone, accompanied the king to the banquet that Queen Esther herself prepared. I have even been invited to do the same again tomorrow’.
But then comes the crunch line:
‘Yet all this does me no good, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate’ (5:11-13).
Little did the conceited Haman realise at that stage that even the banquets to which Queen Esther had recently invited him, far from being intended as occasions for any further exaltation of the man, were in actual fact part of an intricate web that she was spinning, to bring about Haman’s downfall. Esther who, even as queen, had remained obedient to her uncle Mordecai (2:20), had gone into action immediately in response to the latter’s urgent cry for help on behalf of the Jewish people, when, with Haman’s edict before his eyes, Mordecai begged Queen Esther:
‘Beseech the Lord and speak to the king concerning us and deliver us from death’ ( 4:8).
One and the Same Decree of Predestination
The life and death struggle against Haman, in which Esther and Mordecai had become engaged on behalf of the Jewish people, is reminiscent of what Pope Pius XII had called
“that struggle which was common to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Her Divine Son … against the infernal foe”. (“Munificentissimus Deus”, #39).
Mordecai and Esther, therefore, are types of the Woman and Her Divine Son in their everlasting conflict with the infernal Serpent. Thus it is fitting that Mordecai will be designated by the king as “our saviour and perpetual benefactor” (16:13); and by one of the king’s chief eunuchs as “Mordecai, whose word saved the king” (7:9), whilst the king will refer to Esther as “the blameless partner of our kingdom” (16:13).
In the scriptural narrative, Mordecai and Esther precede Haman in time. For Mordecai had already won fame in the king’s sight by saving his life, and Esther had already found favour with the king, who married her, when – “after these things”, as we read – Haman the Agagite makes his appearance as the rising star in the kingdom (3:1). Because of Mordecai’s foresight, the king apparently had no idea that Esther was Jewish; for we read that Queen Esther
“had not made known her kindred or her people, as Mordecai had charged her; for Esther obeyed Mordecai just as when she was brought up by him” (2:20).
Reading between the lines here, we get the distinct impression that Mordecai, from the very outset, knew about Haman and had anticipated the trouble that the latter was capable of causing.
In like fashion, the Woman and Her Son precede Lucifer in the mind of God. Both could say, in the words of the book of Proverbs, that:
“The Lord created Me at the beginning of His work, the first of His acts of old” (8:2).
Pope Pius XII, quoting Pius IX, also described the common and eternal bond that exists between the Mother and Her Son, when he said that
“… there revered Mother of God, ‘from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same Decree of Predestination’ …” (Ibid., #40). .
Just as Mordecai had from the outset anticipated the threat to his people that Haman would pose, so did the Word Incarnate have the measure of Lucifer right from the start.
It was Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh and born of the Virgin Mary, Who would prove therefore to be the definitive stumbling-block for Lucifer and the rebel angels. These purely spiritual beings could not endure the thought of bowing down to a God clothed in weak human flesh. That thought must have rankled sorely in Lucifer’s mind until he could bear it no longer. We can picture him in his state of restless agitation, moving about in the midst of other wicked spirits. Though habitually boastful, Lucifer must also have felt constrained often, like Haman, to punctuate his boorish speech with the protest:
“Yet all this does me no good, so long as I see Jesus Christ the Jew sitting at the King’s gate”.
And just as in the story of Esther, “Haman, son of Hammedatha”, forced to forfeit his title of “father” in the kingdom of Persia (cf. 3:1 & 16:11), and seen “falling” (7:8), would soon be slain along with his ten sons (cf. 7:10 & 9:7-10), so Lucifer, “son of dawn” (Isaiah 14:12), for the same reason forced to forfeit his glorious name so as to be known thereafter as “the father of lies”, and seen “falling … from Heaven” (Luke 10:18), was also ‘slain’ in the sense of his becoming spiritually dead, he and his army of demons.
Satan and his followers were not so much driven out of Heaven, as fled of their own accord. St. Jude says as much when he informs us that:
“The angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day” (v. 6).
But God has not yet confined Satan and his cohorts to the most dreadful fate that finally awaits them: inactivity. Fr. Paine has provided, in the context of St. Luke’s account of the Gerasene swine, the following explanation of the state in which Satan and his demons now find themselves since their departure from Heaven:
“In the place of hell [meaning here the “Abyss” referred to by St. Luke], the demons are frozen face to face with their own despair. They have none of the welcome distractions of wreaking havoc elsewhere or of winning human souls as miserable companions in damnation. So just like the legion of demons driven by Our Lord from the Gerasene demoniac, they are willing to live even in a pig rather than be exorcized all the way down. “They begged Him not to command them to depart into the Abyss” (Luke 8:31). That final exorcism is reserved for the end of time, and only Our Lord can perform it. But till then, the demons are falling through our world. The only variables are how fast they fall, where they are able to hang on the longest, and when the will of God ordains their definitive banishment”. (“His Time is Short”), p. 16).
A Rival Operation
All the way through the history of salvation, since sin fist entered into the universe, the Triune God has employed what Tertullian called “a rival operation”, to turn the Devil’s own schemes upon himself. This dramatic change of fortune against the forces of evil, just when these had appeared to have the upper hand, always leaves them stranded, trapped at their own game, and an easy target for God. It is a process that is wonderfully demonstrated in the Book of Esther, where it is consciously used by the sacred writer to create a dramatic tension. That this same process of “rival operation” runs throughout the entire Scriptures in fact, is attested by Fr. Papali, when he says that: “There is no parallelism in the Scriptures so pronounced and so perfect as between the drama of the fall of man and that of his restoration. St. Paul has emphasised the essential and central point of that contrasting parallel:
“Therefore, as by the offence of one, unto all men to condemnation; so also by the justice of one, unto all men to justification of life. For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one, many shall be made just’ (Rom. 5:18-19)”. (“Mother of God”).
Now what is the role of the Woman in this parallel scheme of things? With this question we touch on the heart of the Fatima message. And, as we are going to discover, this role is a central one.
Already, in the Introduction, we briefly considered how Queen Vashti and Queen Esther typify, respectively, the First Eve and the Second Eve. Now, Tertullian used this very example of the Virgin Mary as the ‘Second Eve’, to illustrate exactly what he meant by his term “rival operation”. Thus he wrote (in De Carn. Christ., 17):
“For into Eve, as yet a virgin, had crept the word which was the framer of death, equally into a Virgin was to be introduced the Word of God which was the builder-up of life”.
Now, considering that the hero and heroine in the Book of Esther – that is, Mordecai and Queen Esther – typify (and only typify) respectively Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, then we shall have to go to the New Testament where the final details of their true relationship lie revealed. We may expect Mordecai, even more than Esther, to be the drama’s chief protagonist on the side of good. And whilst it is indeed Mordecai who initiates the action, and who conveys vital instructions to the ever-obedient Queen Esther, it was nevertheless she alone amongst the Jewish race who had any hope of access to the king. If then it is Esther who will stand before the royal presence – though it may mean her life – and plead for mercy:
‘I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish’ (4:16).
then the final answer to this profound mystery, “Why this preference for the Woman as the central figure in the drama?”, cannot be given until They whom Mordecai and Queen Esther typify have made their appearance: namely, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His holy Mother.
We begin our search for the only answer that can completely satisfy us (as far as the limitations of our earthly existence will allow) at the level where two Popes (Pius IX in “Ineffabilis Deus”, 1854, and Pius XII in “Munificentissimus Deus, 1950) have instructed us to look for it: in eternity ….
A little earlier on we had displayed the important text which appears in both of these papal documents:
“… the revered Mother of God, ‘from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same Decree of Predestination’ …”..
Central to the answer is the unbelievable power of an ‘instrument’ in the Divine Mind; power associated with being a ‘causa instrumentalis’ in God’s Hands. To understand fully what is to follow, it is absolutely essential that the truth be accepted as proposed by the holy Catholic Church: that Mary is not only the Mother and the Model, but also the beginning of the Church.
Central in the Mind of God as to this whole Mystery of Fall and Redemption is this Revealed Truth: that Mary, as the New Eve, was at one stage the whole Church when, on that momentous occasion of the Annunciation, She gave Christ the two instruments that he needed under the Divine Decree of Redemption: the physical Body that made Him human and the Mystical Body that made Him Head. And by this simple act of being the singular instrument that Christ needed to redeem the world in the form of a “rival operation” paralleling the Fall, the world became inundated with the Flood of the Incarnation and Redemption; an unleashing of Grace out of all proportion to the status of being a mere human instrument. And the whole core of what this present book is about is that now, by that same decree, this tremendous power of being a ‘causa instrumentalis’ has flowed from Christ the Head, through Mary, through the holy Church to each of its members, i.e. to each of this Mother’s children ….
“Many souls go to Hell because there is no one to pray or to bring sacrifices for them ….”.
Christ prayed and died for these souls. Mary prayed and suffered for them. The holy Church prays and suffers. Yet, according to St. Paul [Col. 1:24] and the above-quoted words of our Lady at Fatima, there is still something lacking, there is still more to be done! Locked up in God’s inscrutable Decree of Predestination lies the decision that other instruments have been set aside and have been given the power to obtain the very special grace equally won by Christ: the removal of individual obstructions to this ‘flood of Grace’; obstructions which, due to fallen human nature, remain present in each parched soul. And unless a substitute can be found in case the instruments, chosen initially, refuse to pass on this flow and secure this individual grace, “many souls go to Hell” ….
We can now appreciate that if Queen Esther’s importance is compared only with Mordecai in the absence of any other point of reference, the result would be that the latter finds himself overshadowed by the queen and put discreetly somewhere in the background. But then, when Mordecai is typified with Jesus Christ, it becomes clear immediately that this ‘hovering somewhere in the background’ is untenable and makes manifest that the true comparison does not lie between Esther and Mordecai, but between Queen Esther and Our Lady. And here again the concept of ‘being an instrument’ is the one that gives the fullest possible explanation to the roles played by the two pairs of participants and so to Our Lady’s true importance.
From Our Blessed Lord’s position in the Drama of the Redemption we learn of the central role played by Mordecai in the drama of the Jewish deliverance. Looking at Jesus, we see that neither He nor Mordecai was in the background, so to speak, waiting in a kind of passive capacity for their respective ‘instruments’ to make up their minds, as appears to have been the state of Adam. No, long before these decisive moments came to pass, both had fully fashioned their chosen instruments for their respective roles. And it is because of this that both Mordecai and Jesus Christ remained the chief operators in their life’s work, since it was through their instruments that they themselves remained at work. It belongs to the essence of a good instrument that the one who uses it remains the chief operator, for no instrument operates by itself. Both Jesus Christ and Mordecai were successful because the instruments they used were fashioned by means of the best possible training: obedience and prayerfulness.
And this way of fashioning a good instrument, and the resulting power that flows from it, are undiminished and are central to this book.
We are now in the best possible position to complete the answer to our original query: ‘Why this preference for the Woman as the central figure in these two dramas?’
The beginning of that answer is that, in God’s Eternal Decree, he had made it the central condition that initially an intelligent female instrument should freely offer her services to the ‘man’ who fashioned her for His work. Thus it is very necessary that Catholics, and so most readers of this book, be fully exposed to the reality of the tremendous power that is unleashed from this position of ‘instrumental status’, either for evil (Eve) or for good (Our Blessed Lady, prefigured by Queen Esther).
Obviously Eve was initially fashioned by God to be fit for that position of tremendous ‘instrumental power’, so as to unleash natural as well as supernatural life on earth. Yet, being an intelligent creature, she had to choose freely to submit to that position of being a powerful instrument.
Thus her ‘fashioning’ had to be completed by obedience and prayer. That is where her ‘head’, her husband Adam, should have stepped in, like Mordecai did with Esther when she was entrusted to him for that very purpose. Should Adam have been aware of the dark doubts and the secret restlessness of his wife’s spiritual make-up; signs that the Devil recognized only too well, from the lead-up to his own downfall, as foreboding the release of tremendous power for evil? So, at the forbidden tree, who took over the ‘crash-course’ for the ‘fashioning of Eve’ …? As Fr. Papali puts it:
“We know it was essentially the sin of Adam that ruined mankind, and yet the fact remains that it was in the power of Eve to bring it about or to avert it. And she brought it about. As it was, her sin constituted the total occasion and cause without which the fall actually would not have taken place. … By Eve Adam fell and through Eve he propagates the consequences of his fall. [And we may add here: ‘Through Mary, Christ redeemed, and it is through Mary that He propagates His Redemption’!] Eve is at once the cause and complement of the sin of Adam [in the same sense that Mary is the cause and complement of the Redemption]. The parallel [with the New Adam and the New Eve] holds good here. It is the merit of Christ that saves us. But the infinite goodness of God has planned it all in such a way that the whole redemptive work of Christ was so conditioned by Mary’s will and complemented by her merits, that, in a marvellous manner, the work has become her doing as well. Though it is Christ who redeems us and her, she truly works redemption with Him”. (Mother of God, p. 72).
Is it not in her role as Mordecai’s obedient, intelligent, willing and courageous instrument that Queen Esther is such a powerful prefiguration of Our Blessed Lady? Not, that is, of Our Lady as endowed with the privileges of Her Immaculate Conception and Her Divine Motherhood, but of Our Lady as instrument, i.e. Our Lady as Woman, the ‘New Eve’, whose Head, the New Adam, after His slumber on the Cross, works throughout humanity by means of His Mystical Body the Church, the instrument with which She provided Him from Her own substance.
And is this not Her unique role through Her apparitions at Fatima: to fashion such children ‘after Her own Heart and after the Heart of Her Son, obedient for us unto death’? This provides us all with an opportunity as the obedient, intelligent, willing and courageous children of the Church (i.e. as Her instruments!), to allow Her to continue her own role as instrument, and to unleash, throughout the length and breadth of humanity, all the graces for which She has earned the title ‘Mediatrix’. What greater glory can we give to our Blessed Mother than to allow Her to continue, and so to complete, Her own calling in and through us!
Going still deeper, this means of course allowing Her Head to do what, according to the Eternal Decree, He was sent to do: to save the world by means of instruments, especially through that particular instrument, His Mother. Which finally means honouring the Most Blessed Trinity by allowing Its Decree safe passage through us, giving full reign to its results: the unleashing of all its saving powers through the Humanity of the Son and His ‘New Eve’: Mary-as-the-Church, the first chosen instruments.
With all this in mind, we should have a better understanding of the way in which the ‘rival operation’ in the Esther story sheds light on the essence of its counterpart: the Fatima story. It will also considerably enhance our understanding of Our Heavenly Mother’s insistence on obedience later on.
There was an intrinsic peculiarity to ancient Medo-Persian law that – as king Ahasuerus explains it in the Book of Esther:
“an edict written in the name of the king and sealed with the king’s ring cannot be revoked” (8:7-8).
This meant that once a king of the Medes and Persians had promulgated a law in this fashion, he too was completely bound by it. He could do nothing whatsoever to reverse it, even if afterwards he had some to realise that it was full of dire ramifications. He must sit idly by and let the edict run its full course. That so ridiculous and irrational a law was open to exploitation by unscrupulous subordinates is attested in Daniel’s time, when king Darius the Mede was tricked in this way by the governors and prefects of his kingdom into consigning his friend Daniel to the den of lions; and was powerless afterwards to do anything about it (cf. Daniel 6:6-18). [In my Daniel and Esther series, I actually identify this Darius the Mede with Ahasuerus, and Daniel, with Mordecai: http://bookofdaniel.blog.com and http://bookofesther.blog.com]. Nor was someone as wily as Haman ever going to overlook this foible in Medo-Persian law, but would exploit it to the full. From the point of view of the Jews, on the other hand, this peculiar interpretation of the law would mean that their intercessor Queen Esther, despite being promised by the king whatever she requested, could not however have the first edict annulled. Her only option would be to persuade the king to write another, counteracting edict.
This brings us back to God’s Decree in the brilliant context of a “rival operation”. The impossibility of countermanding a Medo-Persian decree reflects ‘the impossibility of countermanding a Divine Decree’ [Pope Pius XII in 1948, quoting St. Augustine]. So ‘death as punishment’ stands.
But the ingenious “rival operation” set in motion by the Medo-Persian king - since its description in Sacred Scripture was inspired by God Himself - gives us a unique insight into the Divine Rival Operation: to work everywhere alongside the original one until it has been nullified. In the Divine scenario this leads, through the death on the Cross of the Rival Operation’s Chief Protagonist, to turning ‘inevitable death’ into the necessary gateway into Life in Heaven.
A “rival operation” always leaves Satan defeated and empty-handed. Throughout Salvation history, his losing streak is continually being exposed by the crushing defeats that his “seed” must endure at the hands of the Woman and Her offspring. The case of Haman is a classic example of this; and while it would take too long for us to describe here all the wonderful array of parallel situations to be found throughout the story of Esther, it will suffice to know that Haman’s complete downfall is accomplished through the very means by which he had intended to achieve total victory.
We may now find our way back to Fatima on the 13th of July, and to the vision of Hell. Nowhere are the Devil’s empty promises, to those who would be seduced by him, shown up for what they really are as in the ultimate futility of Hell. This fact has already been made patently clear in the terrifying description of Hell given by Lucia. It may be worthwhile to reinforce the impression of that vision with the graphic account by a Saint, Anthony Mary Claret, of the “Pains of Hell”, in the hope that the total picture might serve as a strong deterrent to any who may be thinking, like Eve, that there are benefits to be gained by succumbing to the Devil’s seductive proposals. Here is a brief part of the Saint’s account:
“First the fire is all-extensive and tortures the whole body and the whole soul. A damned person lies in hell forever in the same spot which he was assigned by divine justice, without being able to move, as a prisoner in stocks. The fire in which he is totally enveloped, as a fish in water, burns around him, on his left, his right, above and below. His head, his breast, his shoulders, his arms, his hands, and his feet are all penetrated with fire, so that he completely resembles a glowing hot piece of iron which has just been withdrawn from a oven. The roof beneath which the damned person dwells is fire; the food he takes is fire; the drink he tastes is fire; the air he breathes is fire; whatever he sees and touches is all fire … But this fire is not merely outside him; it also passes within the condemned person. It penetrates his brain, his teeth, his tongue, his throat, his liver, his lungs, his bowels, his belly, his heart, his veins, his liver, his nerves, his bones, even to the marrow, even to his blood” (Soul magazine, July-August, 1990).
Given what occurred at the Cova da Iria on the 13th of July, there can be no entertaining the suggestion sometimes made that, since Hell is such a frightening prospect, it should not be spoken about to children. Almighty God, through the agency of Our Lady of Fatima, did not hesitate to show Hell to three children; even though one of them, Jacinta, was only seven, and despite the fact that He knew that the vision would so terrify Jacinta that Lucia could say (as quoted by Baker, “The Finger of God is Here”, p. 59):
“I almost guarantee to the point of wasting away through fear”. And again: “The sight of hell horrified Jacinta to such an extent, that all the penances and the acts of mortification that she could do, seemed a mere nothing to save souls from damnation”.
Nor was John Paul II averse to making explicit and lengthy statements about the Devil and Hell. At Fatima in 1982 for instance, in a speech directed especially against the atheistic tendencies of the C20th, he explained that the greatest obstacle to man’s journey towards God is sin, perseverance in sin, and finally denial of God: “The deliberate blotting out of God from the world of human thought. The detachment from Him of the whole of man’s earthly activity. The rejection of God by man”. In reality, he added, “the eternal salvation of man is only in God. Man’s rejection of God, if it becomes definitive, leads logically to God’s rejection of man (cf. Matthew 7:23, 10:33), to damnation” (“L’Osservatore Romano”, May 17 & 24, 1982).
Again during 1986, not long after he had given a series of talks on the rôle of the angels, John Paul II delivered what Vatican experts think to have been the longest discourse on Satan by a modern Pope; long because – according to their explanation of it:
“The Holy Father thinks civilization is living in one of its most critical moments because of the evil among men”.
In the midst of this discourse, John Paul II suddenly raised his head, surprising his audience as he shouted: “Watch out for the Devil!”
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Filled with fear after seeing the vision of Hell, the three children raised their eyes beseechingly to Our Lady, who said to them with words of unspeakable tenderness:
“You have just seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go. In order to save them, God wishes to establish in the word DEVOTION TO MY IMMACULATE HEART. If people do what I shall tell you, many souls will be saved and there will be peace” (“More About Fatima”, p. 62).
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, about which Our Lady would have more to say shortly, is therefore the “second secret” revealed by Her to the three children during Her apparition of the 13th of July. It is Heaven’s new edict, proclaimed by Our Lady of the Rosary so as to counteract the “first secret”: Satan’s ‘edict’ of Hell and damnation. Our Lady was also about to apprise the three children of a “third secret” – hitherto unrevealed to the public, as She proceeded to make the following staggering predictions:
“The War [1914-1918] will end soon. But if men do not stop offending God, it will not be long before another and worse one begins: that will be in the reign of Pius XI. When you see the night illuminated by an unknown light know that it is the great sign which God is giving you, indicating that the world, on account of its innumerable crimes, will soon be punished by war, famine, and persecutions against the Church and the Holy Father” (“More About Fatima”, pp. 62-63).
Then, for the first time, Our Lady named in full the devotion to her Immaculate Heart, presenting it – as well as the Consecration of Russia to Her Heart – as the means to prevent these impending chastisements:
“In order to stop it, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, as well as COMMUNION OF REPARATION ON THE FIRST SATURDAYS OF THE MONTH. If My wishes are fulfilled, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, then Russia will spread errors throughout the world, bringing new wars and persecution of the Church; the good will be martyred and the Holy Father will have much to suffer; several entire nations will be annihilated” (Ibid., p. 63).
It was at this stage that Our Lady revealed the famous “third secret”, which Lucia later wrote down and sealed in an envelope to be opened in 1960, or on her death, whichever should be sooner. Later on we shall have a bit more to say about the fate of that “secret” [the Vatican in fact revealed this secret to the public on May 13 of 2000, since this book was originally written]. Our Lady went on:
“The outlook is therefore gloomy, but there is a ray of hope. In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me. Russia will be converted, and the world will enjoy a period of peace. In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved. Remember, you must not tell this to anyone except Francisco”.
It should be noted that, whilst all three children could see the lady, Francisco could not hear what She was saying. And only Lucia ever spoke to her. Finally Our Lady added:
“When you recite the Rosary, say at the end of each decade:
‘O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fire of Hell, and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who most need thy mercy” (Ibid.).
Obviously, since the punishments which Our Lady of Fatima foretold were preceded by the conditional “If …”, the degree of alleviation from the suffering to be meted out to the world would be proportional to the degree of response to Her requests for the amendment of lives and the practice of the First Five Saturdays. As early as 1919 Jacinta, whilst stating that:
“Our Lady could no longer uphold the arm of Her Divine Son which will strike the world”, added that: “If people amend their lives, Our Lord will even now save the world, but if they do not, punishment will come” (Johnston, op. cit., p. 84).
We have only to recall the terrifying and unforgettable circumstances accompanying the 13th of July apparition, to realise that Our Lady of Fatima meant Her new program – Her new edict – to be taken very seriously. The scene on that day at Fatima, sometimes described as “the new Sinai”, was truly reminiscent of that occasion when Moses received the Ten Commandments from the hand of God on Mount Sinai. St. Paul has described it vividly in terms of:
“… a blazing fire, the darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them … Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear’” (Hebrews 12:18-21).
But this time, at Fatima, three small children would be the trembling recipients of Heaven‘s proclamation of the Communion of Reparation devotion; a proclamation which was prefaced by a vision far more fearful even than anything that Moses experienced on Mount Sinai. This was the electrifying vision of Hell! Despite its brief duration, the vision of Hell etched itself so profoundly into the hearts and minds of Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, that it would never be effaced.
Heaven’s “Reinforcements”
The apparition of the 13th of July at Fatima could perhaps approximate, analogously, to that phase in the book of Esther where both edicts, the benign one and the evil one, were in circulation at the same time throughout the kingdom of Medo-Persia. Though neither side at that stage could claim a clear victory, the fact that Queen Esther had won over the king’s sympathies to such an extent that three times he offered to fulfil whatever request she might make of him, “even to the half of my kingdom” (cf. 5:3, 6; 7:2), meant that the outcome of the conflict was beginning to look very ominous for Haman and his allies - something of a foregone conclusion.
The same scenario prevailed at Fatima on the 13th of July. Heaven had shown its hand after the Devil had been forced to lay his cards on the table. The battle for souls was on in full earnest. But the Lady of Light seemed to suggest that it was She who held all the trumps; for She promised a triumphant conclusion to the 1917 series of apparitions:
“On the 13th of October I shall say who I am and what I want, and I shall work a great miracle that all may believe”.
How appropriately then does this characteristic of inflexible ‘rigidity’, so peculiar to Medo-Persian law, fit that of salvation history! May we not see in this inflexibility an excellent ‘reflection of the eternal light’ shining on the inscrutable Decree of God, which, hidden from all ages, is also immutable? (Cf. 1 Corinthians 2:7). By the original decree issued in the name of the Medo-Persian king, the Jews were condemned to die. This decree could no longer be undone. Neither can the universal Decree be undone whereby it is ordained that all men must die (1 Corinthians 15:22).
However, just as Mordecai’s new edict was meant to take issue with the original decree which king Ahasuerus had issued under Haman’s insistence, so were God’s ‘rival operations’, all modelled on His primary One, the Redemption in Jesus Christ, meant to take issue with the consequences of the original Decree.
Queen Esther’s intercession with the king was instrumental firstly in gaining permission from him for the Jews to defend themselves against their death sentence. Thus the king, according to his wish as expressed in the decree drawn up by Mordecai (8:11-12),
“allowed the Jews who were in every city to gather and defend their lives, to destroy, to slay, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, with their children and women, and to plunder their goods, upon one day throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar”.
For this the Jews needed manpower, weapons and sundry assistance, if they were to have any hope of success in the physical battle. This was the second concession that Queen Esther managed to elicit from Ahasuerus: reinforcements. To ensure that the Jews would have the upper hand on that fateful thirteenth day, king Ahasuerus commanded his mounted couriers:
“Therefore post a copy of this letter publicly in every place, and permit the Jews to live under their own laws. And give them reinforcements. So that on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, Adar, on that very day they may defend themselves against those who attack them at the time of their affliction. For God, who rules over all things, has made this day to be a joy to his chosen people instead of a day of destruction for them” (16:19-21).
Resistance, and victory to eternal Life: these are the very aspects enshrined in the second part of the Eternal Decree, the divine ‘rival operation’:
‘I shall put enmity between thee and the Woman, and between thy seed and Hers, and She shall crush thy head’ (Genesis 3:15).
and eventually so forcefully summarized by Our Blessed Lord:
‘Was it not ordained that the Christ must suffer and so enter into His glory?’ (Luke 24:26),
by which the second part of the Decree takes issue with the first part whilst leaving it completely intact, exactly as it had been in the days of Queen Esther. How suited then is this divinely inspired proto-type to shed light on the rôle of our Heavenly Queen in the even more intense spiritual struggle between the poor and lowly in God’s Church and the forces of evil, and on the final outcome ….
Now that, with the aid of the Book of Esther, Fatima has been squarely placed within the context of the so necessary ‘reinforcements’ of God’s original ‘rival operation’, we are now in the best possible position to appreciate the central thesis of this present book.
For at Fatima, too, the King of Heaven, through the agency of the Blessed Virgin Mary, provided His beleaguered children with the most effective ‘reinforcements’ of a spiritual nature: the Communion of Reparation of the First Saturdays. In this way, He was equipping them to defend themselves in “the time of their affliction”; that is, their lifetime of striving for salvation in this vale of tears. At this early stage, Our Lady did not intend to go into much detail about the nature and practice of the devotion. She did not even say that it would consist of five first Saturdays. Her intention on the 13th of July was simply to announce it. The full revelation of the First Saturday devotion would be left until some time after Jacinta and Francisco had gone to Heaven.
When the charitable nature of this wonderful apostolate is stressed, we can clearly see that the devotion of the Five First Saturdays is an excellent example of one of God’s ‘rival operations’, which, in line with the main one, enables us to defend ourselves and our contemporaries against whatever iniquity the Evil One may have had in mind for our collective destruction in our own century. Any rival operation intended by God is basically a rescue operation. So they are all modelled on the proto-type (Genesis 3:15) but they all have their own exquisite originality also, reflecting the infinite Mind of God.
When the charitable nature of this wonderful apostolate is stressed, we can clearly see that the devotion of the Five First Saturdays is an excellent example of one of God’s ‘rival operations’, which, in line with the main one, enables us to defend ourselves and our contemporaries against whatever iniquity the Evil One may have had in mind for our collective destruction in our own century. Any rival operation intended by God is basically a rescue operation. So they are all modelled on the proto-type (Genesis 3:15) but they all have their own exquisite originality also, reflecting the infinite Mind of God.
Satan is the “father of lies”, who everywhere fosters lies and error. Our Lady, on the 13th of July, warned the world that if Her requests for the Communion of Reparation on the first Saturdays, and the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, were not fulfilled, then Russia would spread her errors throughout the world. This is tantamount to saying that the Devil, owing to the worldwide neglect of prayer and even of rational thinking, would be allowed to hijack the Russian empire so as to make of it an instrument for his erroneous propaganda against the Church founded by Christ; just as Haman, owing to the apparent gullibility of the Medo-Persians, had been able to hijack the Medo-Persian empire and use it as an instrument for spreading hatred of the Jews. For the mind of Satan is indeed reflected in the distorted and irrational edict of Haman. The Jews, he argued, were “hostile” to the kingdom; their laws were “contrary to those of every nation”; and they showed “continued disregard for the ordinances of the king” (13:4).
We have only to recall the services of Daniel and his three colleagues, firstly to the Babylonian, and then to the Medo-Persian, kings - as well as the fact that Mordecai had saved the life of Ahasuerus - to know that what Haman was alleging here were blatant lies. But this implacable “enemy of the Jews” had determined to ruin their good name in the eyes of the king, and to portray himself instead as the kingdom’s great benefactor. So, because of the recalcitrance of the Jews, as Haman argued, “the unifying of the kingdom which we honourably intend cannot be brought about” (13:4).
There was a certain deceptive truth in what Haman was saying here. He did indeed share the king’s strong desire for a ‘unified’ kingdom; but his concept of such a kingdom was far different form that of his master Ahasuerus. Thus he was lying when he claimed “honourably” to intend unifying the kingdom. Haman was in actual fact driven by a treasonable desire, not for a unified Medo-Persian kingdom with Ahauserus as ruler, but for a Hamanic (perhaps Macedonian) kingdom into which the entire Medo-Persian kingdom would be absorbed, presumably under himself as king …
According to what Queen Esther had discovered, it was the sinister intention of Haman and his allies
“to open the mouths of the nations for the praise of vain idols, and to magnify for ever a mortal king” (14:10).
Just as in our own days Satan seeks to ‘unify the whole world under his own leadership’, by destroying first the good reputation of the Holy Catholic Church.
Unfortunately the rather gullible king of Medo-Persia, whilst having come to adopt as his own Haman’s pernicious propaganda against the Jews, had actually failed to grasp Haman’s real intentions. Unlike Mordecai and Esther, who regarded Haman with the greatest suspicion right from the start, the king became wise to him only post eventum. It is interesting that Ahasuerus, when later he had woken up to the fact that it was Haman - and not the Jews - who was the chief obstacle to legitimate unity, made a sensible decision to change the structure of Medo-Persian law. Conversion to the cause of right had brought with it, for Ahasuerus, healthy common sense and some mental discipline. It was therefore a ‘new’ king Ahasuerus who addressed his kingdom through Mordecai’s decree:
“For the future we shall take care to render our kingdom quite and peaceable for all men, by changing our methods and always judging what comes before our eyes with more equitable consideration” (16:8-9).
The Fourth Apparition: 13th of August
About eighteen thousand persons turned up at the Cova da Iria for Our Lady’s August apparition. Word had got out that in the July apparition a famous secret had been revealed, and that the Lady had promised to perform a miracle in October. The 13th of August, however, is known as “the frustrated apparition”, because the three children were not there. They had been kidnapped by the local administrator, Arturo d’Oliveira Santos, an embittered anti-clerical man bent on crushing what he considered to be “Church reaction against the Government” (“Fatima, Way of Peace”, p. 7).
On the 13th of August, not long before the usual time of the apparitions, Santos seized the three little shepherds and carried them off to the municipal, seat at Vila Nova de Ourem. This callous action would infuriate the crowd at the Cova da Iria, as news of the kidnapping filtered through to them. They began to murmur and to grow extremely restless. Some were even speaking of going to Ourem to demand an explanation from Santos.
However, the crowd calmed down when, at the time that Our Lady was due, certain mysterious phenomena which had already been observed in the previous months, indicated to those present that the Lady had come to the meeting-place.
At Ourem, however, things were far less pleasant. There, Santos attempted to draw the secret from the children firstly with seductive promises of gold pieces. When they remained steadfast in their account of the Lady, he threw them into the town gaol, in a filthy common room with local criminals. Later in the day Santos took the children out of gaol, again demanding their secret, and, when again he was refused, he announced that he would throw them into a cauldron of boiling oil. This was a veritable martyrdom for Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. Santos had them separated; each one was told that the other had died in agony. It seems that they believed it. In the words of the Book of Esther, “their death was before their eyes” (13:18). But it was all in vain. The three seers – like the three children in the Book of Daniel (chapter 3) who refused to worship the golden image of king Nebuchednezzar of Babylon, and who were thrown into the fiery furnace – remained as form as a rock and never faltered. They were ten, nine and seven years old. Finally, they were subjected to a medical-psychiatric examination by a Dr. Rodrigues de Oliveira, and were released on the 15th of August, the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady. Santos had been forced to admit defeat and he sent them home.
{Excursus: Did Fatima come to Tasmania?
Report in the ‘Mercury” newspaper on August 13, 1917 /352/.
Aurora Australis
In these strenuous and exciting times when one is always expecting to hear or read of some new or startling thing, the nerves of the many are ever on the alert, for something to shy at, like a restive steed. We hear and read of signs and portents concerning the end of the war, and what, to many, was accepted as such was visible in the heavens on Thursday night. The “southern lights” (Aurora Australis) have been frequently seen and admired by us all, but the exhibition of the phenomenon referred to was accompanied by most awe-inspiring effects, which will not readily be forgotten by any who saw them. The usual ruddy glow in the south was visible shortly before seven o’clock, the changing and shooting coloured rays being more distinct than for some time. Suddenly there appeared on the south-east horizon a large luminous while ball, or cloud, of dazzling brightness, and this advanced rapidly towards the south-west. As it apparently neared the spectators, it took the form of a huge comet, its “tail” spreading out half way across the southern heavens, and passing swiftly, it vanished in the south-west, being visible for some minutes. Those folk privileged to see this marvellous sight had scarcely recovered their breath, and were wondering what it could be when a luminous mist appeared in the south-south-west, and growing larger and more dense, it moved in a northerly direction, assumed a long feather shape of glowing brightness, and swerved to the west, where it disappeared. A third band of light of the same character then seemed to emerge from the south-west, but was visible for a shorter period. Presumably these immense bands of light, resembling huge meteors in their flight, were in some way due to or were part of the aurora display, but if so they were certainly a new feature, for no one seems to have seen or heard of anything of the sort before. More than a few hazarded the opinion that the phenomena were a sign or portent concerning the war, but none was bold enough to attempt to solve the riddle. Speaking no doubt as they wished, some opined the “white feather” was typical of the dove of peace, and said that we should have good war news very soon. One peculiarity about these luminous bands was that they appeared to be so near the onlooker when passing over, that it seemed as if one could grasp them. Even children remarked that they could have touched the clouds, which shed such a brilliant light around}.
Our Lady appears at Valinhos
Thought the little seers did not expect to see Our Lady again until September, She appeared to them on the 19th of August as they tended their sheep at Valinhos. She complained firstly of the wicked man, Santos, who had prevented them from going to the Cova da Iria on the 13th of August; adding that, on that account, the miracle promised for the 13th of October would be less magnificent than had been intended. Then She urged them again to recite the Rosary every day and not to miss the rendezvous on the following months.
Continuing to exhort the children to the practice of prayer and penance, Our Lady concluded with these words:
“Pray, pray very much, make sacrifices for sinners. Many souls go to Hell because there is nobody to pray and to make sacrifices for them”. ).
With this challenging statement of Our Lady of Fatima in mind, we shall conclude this chapter with a discussion of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body; a knowledge of which is so necessary if we are fully to appreciate the import of Our Lady’s words.
Saving Souls: the Doctrine of the Mystical Body
Francis Johnston (Fatima. The Great Sign, p. 102) has suggested that one of the contributory factors towards the difficulty experienced by some in accepting the full relevance of Our Lady of Fatima’s message, and putting it into practice, may well be an inadequate understanding of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints.
Pope Pius XII has fully developed this important subject in “Mystici Corporis” (1943), in a way that seems to re-echo the words of Our Lady of Fatima. Thus we read:
“A tremendous mystery this and never sufficiently meditated on – that the salvation of many depends on the prayers and sacrifices made for this intention by the members of the Mystical Body of Christ”.
And again:
“… the life of each individual son of God is joined in Christ, and through Him by a wonderful and certain link to all His other Christian brothers and sisters. [Thus joined together,] they form the supernatural unity of Christ’s Mystical Body so that, as it were, a single mystical person is formed” (Ibid.).
That Our Lady of Fatima spoke truly when She said: “Many souls go to Hell because there is no one to pray and to make sacrifices for them”, is further borne out by the evidence of this “supernatural solidarity” affecting all members of the human race for good or ill, as provided by Pope Paul VI. In the latter case it is to be found, according to the Holy Father, in the fact that the sin of Adam is passed on through propagation to all men. But on the positive side, as he goes on to explain,
“… the greatest and most perfect source, foundation and example of this supernatural solidarity is Christ Himself” (“Indulgentiarum Doctrina”, 1967).
Therefore everything, according to the Holy Father, must be brought together under Christ, who is the Head of the Mystical Body (Romans 16:25). Indeed, Christ ‘commited no sin’, ‘suffered for us’ (1 Peter 2:21-22), ‘was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities … and with His stripes we are healed’ (vv. 23-25) (Ibid).
The Blessed Virgin Mary has too, according to the documents of the Second Vatican Council (cf. “Lumen Gentium”, $54) and numerous other authoritative statements by the Church, a notable rôle “in the mystery of the Incarnate Word and the Mystical Body”. But even in the Old Testament, in the Book of Esther as we have seen, the Holy Spirit has provided His people with a preview of Mary’s role as the New Eve and therefore as Mother of Mercy. We recall that king Ahasuerus had promised to give Queen Esther whatever she might ask of him, even to half of his kingdom. Now the Blessed Virgin Mary, who “from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of Predestination”, already shares half of the eternal kingdom with the King of Creation. Since, in order for Her to be Mother of a universe of miserable beings She needed to be furnished with an equally infinite degree of mercy and power. St. Thomas Aquinas could write of Her that “the Mother of God has obtained half the kingdom of God, so that she is Queen of mercy, while Her Son is King of Justice” (Exposit. in Epist. Canon).
Frits Albers ties together some of these individual elements relating to the Mystical Body, when he writes that: “on Calvary, the Mother of the Incarnate Word, as the beginning of the Church, stood proxy for the whole Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, so that our Divine Saviour was able to save the world, including His Body the Church and His Holy Mother, as He had been ordained to do: as the Head of that Body”. (Coming to the Rescue).
Christ’s suffering Mystical Body, made up of His Mother and all Her children, has – by this “Decree of Predestination” – become as indispensable as once was, and still is, His suffering human Body, although now only suffering in its members. It has been laid down by that same Decree that we have a duty to help one another along the path which leads to Our Father in Heaven. The more that we, as sacrificial souls, and members of that suffering Body, are immersed in the fervour of the Divine love, the more shall we reproduce the pattern of Our Lord’s own death, so as to
“complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His Body, that is, the Church” (cf. Colossians 1:24).
Pope John Paul II had, in the case of an operation he underwent, provided us with a shining example of such willing acceptance of suffering for the sake of our neighbour. When it was put to him that he might possibly suffer after his operation, he is reported to have replied: “The Church needs suffering. But what is my suffering compared to that of Jesus Christ?”
From the above, we can perhaps understand more clearly how it is that our prayers and sacrifices for sinners – as begged for so imploringly by Our Lady at Fatima – can be efficacious for sinners even to the extent of saving them from perdition. Thus, once again, the doctrinal accuracy of the Fatima message is seen to be fully vindicated in the pronouncements of the Magisterium.
Chapter Three
THE GREAT SIGN
“And Haman said to the king,
‘For the man whom the king delights to honour, let royal robes be brought, which the king has worn, and the horse which the king has ridden, and on whose head a royal crown is set; and let the robes and the horse be handed over to one of the king’s most noble princes; let him array the man whom the king delights to honour, and let him conduct the man on horseback through the open square of the city, proclaiming before him: ‘Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delights to honour’.
Then the king said to Haman,
‘Make haste, take the robes and the horse, as you have said, and do so to Mordecai the Jew who sits at the king’s gate. Leave out nothing that you have mentioned’ …
Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white, with a great golden crown and a mantle of fine linen and purple, while the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced. The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honour. And in every province and in every city, wherever the king’s command and his edict came, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them” (Esther 6:7-10; 8:15-17).
These passages, about which a lot more will be said later in the chapter during the discussion of the 13th of October apparition, describe the dramatic shift of fortune that suddenly occurs between the major characters. For simultaneously, as the Jewish nation begins to gain from Almighty God the merciful help that it had so earnestly sought by its prayers and supplications, Mordecai’s star bursts into prominence causing that of Haman to wane.
On the night before Mordecai was to die on a gallows erected by Haman, God had gone to work on king Ahasuerus, so that
“On that night the king could not sleep; and he gave orders to bring the book of memorable deeds, the chronicles, and they were read before the king” (6:1).
It was then, at this eleventh hour, that the king’s memory was refreshed regarding Mordecai’s intervention to save his life in the case of the former palace conspiracy.
“And the king said, ‘What honour or dignity has been bestowed upon Mordecai for this?’ The king’s servants who attended him said, ‘Nothing has been done for him’.” (6:2-3).
King Ahasuerus was now intent upon making up for lost time. Mordecai, for his great deed on behalf of the king, must now be honoured as he had deserved. And though at this stage there is still no indication that the king had woken up to the fact that it was Haman who had actually master-minded the former conspiracy against his life, he nevertheless had already begin subconsciously to overlook Haman in favour of Mordecai. Thus the answer contained in the first sentence of the above-quoted scriptural passage from Esther, chapter 6, so full of dramatic irony, had arisen from Haman as a response to king Ahasuerus’ question on behalf of Mordecai: ‘What shall be done to the man whom the king delights to honour?’ For it was at this critical moment that Haman had entered the king’s court with bold intent, to have Ahasuerus to have Mordecai hanged on the gallows that he had prepared for him. But before he could open his mouth, he was met with Ahasuerus’ loaded question. Presuming, in the conceit of his heart, that this ‘man’ must be none other than himself - since he had just come in and since he alone besides the king had been invited to Queen Esther’s banquet - Haman naturally asked for the highest possible honours of which he could think. And herein lies the irony of the situation. Each successive honour that he named on behalf of himself, was yet another honour unwittingly heaped upon his mortal foe, Mordecai. It is a classic example of ‘rival operation’.
The fine tuning in the drama of the Esther narrative is matched by that used by Almighty God for the perfect development of the Fatima scenario. This is especially true in the case of the culminating apparition of the 13th of October. Indeed, this particular apparition has occurred at such a critical juncture in twentieth century history, and is for this and other reasons so singularly important, that we cannot just go straight into it here.
In order to understand the proper significance of this apparition as a very definite point of culmination in the age-long enmity between good and evil, we need to spend the first part of this chapter setting the scene for it.
As we are going to find, October 1917 was a moment in the twentieth century that represents a real show-down between the respective forces of good and evil. The convergence of these two inimical forces for the show-down is perfectly summarised in the conclusion to the Book of Esther, which also happens to be Mordecai’s own summary and explanation of the significance of his dream:
“God has done great signs and wonders, which have not occurred among the nations. For this purpose he made two lots, one for the people of God and one for all the nations. And these two lots came to the hour and moment and day of decision before God and among all the nations. And God remembered His people and vindicated His inheritance” (10:9, 10-12).
Thought the little seers did not expect to see Our Lady again until September, She appeared to them on the 19th of August as they tended their sheep at Valinhos. She complained firstly of the wicked man, Santos, who had prevented them from going to the Cova da Iria on the 13th of August; adding that, on that account, the miracle promised for the 13th of October would be less magnificent than had been intended. Then She urged them again to recite the Rosary every day and not to miss the rendezvous on the following months.
Continuing to exhort the children to the practice of prayer and penance, Our Lady concluded with these words:
“Pray, pray very much, make sacrifices for sinners. Many souls go to Hell because there is nobody to pray and to make sacrifices for them”. ).
With this challenging statement of Our Lady of Fatima in mind, we shall conclude this chapter with a discussion of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body; a knowledge of which is so necessary if we are fully to appreciate the import of Our Lady’s words.
Saving Souls: the Doctrine of the Mystical Body
Francis Johnston (Fatima. The Great Sign, p. 102) has suggested that one of the contributory factors towards the difficulty experienced by some in accepting the full relevance of Our Lady of Fatima’s message, and putting it into practice, may well be an inadequate understanding of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints.
Pope Pius XII has fully developed this important subject in “Mystici Corporis” (1943), in a way that seems to re-echo the words of Our Lady of Fatima. Thus we read:
“A tremendous mystery this and never sufficiently meditated on – that the salvation of many depends on the prayers and sacrifices made for this intention by the members of the Mystical Body of Christ”.
And again:
“… the life of each individual son of God is joined in Christ, and through Him by a wonderful and certain link to all His other Christian brothers and sisters. [Thus joined together,] they form the supernatural unity of Christ’s Mystical Body so that, as it were, a single mystical person is formed” (Ibid.).
That Our Lady of Fatima spoke truly when She said: “Many souls go to Hell because there is no one to pray and to make sacrifices for them”, is further borne out by the evidence of this “supernatural solidarity” affecting all members of the human race for good or ill, as provided by Pope Paul VI. In the latter case it is to be found, according to the Holy Father, in the fact that the sin of Adam is passed on through propagation to all men. But on the positive side, as he goes on to explain,
“… the greatest and most perfect source, foundation and example of this supernatural solidarity is Christ Himself” (“Indulgentiarum Doctrina”, 1967).
Therefore everything, according to the Holy Father, must be brought together under Christ, who is the Head of the Mystical Body (Romans 16:25). Indeed, Christ ‘commited no sin’, ‘suffered for us’ (1 Peter 2:21-22), ‘was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities … and with His stripes we are healed’ (vv. 23-25) (Ibid).
The Blessed Virgin Mary has too, according to the documents of the Second Vatican Council (cf. “Lumen Gentium”, $54) and numerous other authoritative statements by the Church, a notable rôle “in the mystery of the Incarnate Word and the Mystical Body”. But even in the Old Testament, in the Book of Esther as we have seen, the Holy Spirit has provided His people with a preview of Mary’s role as the New Eve and therefore as Mother of Mercy. We recall that king Ahasuerus had promised to give Queen Esther whatever she might ask of him, even to half of his kingdom. Now the Blessed Virgin Mary, who “from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of Predestination”, already shares half of the eternal kingdom with the King of Creation. Since, in order for Her to be Mother of a universe of miserable beings She needed to be furnished with an equally infinite degree of mercy and power. St. Thomas Aquinas could write of Her that “the Mother of God has obtained half the kingdom of God, so that she is Queen of mercy, while Her Son is King of Justice” (Exposit. in Epist. Canon).
Frits Albers ties together some of these individual elements relating to the Mystical Body, when he writes that: “on Calvary, the Mother of the Incarnate Word, as the beginning of the Church, stood proxy for the whole Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, so that our Divine Saviour was able to save the world, including His Body the Church and His Holy Mother, as He had been ordained to do: as the Head of that Body”. (Coming to the Rescue).
Christ’s suffering Mystical Body, made up of His Mother and all Her children, has – by this “Decree of Predestination” – become as indispensable as once was, and still is, His suffering human Body, although now only suffering in its members. It has been laid down by that same Decree that we have a duty to help one another along the path which leads to Our Father in Heaven. The more that we, as sacrificial souls, and members of that suffering Body, are immersed in the fervour of the Divine love, the more shall we reproduce the pattern of Our Lord’s own death, so as to
“complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His Body, that is, the Church” (cf. Colossians 1:24).
Pope John Paul II had, in the case of an operation he underwent, provided us with a shining example of such willing acceptance of suffering for the sake of our neighbour. When it was put to him that he might possibly suffer after his operation, he is reported to have replied: “The Church needs suffering. But what is my suffering compared to that of Jesus Christ?”
From the above, we can perhaps understand more clearly how it is that our prayers and sacrifices for sinners – as begged for so imploringly by Our Lady at Fatima – can be efficacious for sinners even to the extent of saving them from perdition. Thus, once again, the doctrinal accuracy of the Fatima message is seen to be fully vindicated in the pronouncements of the Magisterium.
Chapter Three
THE GREAT SIGN
“And Haman said to the king,
‘For the man whom the king delights to honour, let royal robes be brought, which the king has worn, and the horse which the king has ridden, and on whose head a royal crown is set; and let the robes and the horse be handed over to one of the king’s most noble princes; let him array the man whom the king delights to honour, and let him conduct the man on horseback through the open square of the city, proclaiming before him: ‘Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delights to honour’.
Then the king said to Haman,
‘Make haste, take the robes and the horse, as you have said, and do so to Mordecai the Jew who sits at the king’s gate. Leave out nothing that you have mentioned’ …
Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white, with a great golden crown and a mantle of fine linen and purple, while the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced. The Jews had light and gladness and joy and honour. And in every province and in every city, wherever the king’s command and his edict came, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them” (Esther 6:7-10; 8:15-17).
These passages, about which a lot more will be said later in the chapter during the discussion of the 13th of October apparition, describe the dramatic shift of fortune that suddenly occurs between the major characters. For simultaneously, as the Jewish nation begins to gain from Almighty God the merciful help that it had so earnestly sought by its prayers and supplications, Mordecai’s star bursts into prominence causing that of Haman to wane.
On the night before Mordecai was to die on a gallows erected by Haman, God had gone to work on king Ahasuerus, so that
“On that night the king could not sleep; and he gave orders to bring the book of memorable deeds, the chronicles, and they were read before the king” (6:1).
It was then, at this eleventh hour, that the king’s memory was refreshed regarding Mordecai’s intervention to save his life in the case of the former palace conspiracy.
“And the king said, ‘What honour or dignity has been bestowed upon Mordecai for this?’ The king’s servants who attended him said, ‘Nothing has been done for him’.” (6:2-3).
King Ahasuerus was now intent upon making up for lost time. Mordecai, for his great deed on behalf of the king, must now be honoured as he had deserved. And though at this stage there is still no indication that the king had woken up to the fact that it was Haman who had actually master-minded the former conspiracy against his life, he nevertheless had already begin subconsciously to overlook Haman in favour of Mordecai. Thus the answer contained in the first sentence of the above-quoted scriptural passage from Esther, chapter 6, so full of dramatic irony, had arisen from Haman as a response to king Ahasuerus’ question on behalf of Mordecai: ‘What shall be done to the man whom the king delights to honour?’ For it was at this critical moment that Haman had entered the king’s court with bold intent, to have Ahasuerus to have Mordecai hanged on the gallows that he had prepared for him. But before he could open his mouth, he was met with Ahasuerus’ loaded question. Presuming, in the conceit of his heart, that this ‘man’ must be none other than himself - since he had just come in and since he alone besides the king had been invited to Queen Esther’s banquet - Haman naturally asked for the highest possible honours of which he could think. And herein lies the irony of the situation. Each successive honour that he named on behalf of himself, was yet another honour unwittingly heaped upon his mortal foe, Mordecai. It is a classic example of ‘rival operation’.
The fine tuning in the drama of the Esther narrative is matched by that used by Almighty God for the perfect development of the Fatima scenario. This is especially true in the case of the culminating apparition of the 13th of October. Indeed, this particular apparition has occurred at such a critical juncture in twentieth century history, and is for this and other reasons so singularly important, that we cannot just go straight into it here.
In order to understand the proper significance of this apparition as a very definite point of culmination in the age-long enmity between good and evil, we need to spend the first part of this chapter setting the scene for it.
As we are going to find, October 1917 was a moment in the twentieth century that represents a real show-down between the respective forces of good and evil. The convergence of these two inimical forces for the show-down is perfectly summarised in the conclusion to the Book of Esther, which also happens to be Mordecai’s own summary and explanation of the significance of his dream:
“God has done great signs and wonders, which have not occurred among the nations. For this purpose he made two lots, one for the people of God and one for all the nations. And these two lots came to the hour and moment and day of decision before God and among all the nations. And God remembered His people and vindicated His inheritance” (10:9, 10-12).
The Two Kingdoms
We already well know the nature of the two sides in this conflict. Pope Leo XIII, for example, had written in his encyclical on Freemasonry, “Humanum Genus” (1884) – on whose teachings we shall be greatly reliant in the first part if this chapter - that
“This twofold kingdom [the kingdom of God, on the one hand, and that of Satan, on the other] St. Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects; and with a subtle brevity he expressed the efficient cause of each in these words: “Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one” (#2).
In the case of the righteous City, which Pope Leo called “the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ” (ibid., #1), it is ever to the “Woman”, whom God has placed with Christ her Son at the centre of the enmity, that we must look. Pope Leo urged that we
“take as our helper and intercessor the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, so that She, who from the moment of Her conception overcame Satan, may show Her power over these evil sects, in which is revived the contumacious spirit of the demon, together with his unsubdued perfidy and deceit” (Ibid., #37).
Since 1917, that Woman has become fully known to the whole world as Our Lady of Fatima. But the Holy Father here also provides us with a definition of the opposing camp, describing for us, within the generic context of the term ‘Freemasonry’, its true nature: “these evil sects”. In other words, the form that the City of Satan had assumed by Pope Leo’s time, on the eve of the twentieth century, and would continue to assume during the era of the Fatima apparitions, was conspiratorial Freemasonry in its manifold guises. The Holy Father called it “a kind of centre”, from which go forth and to which return other
“organized bodies which, though different in name, in ceremonial, in form and origin, are nevertheless so bound together by community of purpose and by the similarity of their main opinions, as to make in fact one thing with the sect of the Freemasons” (Ibid., #9).
Apart from the mention of the specific names and of things pertaining to modern technological development, every word of Pope Leo XIII’s description of Freemasonry and its methods could likewise be applied to the ancient conspiracy of Haman. That should not surprise us when we consider that each wicked conspiracy reproduces the same general pattern as the original one. The reader can test this claim by substituting, in the following summary of the Holy Father’s teachings on the subject, “Haman” and “his allies” for “Freemasonry”, or related concepts, and the “Jewish nation” and “Mordecai” for the “Church” (or “Catholicism”) and the “Holy Father”. Here is what Pope Leo had further to say on the subject (his words in italics below):
The two cities have been in conflict with each other at every period of time, using a variety of weapons and of warfare, though not always with equal ferocity. “At this period, however, the partisans of evil seem to be combining together, and are struggling with united vehemence … led on by that strongly organized and widespread association called the Freemasons”.
No longer making any secret of their intentions, they are now boldly rising up against God Himself. “They are planning the destruction of the holy Church publicly and openly” (#2).
“The Roman Pontiffs … in their incessant watchfulness over the safety of the Christian people, were prompt in detecting the presence and purpose of this capital enemy immediately it sprang into the light instead of hiding as a dark conspiracy; and moreover they took occasion with true foresight to give, as it were, the alarm, and to admonish both princes and nations to stand on their guard, and not allow themselves to be caught by the devices and snares laid out to deceive them” (#4). [Compare this with Mordecai’s warning the king and the Jewish nation about Haman’s intentions].
But, either because of the “simulation and cunning of some who were active agents” in the conspiracy, “or else of the thoughtless levity of the rest”, the sect of Freemasons, “grew with a rapidity beyond conception in the course of a century and a half, until it came to be able, by means of fraud or of audacity, to gain such entrance into every rank of the State as to seem to be almost its ruling power” (#7).
With a fraudulent external appearance, and with a style of simulation always the same, Freemasons strive, as far as possible, to conceal themselves; for example, by assuming the character of literary men and scholars associated for purposes of learning: “They speak of their zeal for a more cultured refinement, and of their love for the poor; and they declare their one wish to be the amelioration of the condition of the masses, and to share with the largest possible number all the benefits of civil life” (#9).
The Fundamental Doctrine
The fundamental doctrine of these pernicious sects is that human nature and reason ought in all things to be the mistress and guide. Thus they care little for duties to God. They even deny that anything has been taught by God; allowing no dogma of religion or truth which cannot be understood by the human intelligence. “And since it is the special and exclusive duty of the Catholic Church fully to set forth in words truths divinely received, to teach, besides other divine helps to salvation, the authority of its office, and to defend the same with perfect purity, it is against the Church that the rage and attack of the enemies are principally directed” (#12).
But it is against the Roman Pontiff himself that the contention of these enemies has been for a long time directed. “The Pontiff was first, for specious reasons, thrust out from the bulwark of his liberty and of his right, the civil princedom; soon he was unjustly driven into a position which was unbearable because of the difficulties raised on all sides; and now the time has come when the partisans of the sects openly declare, what in secret among themselves they have for a long time plotted, that the sacred power of the Pontiffs must be abolished, and that the Pontificate itself, founded by divine right, must be utterly destroyed” (#15).
We already well know the nature of the two sides in this conflict. Pope Leo XIII, for example, had written in his encyclical on Freemasonry, “Humanum Genus” (1884) – on whose teachings we shall be greatly reliant in the first part if this chapter - that
“This twofold kingdom [the kingdom of God, on the one hand, and that of Satan, on the other] St. Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects; and with a subtle brevity he expressed the efficient cause of each in these words: “Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one” (#2).
In the case of the righteous City, which Pope Leo called “the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ” (ibid., #1), it is ever to the “Woman”, whom God has placed with Christ her Son at the centre of the enmity, that we must look. Pope Leo urged that we
“take as our helper and intercessor the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, so that She, who from the moment of Her conception overcame Satan, may show Her power over these evil sects, in which is revived the contumacious spirit of the demon, together with his unsubdued perfidy and deceit” (Ibid., #37).
Since 1917, that Woman has become fully known to the whole world as Our Lady of Fatima. But the Holy Father here also provides us with a definition of the opposing camp, describing for us, within the generic context of the term ‘Freemasonry’, its true nature: “these evil sects”. In other words, the form that the City of Satan had assumed by Pope Leo’s time, on the eve of the twentieth century, and would continue to assume during the era of the Fatima apparitions, was conspiratorial Freemasonry in its manifold guises. The Holy Father called it “a kind of centre”, from which go forth and to which return other
“organized bodies which, though different in name, in ceremonial, in form and origin, are nevertheless so bound together by community of purpose and by the similarity of their main opinions, as to make in fact one thing with the sect of the Freemasons” (Ibid., #9).
Apart from the mention of the specific names and of things pertaining to modern technological development, every word of Pope Leo XIII’s description of Freemasonry and its methods could likewise be applied to the ancient conspiracy of Haman. That should not surprise us when we consider that each wicked conspiracy reproduces the same general pattern as the original one. The reader can test this claim by substituting, in the following summary of the Holy Father’s teachings on the subject, “Haman” and “his allies” for “Freemasonry”, or related concepts, and the “Jewish nation” and “Mordecai” for the “Church” (or “Catholicism”) and the “Holy Father”. Here is what Pope Leo had further to say on the subject (his words in italics below):
The two cities have been in conflict with each other at every period of time, using a variety of weapons and of warfare, though not always with equal ferocity. “At this period, however, the partisans of evil seem to be combining together, and are struggling with united vehemence … led on by that strongly organized and widespread association called the Freemasons”.
No longer making any secret of their intentions, they are now boldly rising up against God Himself. “They are planning the destruction of the holy Church publicly and openly” (#2).
“The Roman Pontiffs … in their incessant watchfulness over the safety of the Christian people, were prompt in detecting the presence and purpose of this capital enemy immediately it sprang into the light instead of hiding as a dark conspiracy; and moreover they took occasion with true foresight to give, as it were, the alarm, and to admonish both princes and nations to stand on their guard, and not allow themselves to be caught by the devices and snares laid out to deceive them” (#4). [Compare this with Mordecai’s warning the king and the Jewish nation about Haman’s intentions].
But, either because of the “simulation and cunning of some who were active agents” in the conspiracy, “or else of the thoughtless levity of the rest”, the sect of Freemasons, “grew with a rapidity beyond conception in the course of a century and a half, until it came to be able, by means of fraud or of audacity, to gain such entrance into every rank of the State as to seem to be almost its ruling power” (#7).
With a fraudulent external appearance, and with a style of simulation always the same, Freemasons strive, as far as possible, to conceal themselves; for example, by assuming the character of literary men and scholars associated for purposes of learning: “They speak of their zeal for a more cultured refinement, and of their love for the poor; and they declare their one wish to be the amelioration of the condition of the masses, and to share with the largest possible number all the benefits of civil life” (#9).
The Fundamental Doctrine
The fundamental doctrine of these pernicious sects is that human nature and reason ought in all things to be the mistress and guide. Thus they care little for duties to God. They even deny that anything has been taught by God; allowing no dogma of religion or truth which cannot be understood by the human intelligence. “And since it is the special and exclusive duty of the Catholic Church fully to set forth in words truths divinely received, to teach, besides other divine helps to salvation, the authority of its office, and to defend the same with perfect purity, it is against the Church that the rage and attack of the enemies are principally directed” (#12).
But it is against the Roman Pontiff himself that the contention of these enemies has been for a long time directed. “The Pontiff was first, for specious reasons, thrust out from the bulwark of his liberty and of his right, the civil princedom; soon he was unjustly driven into a position which was unbearable because of the difficulties raised on all sides; and now the time has come when the partisans of the sects openly declare, what in secret among themselves they have for a long time plotted, that the sacred power of the Pontiffs must be abolished, and that the Pontificate itself, founded by divine right, must be utterly destroyed” (#15).
The Marian Antidote to Freemasonry and Conspiratorialism
Not many years before Freemasonry was set up in London in 1717 – approximately “a century and a half” before Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical – with the active co-operation of Voltaire who was then in exile from France, Almighty God set in motion the appropriate “rival operation” needed to oppose this diabolical system, and to nullify its effects. A great instrument of God’s in this era was St. Louis Grignion de Montfort. The importance of this French saint can be gauged by the fact that his coming was prophesied three centuries in advance by St. Vincent Ferrer (c. 1400), a celebrated Dominican preacher, and a native of Spain. St. Vincent Ferrer actually identified himself with the “Eagle” or “Angel” of the Judgment, who – in Revelation 8:13 – announces the three Woes that God will send upon the earth. And he raised a woman from the dead to verify his extraordinary claim (see Fr. H. Kramer’s The Book of Destiny, pp. 208ff.).
Whilst preaching in France, St. Vincent Ferrer and his disciples came upon a dilapidated church, regarding which – when his disciples asked him if he intended to restore it – he foretold that, not he, but a future “great missionary priest”, would rebuild it. St. Louis de Montfort, elevated to the Priesthood in the year 1700, recognized himself as the missionary priest whom St. Vincent Ferrer had anticipated, and he rebuilt the Church.
While Satan was planning his new system of apostasy, the Holy Spirit inspired St. Louis de Montfort to preach and to write a brilliant Mariology. For God had chosen to reveal through this Saint in more systematic detail one of His best loved and best kept secrets, the Secret of Mary. Here was the perfect antidote for the poison that would issue from the new secret societies. St. Louis’ Marian doctrine, which Pope John Paul II has since honoured with the description, “authentic Marian spirituality” (“Redemptoris Mater”, 1987, #48), also provided the ideal preparation for the series of Marian apparitions that heaven would so generously concede to the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The First Papal Condemnations
In the late eighteenth century, there arose a new “Haman” – though ironically, in this case, a Jew – in the form of Adam Weishaupt. Probably inspired by the disciplined structure, but not the spirit, of the Jesuit Order, Weishaupt - who had ‘converted’ to Catholicism and had become a Jesuit priest – eventually devised his own ingenious organization for world conquest: the secret “Order of Illuminati”. Being not a military man, but an academic – he was actually Professor of Canon Law at Ingolstadt University – Weishaupt did not intend to carry out his ambition by force of arms but by subversion. Freemasonry provided the greatest opportunities for Weishaupt and his Illuminati fellow-conspirators to implement their plan, with the backing of powerful international financiers, such as the Rothschilds. According to J. Robison (Proofs of a Conspiracy, Introduction), Weishaupt grafted his Illuminati Order “at selected points onto Freemasonry – like a fungus”.
To achieve their goal of world domination, the Illuminati had understood that it would be necessary to do the very things that Pope Leo XIII would later describe as being the aims of Freemasonry: for example, to destroy all religions, especially Christianity; to overthrow all governments; and to abolish private property. Reduce all to chaos, and in the midst of that chaos establish a “Novus Ordo Saeculorum”, a “New Order of the Ages”, ruled by the Illuminati. It was Haman the Agagite all over again!
Weishaupt founded the Illuminati Order in 1776. In 1829 Pope Pius VIII, referring to secret societies of Freemasonry in general, wrote:
“Lying is their rule, Satan is their God, and shameful deeds their sacrifice”.
His successor, Pope Gregory XVI, compared these societies to a
“sink, in which are congregated and intermingled all the sacrileges, infamy, blasphemy which are contained in the most abominable heresies” (1832).
To which his successor, Pope Pius IX, contributed in 1846:
“Those baneful secret sects which have come forth from the darkness for the ruin and devastation of both Church and State”.
The first of these three papal condemnations was issued right on the eve of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s apparition to St. Catherine Labouré in Paris, at the
Rue du Bac, 1830
Not many years before Freemasonry was set up in London in 1717 – approximately “a century and a half” before Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical – with the active co-operation of Voltaire who was then in exile from France, Almighty God set in motion the appropriate “rival operation” needed to oppose this diabolical system, and to nullify its effects. A great instrument of God’s in this era was St. Louis Grignion de Montfort. The importance of this French saint can be gauged by the fact that his coming was prophesied three centuries in advance by St. Vincent Ferrer (c. 1400), a celebrated Dominican preacher, and a native of Spain. St. Vincent Ferrer actually identified himself with the “Eagle” or “Angel” of the Judgment, who – in Revelation 8:13 – announces the three Woes that God will send upon the earth. And he raised a woman from the dead to verify his extraordinary claim (see Fr. H. Kramer’s The Book of Destiny, pp. 208ff.).
Whilst preaching in France, St. Vincent Ferrer and his disciples came upon a dilapidated church, regarding which – when his disciples asked him if he intended to restore it – he foretold that, not he, but a future “great missionary priest”, would rebuild it. St. Louis de Montfort, elevated to the Priesthood in the year 1700, recognized himself as the missionary priest whom St. Vincent Ferrer had anticipated, and he rebuilt the Church.
While Satan was planning his new system of apostasy, the Holy Spirit inspired St. Louis de Montfort to preach and to write a brilliant Mariology. For God had chosen to reveal through this Saint in more systematic detail one of His best loved and best kept secrets, the Secret of Mary. Here was the perfect antidote for the poison that would issue from the new secret societies. St. Louis’ Marian doctrine, which Pope John Paul II has since honoured with the description, “authentic Marian spirituality” (“Redemptoris Mater”, 1987, #48), also provided the ideal preparation for the series of Marian apparitions that heaven would so generously concede to the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The First Papal Condemnations
In the late eighteenth century, there arose a new “Haman” – though ironically, in this case, a Jew – in the form of Adam Weishaupt. Probably inspired by the disciplined structure, but not the spirit, of the Jesuit Order, Weishaupt - who had ‘converted’ to Catholicism and had become a Jesuit priest – eventually devised his own ingenious organization for world conquest: the secret “Order of Illuminati”. Being not a military man, but an academic – he was actually Professor of Canon Law at Ingolstadt University – Weishaupt did not intend to carry out his ambition by force of arms but by subversion. Freemasonry provided the greatest opportunities for Weishaupt and his Illuminati fellow-conspirators to implement their plan, with the backing of powerful international financiers, such as the Rothschilds. According to J. Robison (Proofs of a Conspiracy, Introduction), Weishaupt grafted his Illuminati Order “at selected points onto Freemasonry – like a fungus”.
To achieve their goal of world domination, the Illuminati had understood that it would be necessary to do the very things that Pope Leo XIII would later describe as being the aims of Freemasonry: for example, to destroy all religions, especially Christianity; to overthrow all governments; and to abolish private property. Reduce all to chaos, and in the midst of that chaos establish a “Novus Ordo Saeculorum”, a “New Order of the Ages”, ruled by the Illuminati. It was Haman the Agagite all over again!
Weishaupt founded the Illuminati Order in 1776. In 1829 Pope Pius VIII, referring to secret societies of Freemasonry in general, wrote:
“Lying is their rule, Satan is their God, and shameful deeds their sacrifice”.
His successor, Pope Gregory XVI, compared these societies to a
“sink, in which are congregated and intermingled all the sacrileges, infamy, blasphemy which are contained in the most abominable heresies” (1832).
To which his successor, Pope Pius IX, contributed in 1846:
“Those baneful secret sects which have come forth from the darkness for the ruin and devastation of both Church and State”.
The first of these three papal condemnations was issued right on the eve of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s apparition to St. Catherine Labouré in Paris, at the
Rue du Bac, 1830
This was the first in the series of Marian apparitions contemporaneous with the era of public Freemasonry. With each critical step of the conspiracy, the Blessed Virgin Mary would appear in earth with her spiritual antidote.
At a meeting of the Illuminati in New York in 1829, it was announced that the forces of Atheism, Nihilism, and others, would be fused into a new organization which would bear the name, Communism. This evil system, which Pope Leo XIII rightly regarded as a sequel to Freemasonry (op. cit., #’s 23 & 27), would later, during the pontificate of Pope Pius XI, be officially condemned by the Church as being “intrinsically evil”.
The following year of 1830, that of Our Lady’s visit to St. Catherine at the Rue du Bac, also marked the death of Adam Weishaupt. Heaven’s special gift at the Rue du Bac was Our Lady’s Miraculous Medal, bringing peace and protection to all who would wear it. Its prayer:
“O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee”.
anticipated the future Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The Blessed Virgin Mary announced to St. Catherine:
“The times are evil. Sorrow will come upon France; the throne will be overturned. The whole world will be upset by miseries of every kind”.
And again:
“There will be victims among the clergy of Paris. The Archbishop will die. The Cross will be trampled. Blood will run in the streets; the world will be plunged into sadness”.
Next, Our Lady appeared at
La Salette, 1846
Devastating famines were occurring throughout Europe at this time, and France herself was threatened by imminent dangers; the very ones that Our Lady had foretold at Rue du Bac. For in those days, with Karl Marx having been hired to write ‘The Communist Manifesto”, the global conspiracy was about to gain momentum. Thus two years later, in 1848, the French capital was shaken by the horrors of the “February Revolution”, the “March Revolution”, and finally the “June Days”. 1848 also saw the beginning of Communism in France.
Not long before La Salette, in 1842, Our Lady’s own “Manifesto” in the form of St. Louis de Montfort’s “True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary”, was re-discovered, after its having been lost – as St. Louis had predicted it would – for all that time. At La Salette, Our Lady gave a “secret” to both of the two seers. Five years later in 1851, Pope Pius IX – according to Sharkey (The Woman Shall Conquer, p. 39) - expressed his wish to know these two secrets. While the girl, Melanie, was writing down her “secret” for the Holy Father, Sharkey says, she asked the meaning of the word “infallibility”, and the spelling of “Antichrist” (ibid.). It is little wonder then that, in such “evil” times, the Blessed Virgin should choose to appear at La Salette in the guise of Our Lady of Sorrows. Her pitiful lamentation for France in particular is reminiscent of Our Lord’s own lament and tears over unrepentant Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37):
“The Lady spoke again in a voice sweeter than the sweetest of melodies. Tears fell from her eyes as She spoke.
‘If my people will not submit’, She said, ‘I shall be forced to let go the hand of My Son. It is so strong, so heavy, that I can no longer withhold it. How long a time do I suffer for you …!” (Sharkey, ibid., pp. 35-36).
Lourdes, 1858
When Our Lady appeared to Bernadette at the now world-famous shrine of Lourdes in southern France, the spectre of Evolutionism loomed on the horizon. Our Lady came to Lourdes on the very eve of Charles Darwin’s writing of The Origin of Species (1859), according to which the scriptural version of Creation, Adam and Eve, the Devil, the Fall and Original Sin would be “replaced” by a pseudo-scientific hypothesis, custom-made to suit the aims of the conspirators.
Darwin’s new theory of evolution was the Book of Genesis in reverse. Instead of men and women having been made in the image and likeness of God, their Creator, and having fallen from that likeness owing to the devastating effects of Original Sin, it was now to be argued that humankind, having originated in the form of brute apes, was in fact evolving upwards to perfection. This diabolical theory “obviated” the need for a Redemption of the human race by the Divine intervention of a loving New Adam; thereby also “making irrelevant” the New Eve. Likewise neither Original Sin, nor the very notion of an Immaculate Conception, had any meaning in this new scheme of things.
This was Satan playing God, trying to “create” his own version of “man” and “woman”, made in the distorted image and likeness of himself. Eventually the theory of evolution would be imposed upon all systems of education, and all subjects, for the purpose of ‘re-shaping’ the sons and daughters of God into the bestial new creation; without belief in God, without any morals, without pity. Satan intended in this way to gain full control of his future New World Order, whose inhabitants were to be enslaved by sin and controlled by a State which would take the place of God. But was the Mother of God going to look on passively, while Her children were being thus corrupted? “Can the Mother, who, with all the force of the Love that She fosters in the Holy Spirit, desire everyone’s salvation, keep silence on what undermines the very bases of their salvation? No, She cannot” (John Paul II at Fatima, 13th of May, 1982).
So once again Our Lady came to France at a critical moment, to bestow upon an ungrateful world Her extraordinary miracles of Grace and healing, and to remind the world of the reality, and of the devastations, of sin. Her moving request was “Penance! Penance!”
The Blessed Virgin Mary came to Lourdes only four years after Pope Pius IX had proclaimed the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception in Rome (1854). She showed Her gratitude to the Holy Father when She proclaimed to St. Bernadette:
“I am the Immaculate Conception”.
At a meeting of the Illuminati in New York in 1829, it was announced that the forces of Atheism, Nihilism, and others, would be fused into a new organization which would bear the name, Communism. This evil system, which Pope Leo XIII rightly regarded as a sequel to Freemasonry (op. cit., #’s 23 & 27), would later, during the pontificate of Pope Pius XI, be officially condemned by the Church as being “intrinsically evil”.
The following year of 1830, that of Our Lady’s visit to St. Catherine at the Rue du Bac, also marked the death of Adam Weishaupt. Heaven’s special gift at the Rue du Bac was Our Lady’s Miraculous Medal, bringing peace and protection to all who would wear it. Its prayer:
“O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee”.
anticipated the future Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The Blessed Virgin Mary announced to St. Catherine:
“The times are evil. Sorrow will come upon France; the throne will be overturned. The whole world will be upset by miseries of every kind”.
And again:
“There will be victims among the clergy of Paris. The Archbishop will die. The Cross will be trampled. Blood will run in the streets; the world will be plunged into sadness”.
Next, Our Lady appeared at
La Salette, 1846
Devastating famines were occurring throughout Europe at this time, and France herself was threatened by imminent dangers; the very ones that Our Lady had foretold at Rue du Bac. For in those days, with Karl Marx having been hired to write ‘The Communist Manifesto”, the global conspiracy was about to gain momentum. Thus two years later, in 1848, the French capital was shaken by the horrors of the “February Revolution”, the “March Revolution”, and finally the “June Days”. 1848 also saw the beginning of Communism in France.
Not long before La Salette, in 1842, Our Lady’s own “Manifesto” in the form of St. Louis de Montfort’s “True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary”, was re-discovered, after its having been lost – as St. Louis had predicted it would – for all that time. At La Salette, Our Lady gave a “secret” to both of the two seers. Five years later in 1851, Pope Pius IX – according to Sharkey (The Woman Shall Conquer, p. 39) - expressed his wish to know these two secrets. While the girl, Melanie, was writing down her “secret” for the Holy Father, Sharkey says, she asked the meaning of the word “infallibility”, and the spelling of “Antichrist” (ibid.). It is little wonder then that, in such “evil” times, the Blessed Virgin should choose to appear at La Salette in the guise of Our Lady of Sorrows. Her pitiful lamentation for France in particular is reminiscent of Our Lord’s own lament and tears over unrepentant Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37):
“The Lady spoke again in a voice sweeter than the sweetest of melodies. Tears fell from her eyes as She spoke.
‘If my people will not submit’, She said, ‘I shall be forced to let go the hand of My Son. It is so strong, so heavy, that I can no longer withhold it. How long a time do I suffer for you …!” (Sharkey, ibid., pp. 35-36).
Lourdes, 1858
When Our Lady appeared to Bernadette at the now world-famous shrine of Lourdes in southern France, the spectre of Evolutionism loomed on the horizon. Our Lady came to Lourdes on the very eve of Charles Darwin’s writing of The Origin of Species (1859), according to which the scriptural version of Creation, Adam and Eve, the Devil, the Fall and Original Sin would be “replaced” by a pseudo-scientific hypothesis, custom-made to suit the aims of the conspirators.
Darwin’s new theory of evolution was the Book of Genesis in reverse. Instead of men and women having been made in the image and likeness of God, their Creator, and having fallen from that likeness owing to the devastating effects of Original Sin, it was now to be argued that humankind, having originated in the form of brute apes, was in fact evolving upwards to perfection. This diabolical theory “obviated” the need for a Redemption of the human race by the Divine intervention of a loving New Adam; thereby also “making irrelevant” the New Eve. Likewise neither Original Sin, nor the very notion of an Immaculate Conception, had any meaning in this new scheme of things.
This was Satan playing God, trying to “create” his own version of “man” and “woman”, made in the distorted image and likeness of himself. Eventually the theory of evolution would be imposed upon all systems of education, and all subjects, for the purpose of ‘re-shaping’ the sons and daughters of God into the bestial new creation; without belief in God, without any morals, without pity. Satan intended in this way to gain full control of his future New World Order, whose inhabitants were to be enslaved by sin and controlled by a State which would take the place of God. But was the Mother of God going to look on passively, while Her children were being thus corrupted? “Can the Mother, who, with all the force of the Love that She fosters in the Holy Spirit, desire everyone’s salvation, keep silence on what undermines the very bases of their salvation? No, She cannot” (John Paul II at Fatima, 13th of May, 1982).
So once again Our Lady came to France at a critical moment, to bestow upon an ungrateful world Her extraordinary miracles of Grace and healing, and to remind the world of the reality, and of the devastations, of sin. Her moving request was “Penance! Penance!”
The Blessed Virgin Mary came to Lourdes only four years after Pope Pius IX had proclaimed the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception in Rome (1854). She showed Her gratitude to the Holy Father when She proclaimed to St. Bernadette:
“I am the Immaculate Conception”.
Pontmain, 1871
The Virgin Mary came to Pontmain at a time when the writings of Karl Marx were beginning to bear their poisonous fruit. It was also exactly three centuries after the Lepanto victory. The disaster that Our Lady had predicted in 1830 would overtake the Church in France forty years hence, became apparent in the War of the Commune of 1871. Open warfare against God had been declared by the conspirators, as expressed in the words of the Communard Flourens: “Our enemy is God. Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom” (C. Boyer, “The Philosophy of Communism”, Vol. 10, p. 34). And Karl Marx had nothing but admiration for these French Communards.
In Germany, also in the year 1871, Bismarck had begin to pass a series of anti-Catholic laws, abolishing the Church’s control of its own schools, expelling the Jesuits ands other religious orders, taking over the seminaries, claiming the right to appoint the clergy, and finally punishing with severe imprisonment those who violated any one of these various regulations.
The Franco-Prussian war had begin in 1870, the year before Our Lady came to Pontmain. By the time of her visit in 1871, half of France had been conquered, and the other half was in terror of being conquered, by the Prussians.
“At least sixty religious and secular priests met a violent death …. The Archbishop of Paris was first held hostage, then stripped naked before being murdered in cold blood. The churches and the Cross were desecrated with a savagery that was diabolic. Human blood ran in the streets with the execution of 17,000 men, women and children” (SOUL, Nov-Dec, 1988, p. 18).
With France, because of he impiety, on the verge of total disaster, her starving, desperate people at last began to heed Our Lady’s repeated admonitions. In their hour of trial, millions of French people turned to Mary as their Mother and Protectress. She heard the prayers of these ordinary people of France, and came to Pontmain as Our Lady of Hope.
The Prussians, who had been at Laval only a few miles away, never reached Pontmain. For some unexplained reasons, they turned back. The armistice was signed just ten days after the apparition. France had lost the war and had to pay a heavy indemnity, but the bloodshed was over.
Next,
Knock, 1879
According to Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Our Lady’s apparition at Knock in Ireland, “heralded our entry into the Apocalyptic Age”. Indeed, it signalled a new era for the Church. For, with the election to the papacy of Leo XIII on the 20th of February 1878, only six months prior to the apparition, a new age – as it is now universally realised – began in the Church’s history. As Philip Hughes wrote: “Pope Pius IX had openly said, some little time before his death, that his methods and his policy had had their day, and that his successor would need to alter the whole direction of the papal action” (A Popular History of the Catholic Church, p. 227).
In her apparition at Knock, the Blessed Virgin was accompanied by St. Joseph and also by St. John the Evangelist, who, vested as a Bishop, held the Book of the Apocalypse – some say a Missal – in his left hand whilst his right was raised as if preaching. This apparition occurred on the eve of the advent of Modernism, whose seeds were already being sown in those days by the likes of Joseph Renan (d. 1892), one-time student for the Priesthood. “Just as he banished all traditional metaphyiscs from philosophy, Renan rejected any supernatural content in religion. The true religion of mankind … is that of science” (The Macmillan “Encyclopedia of Philosophy”, article on ‘Renan’).
Modernism would soon erupt as a great movement of apostasy within ostensibly Catholic circles, led by Fr. George Tyrrell (SJ) in England, and the Abbé Alfred Loisy in France. Once again it was France that had become the main centre of the controversy.
Modernism, as we saw, was implicitly condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical, “Humanum Genus” (1884). In those days it was constantly in trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities. But the Orthodox Catholic opposition to this dread system became especially militant with the accession to the throne of St. Peter of Pope St. Pius X, in 1903. His decree, “Lamentabili” (1907) – a collection of 65 condemned propositions aimed chiefly at Loisy – and the more general and philosophically grounded encyclical of the same year, “Pascendi Dominici Gregis”, condemned the views of the Modernists, whose system was epitomised by this Pope and Saint as “the synthesis of all heresies”.
These uncompromising condemnations of Modernism by the Church, coupled with Pope St. Pius X’s requirement in 1910 that all clerics take the anti-Modernist oath (“Sacrorum Antistitum”), forced the Modernists to go underground for the time being.
Meanwhile, the almost universal rebellion against Heaven inspired by the evil spirit of Freemasonry, far from yielding the glorious new era of peace and prosperity for humankind that the Illuminati had promised it would, had instead – as Our Lady had warned – begun to bear the most bitter fruits. In 1914 World War I erupted. The slaughter fell with greatest ferocity on France. The soil of no other nation in that conflict was so blood-soaked as was hers. Moreover, the Boshevik conspirators were planning to seize control of Russia from the Tsar, and turn that country into an atheistic Communist state.
The Virgin Mary came to Pontmain at a time when the writings of Karl Marx were beginning to bear their poisonous fruit. It was also exactly three centuries after the Lepanto victory. The disaster that Our Lady had predicted in 1830 would overtake the Church in France forty years hence, became apparent in the War of the Commune of 1871. Open warfare against God had been declared by the conspirators, as expressed in the words of the Communard Flourens: “Our enemy is God. Hatred of God is the beginning of wisdom” (C. Boyer, “The Philosophy of Communism”, Vol. 10, p. 34). And Karl Marx had nothing but admiration for these French Communards.
In Germany, also in the year 1871, Bismarck had begin to pass a series of anti-Catholic laws, abolishing the Church’s control of its own schools, expelling the Jesuits ands other religious orders, taking over the seminaries, claiming the right to appoint the clergy, and finally punishing with severe imprisonment those who violated any one of these various regulations.
The Franco-Prussian war had begin in 1870, the year before Our Lady came to Pontmain. By the time of her visit in 1871, half of France had been conquered, and the other half was in terror of being conquered, by the Prussians.
“At least sixty religious and secular priests met a violent death …. The Archbishop of Paris was first held hostage, then stripped naked before being murdered in cold blood. The churches and the Cross were desecrated with a savagery that was diabolic. Human blood ran in the streets with the execution of 17,000 men, women and children” (SOUL, Nov-Dec, 1988, p. 18).
With France, because of he impiety, on the verge of total disaster, her starving, desperate people at last began to heed Our Lady’s repeated admonitions. In their hour of trial, millions of French people turned to Mary as their Mother and Protectress. She heard the prayers of these ordinary people of France, and came to Pontmain as Our Lady of Hope.
The Prussians, who had been at Laval only a few miles away, never reached Pontmain. For some unexplained reasons, they turned back. The armistice was signed just ten days after the apparition. France had lost the war and had to pay a heavy indemnity, but the bloodshed was over.
Next,
Knock, 1879
According to Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Our Lady’s apparition at Knock in Ireland, “heralded our entry into the Apocalyptic Age”. Indeed, it signalled a new era for the Church. For, with the election to the papacy of Leo XIII on the 20th of February 1878, only six months prior to the apparition, a new age – as it is now universally realised – began in the Church’s history. As Philip Hughes wrote: “Pope Pius IX had openly said, some little time before his death, that his methods and his policy had had their day, and that his successor would need to alter the whole direction of the papal action” (A Popular History of the Catholic Church, p. 227).
In her apparition at Knock, the Blessed Virgin was accompanied by St. Joseph and also by St. John the Evangelist, who, vested as a Bishop, held the Book of the Apocalypse – some say a Missal – in his left hand whilst his right was raised as if preaching. This apparition occurred on the eve of the advent of Modernism, whose seeds were already being sown in those days by the likes of Joseph Renan (d. 1892), one-time student for the Priesthood. “Just as he banished all traditional metaphyiscs from philosophy, Renan rejected any supernatural content in religion. The true religion of mankind … is that of science” (The Macmillan “Encyclopedia of Philosophy”, article on ‘Renan’).
Modernism would soon erupt as a great movement of apostasy within ostensibly Catholic circles, led by Fr. George Tyrrell (SJ) in England, and the Abbé Alfred Loisy in France. Once again it was France that had become the main centre of the controversy.
Modernism, as we saw, was implicitly condemned by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical, “Humanum Genus” (1884). In those days it was constantly in trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities. But the Orthodox Catholic opposition to this dread system became especially militant with the accession to the throne of St. Peter of Pope St. Pius X, in 1903. His decree, “Lamentabili” (1907) – a collection of 65 condemned propositions aimed chiefly at Loisy – and the more general and philosophically grounded encyclical of the same year, “Pascendi Dominici Gregis”, condemned the views of the Modernists, whose system was epitomised by this Pope and Saint as “the synthesis of all heresies”.
These uncompromising condemnations of Modernism by the Church, coupled with Pope St. Pius X’s requirement in 1910 that all clerics take the anti-Modernist oath (“Sacrorum Antistitum”), forced the Modernists to go underground for the time being.
Meanwhile, the almost universal rebellion against Heaven inspired by the evil spirit of Freemasonry, far from yielding the glorious new era of peace and prosperity for humankind that the Illuminati had promised it would, had instead – as Our Lady had warned – begun to bear the most bitter fruits. In 1914 World War I erupted. The slaughter fell with greatest ferocity on France. The soil of no other nation in that conflict was so blood-soaked as was hers. Moreover, the Boshevik conspirators were planning to seize control of Russia from the Tsar, and turn that country into an atheistic Communist state.
Such was the desperate situation in the world when the series of Marian apparitions came to their climax at,
Fatima, 1917
But Our Lady of Fatima’s long-range predictions went far beyond the era of the Great War (1914-1918). She conditionally warned, on the 13th of July, of an even worse war in the reign of Pope Pius XI, and – after that – of Russia spreading her errors throughout the world, provoking new wards and persecutions of the Church, if the Consecration of Russia, and if the Communion of Reparation – both to be performed with regard to Her Immaculate Heart – were neglected. Our Lady mentioned ‘Russia’ four times during that particular apparition, identifying that country as the new source for world-wide error and subversion.
In 1917, Russia appeared to be no threat to the peace of the world, having been badly defeated in World War I. But Our Lady of Fatima, seeing in the light of God beyond mere appearances, knew 1917 to be the year of decision for the Bolshevik take-over in Russia. As usual, her counter-offensive had been timed to perfection; and She wanted it to be known. For, by providing clear instructions to the three children with regard to the month, the day and the hour that they must rendezvous with her during that year, Our Lady was subtly indicating that Heaven knew every move of the enemy. Militant atheism was now on a collision course with the Blessed Virgin Mary and her “seed”. The “two lots”, as in the Book of Esther, were hastening “to the hour and moment and ‘day of decision’ before God and among all the nations” (10:11).
The fact that Our Lady warned about the errors of Russia as early as July of 1917 would negate any foolish suggestion that the Communist Revolution took God by surprise, or that the Church was slow to perceive the real threat posed to the world by this virulent form of atheism. The Holy Spirit had already, more than thirty years previously, in “Humanum Genus”, inspired Pope Leo XIII to warn the word about the dangers of Communism and Socialism (# 27). And the same Holy Father had predicted that the sequel to what he called “the disturbing errors” of Freemasonry, “in taking away all necessary restraints including the fear of God and reverence for divine laws”, would of necessity be “a change and overthrow of all things” (ibid., #’s 23 & 27).
“Yea”, he added, “this change and overthrow is deliberately planned and put forward by many associations of Communists and Socialists; and to their undertakings the sect of the Freemasons is not hostile, but greatly favours their designs, and holds in common with them their chief opinions” (ibid.).
These warnings should have been taken far more seriously. For, once the Communists had established their iron-fisted control over Russia, they saw to it that this formerly great Christian country became the new source of the flow of error.
The Fifth Apparition: 13th of September
With this September apparition, the Fatima series was now hastening to its culmination. In anticipation of the glorious conclusion that Our Lady had promised for the 13th of October – the miracle “that everybody will see and believe” – the crowd had swollen to about 30,000. Lucia’s admonition to the crowd: “You must pray”, was taken up by the Queen of Peace when She arrived at the specified time. For again She told them:
“Go on saying the Rosary in order to obtain the end of the war”.
The gathering at the Cova da Iria on the 13th of September was truly one comprised of God’s poor and lowly people, beseeching the heavenly Lady, through the intercession of Lucia, for the restoration of health, for the cure of cripples, for the blind, for the safe return of husbands and sons fighting in the war, for the conversion of sinners. All the miseries of poor humanity appeared there. Our Lady’s message, anticipating her final apparition, was brief:
“In October Our Lord will also come, and Our Lady of Sorrows and of Mount Carmel, and Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus, all to bestow Their blessing on the world”.
In regard to the sick and afflicted who had been recommended to her for healing, Our Lady said:
“I will cure some of them, others no”.
Then She reminded the three children:
“In October I will perform the miracle so that everybody will believe”.
There next occurred an incident which is usually passed over without much comment. A simple child had asked Lucia to offer the Lady a little bottle of eau-de-cologne. This she did but Our Lady told her “that is not needed in Heaven”. On the face of it, Our Lady’s straight-out refusal to accept the child’s well-intentioned gift might seem a little harsh. But, since nothing that the Queen of Heaven says or does is without significance, it might be worth our while pausing for a moment to see if, by putting this incident in its proper perspective, we might be able to arrive at a better understanding of it. To do this we need a clue, and once again the Book of Esther, which has served us so well to date, seems to provide us with the necessary elucidation.
The 13th of September apparition still corresponds analogously with the phase of mourning, of prayer and fasting, in the Book of Esther. At this stage victory is in sight, but not yet attained. Now, in Chapter 14 of the Book of Esther, we read these relevant words:
“And Esther, the queen, seized with deathly anxiety, fled to the Lord; she took off her splendid apparel and put on the garments of distress and mourning, and instead of costly perfumes she covered her head with ashes and dung, and she utterly humbled her body, and every part that she loved to adorn she covered with her tangled hair. And she prayed to the Lord God of Israel …” (vv. 1-2, 3).
These verses seem to provide us with the explanation we are seeking. The bottle of perfume that the child offered was not only irrelevant for Heaven; at this stage of the Fatima apparitions it was also completely out of context with the mood of prayer and fervent supplication to God that Our Lady was trying to engender amongst the people.
Images of the Holy Rosary
We left the Esther narrative at the point where Mordecai had, to Haman’s profound chagrin, just been elevated to the highest honours in the kingdom. It was the beginning of the end for Haman. Nevertheless, the Jewish nation itself was still in mortal perils from his decree, since king Ahasuerus had so far done nothing to counteract it.
But now it was Queen Esther’s moment to intervene on behalf of her people, by identifying herself before the king as a member of this condemned Jewish race. She chose, as the occasion for finally making this identification, the second banquet that she had prepared for the king and Haman. On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king repeated is most generous offer to Esther: “What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled” (7:2).
“Then Queen Esther answered, ‘If I have found favour in your sight, O king … let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request. For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to be annihilated’ (7:3, 4).
Obviously Queen Esther’s plea took the king completely by surprise. Being, even at this late stage, completely unaware of Haman’s malicious intentions, the king wondered whom Esther meant.
“Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, ‘Who is he, and where is he, that would presume to do this?’ And Esther said, ‘A foe and enemy! This wicked Haman’. Then Haman was in terror before the king and the queen” (7:5-6).
Queen Esther’s long-awaited revelation of who she was became the turning point as far as king Ahasuerus was concerned. Having committed himself irrevocably to her cause, the king must also become an ally to her people and an enemy of the conspirators. However, before his passing sentence on Haman, Ahasuerus did something unexpected; he
“rose from the feast in wrath and went into the palace garden” (v. 7). Now there may be important spiritual significance for us in this action by the king. When we recall how rightly the Saints have compared the Holy Rosary to a ‘garden’, then we may see “the palace garden” as symbolic of the Rosary, allowing this passage to take its place amongst the abundance of Rosary images that permeate the Book of Esther. It then becomes a further reminder to us of Our Lady of Fatima’s own reiterated petition and request. The point is this: if we wish to overcome the enemies of our salvation and bring down Heaven’s peace upon us, we must first have recourse to the Holy Rosary. Haman’s execution was now a foregone conclusion.
“And the king returned from the palace garden to the place where they were drinking wine, as Haman was falling … [and] they covered Haman’s face. Then said Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, ‘Moreover, the gallows which Haman has prepared for Mordecai whose word saved the king, is standing in Haman’s house, fifty [a Rosary number] cubits high’. And the king said, ‘Hang him on that’. So they hanged Haman on the gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated” (7:8, 9-10).
This passage connects with the latter part of the previous chapter, where Haman’s partners in crime, “his wise men and his wife Zeresh”, had warned him that:
“If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of the Jewish people, you will not prevail against him but will surely fall before him” (6:13).
Since that statement had been uttered, Haman had gone from ‘falling’ to complete ruination and destruction.
The whole incident is a perfect image of the Fall of Lucifer, on account of the Incarnate Word Jesus Christ, likewise a Jew. The Cross, instrument of Satan’s doom, is symbolised here by the “gallows”, the very instrument of Haman’s demise. Even St. Michael the Archangel apparently is figured here in the person of ‘Harbona’ who hurries Haman away from Ahasuerus’ presence, with face covered, to his execution.
Thus it came about, even though all of life’s joyful and sorrowful events are related to the ones contemplated in the Holy Rosary, that those which were woven into the tapestry of Queen Esther’s life, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, became a direct prefiguration of the Holy Rosary’s Mysteries. But even whilst the joyful and sorrowful phases of the drama are being enacted before us, there is also present for the meditative mind the subtle hint also of the glorious outcome. Had not Haman’s wife Zeresh and all his friends suggested that Haman go to the king “in the morning” (5:14) – a biblical phrase (e.g. Psalm 5:3) that commentators take as referring to Christ’s Resurrection – to tell him to have Mordecai hanged on the gallows? Conversely, that “morning” would be witness to Mordecai’s own sudden rise, with the simultaneous eclipse of Haman.
We left the Esther narrative at the point where Mordecai had, to Haman’s profound chagrin, just been elevated to the highest honours in the kingdom. It was the beginning of the end for Haman. Nevertheless, the Jewish nation itself was still in mortal perils from his decree, since king Ahasuerus had so far done nothing to counteract it.
But now it was Queen Esther’s moment to intervene on behalf of her people, by identifying herself before the king as a member of this condemned Jewish race. She chose, as the occasion for finally making this identification, the second banquet that she had prepared for the king and Haman. On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king repeated is most generous offer to Esther: “What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled” (7:2).
“Then Queen Esther answered, ‘If I have found favour in your sight, O king … let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request. For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to be annihilated’ (7:3, 4).
Obviously Queen Esther’s plea took the king completely by surprise. Being, even at this late stage, completely unaware of Haman’s malicious intentions, the king wondered whom Esther meant.
“Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, ‘Who is he, and where is he, that would presume to do this?’ And Esther said, ‘A foe and enemy! This wicked Haman’. Then Haman was in terror before the king and the queen” (7:5-6).
Queen Esther’s long-awaited revelation of who she was became the turning point as far as king Ahasuerus was concerned. Having committed himself irrevocably to her cause, the king must also become an ally to her people and an enemy of the conspirators. However, before his passing sentence on Haman, Ahasuerus did something unexpected; he
“rose from the feast in wrath and went into the palace garden” (v. 7). Now there may be important spiritual significance for us in this action by the king. When we recall how rightly the Saints have compared the Holy Rosary to a ‘garden’, then we may see “the palace garden” as symbolic of the Rosary, allowing this passage to take its place amongst the abundance of Rosary images that permeate the Book of Esther. It then becomes a further reminder to us of Our Lady of Fatima’s own reiterated petition and request. The point is this: if we wish to overcome the enemies of our salvation and bring down Heaven’s peace upon us, we must first have recourse to the Holy Rosary. Haman’s execution was now a foregone conclusion.
“And the king returned from the palace garden to the place where they were drinking wine, as Haman was falling … [and] they covered Haman’s face. Then said Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, ‘Moreover, the gallows which Haman has prepared for Mordecai whose word saved the king, is standing in Haman’s house, fifty [a Rosary number] cubits high’. And the king said, ‘Hang him on that’. So they hanged Haman on the gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated” (7:8, 9-10).
This passage connects with the latter part of the previous chapter, where Haman’s partners in crime, “his wise men and his wife Zeresh”, had warned him that:
“If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of the Jewish people, you will not prevail against him but will surely fall before him” (6:13).
Since that statement had been uttered, Haman had gone from ‘falling’ to complete ruination and destruction.
The whole incident is a perfect image of the Fall of Lucifer, on account of the Incarnate Word Jesus Christ, likewise a Jew. The Cross, instrument of Satan’s doom, is symbolised here by the “gallows”, the very instrument of Haman’s demise. Even St. Michael the Archangel apparently is figured here in the person of ‘Harbona’ who hurries Haman away from Ahasuerus’ presence, with face covered, to his execution.
Thus it came about, even though all of life’s joyful and sorrowful events are related to the ones contemplated in the Holy Rosary, that those which were woven into the tapestry of Queen Esther’s life, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, became a direct prefiguration of the Holy Rosary’s Mysteries. But even whilst the joyful and sorrowful phases of the drama are being enacted before us, there is also present for the meditative mind the subtle hint also of the glorious outcome. Had not Haman’s wife Zeresh and all his friends suggested that Haman go to the king “in the morning” (5:14) – a biblical phrase (e.g. Psalm 5:3) that commentators take as referring to Christ’s Resurrection – to tell him to have Mordecai hanged on the gallows? Conversely, that “morning” would be witness to Mordecai’s own sudden rise, with the simultaneous eclipse of Haman.
Now we have all the elements that we need to consider
The Sixth Apparition: 13th of October
Torrential rain fell upon the 70,000 or more pilgrims who braved their way to the Cova da Iria on the 13th of October, to witness the promised miracle. But despite the fact that the rain had continued to fall, Lucia told the crowd: “You must close your umbrellas”. The people obeyed and, in pelting rain, they prayed the Rosary. It was to be the day, also, when the Lady from Heaven would reveal Her identity to the three children. Lucia had been careful never to name the heavenly Visitor, but always referred to Her as “the Lady”, or “the beautiful Lady”.
Before the Lady arrived at the Cova da Iria that day, however, the children would be put through a testing time. For once, She did not come at the customary hour of noon. Nothing happened then: just more rain and cold and a crowd becoming restless. But for this, her October apparition, Our Lady would be coming, not just for Portugal, but
“that all the world may believe”.
Portuguese time was two hours ahead of solar time. So it was jnot until tow o’clock, or solar noon, that Lucia raised her hands and cried:
“She is coming!”
Lucia opened the conversation, asking the Lady:
“Madam, who are you, what do you want of me?”
Our Lady replied:
“I want to tell you to have a chapel built here in My honour. I am the Queen of the Holy Rosary. Continue praying the Rosary daily. The war is coming to an end and the soldiers will return to their homes soon”.
Our Lady, Queen of the Holv Rosary
In her modern apparitions leading up to Fatima, the Blessed Virgin Mary had chosen to appear in various guises, identifying herself differently according to the circumstances. At Rue du Bac, She was Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal; at La Salette, Our Lady of Sorrows; at Lourdes, “I am the Immaculate Conception”; at Pontmain, She was Our Lady of Hope.
It was most fitting then that at Fatima, the apogée of her visitations, the Blessed Virgin should come as Queen of the Holy Rosary. If the abundant Rosary images in the Book of Esther were a clue to her identification, much more would the situation in 1917 in Russia indicate that the Woman must enter the conflict in her powerful guise of Queen of the Holy Rosary. The impending Communist takeover of Russia, with all of its ramifications for the world, required a counter offensive from Heaven that would match its gravity. Our Lady of the Rosary was the perfect Agent for such an assignment; for always throughout history, at a time of great crisis and impending doom for Christendom, God’s faithful had looked to the Mother of God under that title, to rescue them. Like Queen Esther, Our Lady of the Rosary is a Queen who wins great victories when the chips are down; when all seems lost for the cause of right.
* Was it not Our Lady of the Rosary who, in response to the public praying of the Rosary recited at the urgent request of Pope St. Pius V, saved Christendom, so terribly threatened by the Turkish fleet, by bestowing her glorious victory upon the Christian fleet at Lepanto on the 7th of October, 1571?
* Was it not to Our Lady of the Rosary that was due the miraculous delivery of the city of Vienna, besieged by the Ottoman Turks in 1683?
* More recently, did it not happen in Austria once again that the fervent appeal of a population praying the Rosary in a continuous crusade of prayer, obtained on the 13th of May, 1955, the retreat of the Soviet occupying forces from Austrian soil?
If the recitation of the Rosary, and devotion to Our Lady invoked as Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, have been the cause of so many astonishing miracles in the temporal or physical order, how many other marvels, even more prodigious, are not to be ascribed to this devotion in the order of Grace? Is it not told, for instance, that St. Dominic converted 100,000 Albigensian heretics by leading them to a knowledge and love of the Mysteries of the holy Rosary?
Many Saints have also testified that God, through the Rosary and the Scapular, will one day save the world. Considered in the context of the Esther story, there is something very significant in the fact that Our Lady of Fatima deliberately withheld her true identity until this crucial moment – just before She performed the great Miracle. For, when finally Queen Esther chose to reveal her nationality to the king, it too was at a crucial moment, and it helped Esther to turn the tide. From a comparison of the two scenarios, we can only conclude that the Queen of the Rosary will similarly snatch a victory at a point in human history when all seems lost.
The Sixth Apparition: 13th of October
Torrential rain fell upon the 70,000 or more pilgrims who braved their way to the Cova da Iria on the 13th of October, to witness the promised miracle. But despite the fact that the rain had continued to fall, Lucia told the crowd: “You must close your umbrellas”. The people obeyed and, in pelting rain, they prayed the Rosary. It was to be the day, also, when the Lady from Heaven would reveal Her identity to the three children. Lucia had been careful never to name the heavenly Visitor, but always referred to Her as “the Lady”, or “the beautiful Lady”.
Before the Lady arrived at the Cova da Iria that day, however, the children would be put through a testing time. For once, She did not come at the customary hour of noon. Nothing happened then: just more rain and cold and a crowd becoming restless. But for this, her October apparition, Our Lady would be coming, not just for Portugal, but
“that all the world may believe”.
Portuguese time was two hours ahead of solar time. So it was jnot until tow o’clock, or solar noon, that Lucia raised her hands and cried:
“She is coming!”
Lucia opened the conversation, asking the Lady:
“Madam, who are you, what do you want of me?”
Our Lady replied:
“I want to tell you to have a chapel built here in My honour. I am the Queen of the Holy Rosary. Continue praying the Rosary daily. The war is coming to an end and the soldiers will return to their homes soon”.
Our Lady, Queen of the Holv Rosary
In her modern apparitions leading up to Fatima, the Blessed Virgin Mary had chosen to appear in various guises, identifying herself differently according to the circumstances. At Rue du Bac, She was Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal; at La Salette, Our Lady of Sorrows; at Lourdes, “I am the Immaculate Conception”; at Pontmain, She was Our Lady of Hope.
It was most fitting then that at Fatima, the apogée of her visitations, the Blessed Virgin should come as Queen of the Holy Rosary. If the abundant Rosary images in the Book of Esther were a clue to her identification, much more would the situation in 1917 in Russia indicate that the Woman must enter the conflict in her powerful guise of Queen of the Holy Rosary. The impending Communist takeover of Russia, with all of its ramifications for the world, required a counter offensive from Heaven that would match its gravity. Our Lady of the Rosary was the perfect Agent for such an assignment; for always throughout history, at a time of great crisis and impending doom for Christendom, God’s faithful had looked to the Mother of God under that title, to rescue them. Like Queen Esther, Our Lady of the Rosary is a Queen who wins great victories when the chips are down; when all seems lost for the cause of right.
* Was it not Our Lady of the Rosary who, in response to the public praying of the Rosary recited at the urgent request of Pope St. Pius V, saved Christendom, so terribly threatened by the Turkish fleet, by bestowing her glorious victory upon the Christian fleet at Lepanto on the 7th of October, 1571?
* Was it not to Our Lady of the Rosary that was due the miraculous delivery of the city of Vienna, besieged by the Ottoman Turks in 1683?
* More recently, did it not happen in Austria once again that the fervent appeal of a population praying the Rosary in a continuous crusade of prayer, obtained on the 13th of May, 1955, the retreat of the Soviet occupying forces from Austrian soil?
If the recitation of the Rosary, and devotion to Our Lady invoked as Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, have been the cause of so many astonishing miracles in the temporal or physical order, how many other marvels, even more prodigious, are not to be ascribed to this devotion in the order of Grace? Is it not told, for instance, that St. Dominic converted 100,000 Albigensian heretics by leading them to a knowledge and love of the Mysteries of the holy Rosary?
Many Saints have also testified that God, through the Rosary and the Scapular, will one day save the world. Considered in the context of the Esther story, there is something very significant in the fact that Our Lady of Fatima deliberately withheld her true identity until this crucial moment – just before She performed the great Miracle. For, when finally Queen Esther chose to reveal her nationality to the king, it too was at a crucial moment, and it helped Esther to turn the tide. From a comparison of the two scenarios, we can only conclude that the Queen of the Rosary will similarly snatch a victory at a point in human history when all seems lost.
The Great Solar Miracle
After the Lady had identified who She was, Lucia again asked her if She would cure the sick, and convert the sinners who had been recommended to her. Our Lady replied:
“I will cure or convert some of them. Others I will not. They must repent and beg pardon for their sins”.
Then, with a look of grief and in a suppliant tone of voice, She added:
“Men must not offend God any more for He is already very much offended”.
And opening her hands Our Lady, as She was rising to go away, projected beams of light onto the sun. Lucia cried: “Look at the sun!” And suddenly, as the crowd looked upwards, the clouds opened and exposed the blue sky with the sun at its zenith. But this sun did not dazzle. The people could look directly at it. It was like a shining silver plate. Then the sun trembled. It made some abrupt movements. It began to spin like a wheel of fire. Great shafts of coloured light flared out from its center in all directions, colouring in a most fantastic manner the clouds, trees, rocks, earth, and even the clothes and faces of the people gathered there, in alternating splashes of red, yellow, green, blue and violet – the full spectrum of rainbow colours.
After about five minutes the sun stopped revolving in this fashion. A moment later, it resumed a second time its incredible motion, throwing out its light and colour like a huge display of fireworks. And once more, after a few minutes, the sun stopped its prodigious dance.
After a short time, and for the third time, it resumed its spinning and fantastic colours. The crowd gazed spellbound. Then came the awful climax. The sun seemed to be falling from the sky. Zig-zagging from sided to side, it plunged down towards the crowd below, sending out a heat increasingly intense, and causing the spectators to believe that this was indeed the end of the world.
People stood wild-eyed, or sank to their knees in the mud, as the sun rushed towards them. A desperate cry went up from the crowd, begging God, or the Blessed Virgin Mary, for mercy, asking pardon for their sins. The sun halted, stopping short in its precipitous fall, and then it climbed back to its place in the sky, where it regained its normal brilliance.
Then the dazed people, who had just experienced the wonder of the age – or what Cardinal Laraana would later call “the greatest Divine intervention since the time of Our Lord” (Soul, Sep-Oct, 1990, p. 6) – found that another miracle had occurred. This apocalyptic scene, full of majesty and terror, had ended with a delicate gift, which showed the motherly tenderness of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for her children. Their sodden clothes were dry and comfortable, without a trace of mud and rain.
But there was another aspect to Our Lady’s Miracle that only the three children witnessed. Corresponding to the three distinct movements of the sun, separated by the moments of pause, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco saw three distinct tableaux representing, successively, the Joyful, the Sorrowful and the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary.
In the first tableau they saw the three members of the Holy Family; with Our Lady of the Rosary to the right of the sun and more brilliant than the sun, wearing a white dress and a blue mantle. To the left, dressed in red, was St. Joseph with the Infant Jesus blessing the world. Next, Our Divine Lord appeared as a grown man, lovingly blessing the world. To the left was Our Lady of Sorrows, clad in purple. Finally, Our Lady of Sorrows was replaced by Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Scapular in her hand. The Miracle of the sun at Fatima, therefore, was absolutely a Rosary miracle. It seemed even to move to the pulse and rhythm of a Rosary being recited. Its approximately fifteen minutes’ duration might also have been intended to represent one of the conditions of the Five First Saturday devotion: fifteen minutes of meditation on the Mysteries of the Rosary, while keeping Our Lady company.
Full of Scriptural Imagery
All in one, the great Miracle of the 13th of October, 1917, incorporated some of the most spectacular elements of renowned Old Testament miracles. Fr. Smolenski (op. cit., pp. 11-12) has compared Noah’s time for instance, when it rained for forty days and forty nights, with Fatima on that day, when everything was drenched with rain. The dove with the branch indicated that the storm had subsided; Our Lady’s presence over the holm-oak tree was Heaven’s peace. The Ark landed on solid earth; Fatima was dry because of the miracle. God re-established the covenant of peace by means of Noah; Our Lady asked that Consecration be made to her Immaculate Heart. The rainbow became the sign of peace; the whole area of the Fatima miracle reflected all the colours of the rainbow during the sun’s dance. “As Noah’s sons inherited the covenant of peace, brought to mind by the presence of the rainbow, so Mary, Image of the Church as the servant of God, would have her children be the bearers of her peace to a re-energized and re-evangelized creation”.
Other comparisons with Old Testament miracles appear in Soul magazine (Sep-Oct, 1990, p. 6). For instance, the sun’s leaving the entire area dry at the Cova da Iria reminds one of the dry path through the Red Sea. Or of Joshua’s own solar miracle, when, at his command, the sun gave its light two hours after sunset. Again, reminiscent of the sun’s fall, was Elijah’s calling down of fire from the sky as a challenge to the pagan priests. (Elijah is of course already linked to the Carmelites, and the Scapular, due to his association with Mount Carmel, and his miraculous mantle). Finally, we could add to these the miraculous alteration affected on the sundial, as cause by the prophet Isaiah for the benefit of king Hezekiah.
Pope Pius XII, when instituting the feast of The Queenship of Mary with his encyclical, Ad Caeli Reginam, in 1954, likened Our Lady to the rainbow in the Genesis account of Noah and in Ecclesiasticus:
“Is She not a rainbow in the clouds, reaching towards God, a promise of peace? (Cf. Genesis 9:13). ‘Look upon the rainbow, and bless Him that made it; it is very beautiful in its brightness. It encompasses the heaven about with the circle of its glory, the hands of the Most High have displayed it’ (Ecclesiasticus 43:11-12)”.
But undoubtedly, more than anything else, it was the stupendous character of the Miracle of the Sun – coupled with the fact that it had been predicted to the very hour, months in advance – that sets Fatima apart from all of the Old Testament manifestations of God, and even from the preceding Marian apparitions. Pope Paul VI referred to it simply as ‘Signum Magnum’, ‘The Great Sign’.
Symbolised in the Book of Esther
We are interested now in the description of Mordecai at the peak of his triumph, as described in the scriptural texts at the head of this chapter, when “Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white, with a great golden crown and a mantle of fine linen and purple, while the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced” (8:15). What is truly amazing is that the successive Rosary tableaux that appeared during the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, seem to be, in a sense, symbolically emblazoned upon Mordecai’s apparel. Thus:
- Mordecai wears royal robes of blue and white. In the Joyful tableau, the children saw Our Lady of the Rosary wearing a white dress and a blue mantle.
- Mordecai also wears the colour purple. In the Sorrowful tableau, the Blessed Virgin wore the purple robes of Our Lady of Sorrows.
- Finally, Mordecai wears a golden crown and a mantle of fine linen. The crown is symbolic of the Glorious mysteries, represented in the third tableau. The Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is perhaps foreshadowed by Mordecai’s “mantle of fine linen”.
Nor was the tripe Rosary symbolism of the great Miracle at Fatima lost on John Paul II, as is evidenced by the structure of his world-wide Rosary in 1987. In keeping with the universality of the occasion, but no doubt also with the Miracle of the 13th of October well in mind, John Paul II led a five-decade Rosary which included a mixture of Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious mysteries. Following the example of Our Lady of the Rosary, the Pope had publicized this memorable event months in advance, so that all would join him in the recitation at that same hour. The entire Church, according to the Holy Father’s intentions, was to be involved. “And all Israel cried out mightily, for their death was before their eyes” (Esther 13:18).
Like Mordecai, the Holy Father “roared terribly” against the forces of evil through this powerful Rosary of his. Observers say that John Paul II on that day had an uncharacteristic aspect about him of “solemn defiance”, as if “launching a battle”. This must have been the exact impression that Mordecai also conveyed, when he went out from the presence of the king in his glorious apparel, to rouse the Jewish people throughout the kingdom of Medo-Persia to defend themselves against Haman’s edict.
And again, how wondrously does the description of Mordecai in his resplendent apparel compare with that of the Holy Father on that eve of Pentecost, bedecked in his Marian robes and wearing the same glorious mitre that was presented to Pope Pius IX on the day that he proclaimed the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Pope John Paul II had deliberately chosen to wear this mitre at the Mass of Pentecost Vigil in St. Peter’s Square; a Mass that he presented as the crowning experience of the papal Rosary.
Conclusion
After Haman was hanged, king Ahasuerus gave his entire house and possessions over to Queen Esther (8:1). Mordecai went forth and inspired the Jews throughout the entire Medo-Persian kingdom to a great victory over their enemies; for “the fear of the Jews” fell upon all the nations (8:17). The Book of Esther concludes after Mordecai had fully explained the meaning of his dream.
Inasmuch as the Book of Esther tells us nothing further about Queen Esther herself, its main character, this ending is rather abrupt. It is as of the remaining chapters had yet to be written…?
All in one, the great Miracle of the 13th of October, 1917, incorporated some of the most spectacular elements of renowned Old Testament miracles. Fr. Smolenski (op. cit., pp. 11-12) has compared Noah’s time for instance, when it rained for forty days and forty nights, with Fatima on that day, when everything was drenched with rain. The dove with the branch indicated that the storm had subsided; Our Lady’s presence over the holm-oak tree was Heaven’s peace. The Ark landed on solid earth; Fatima was dry because of the miracle. God re-established the covenant of peace by means of Noah; Our Lady asked that Consecration be made to her Immaculate Heart. The rainbow became the sign of peace; the whole area of the Fatima miracle reflected all the colours of the rainbow during the sun’s dance. “As Noah’s sons inherited the covenant of peace, brought to mind by the presence of the rainbow, so Mary, Image of the Church as the servant of God, would have her children be the bearers of her peace to a re-energized and re-evangelized creation”.
Other comparisons with Old Testament miracles appear in Soul magazine (Sep-Oct, 1990, p. 6). For instance, the sun’s leaving the entire area dry at the Cova da Iria reminds one of the dry path through the Red Sea. Or of Joshua’s own solar miracle, when, at his command, the sun gave its light two hours after sunset. Again, reminiscent of the sun’s fall, was Elijah’s calling down of fire from the sky as a challenge to the pagan priests. (Elijah is of course already linked to the Carmelites, and the Scapular, due to his association with Mount Carmel, and his miraculous mantle). Finally, we could add to these the miraculous alteration affected on the sundial, as cause by the prophet Isaiah for the benefit of king Hezekiah.
Pope Pius XII, when instituting the feast of The Queenship of Mary with his encyclical, Ad Caeli Reginam, in 1954, likened Our Lady to the rainbow in the Genesis account of Noah and in Ecclesiasticus:
“Is She not a rainbow in the clouds, reaching towards God, a promise of peace? (Cf. Genesis 9:13). ‘Look upon the rainbow, and bless Him that made it; it is very beautiful in its brightness. It encompasses the heaven about with the circle of its glory, the hands of the Most High have displayed it’ (Ecclesiasticus 43:11-12)”.
But undoubtedly, more than anything else, it was the stupendous character of the Miracle of the Sun – coupled with the fact that it had been predicted to the very hour, months in advance – that sets Fatima apart from all of the Old Testament manifestations of God, and even from the preceding Marian apparitions. Pope Paul VI referred to it simply as ‘Signum Magnum’, ‘The Great Sign’.
Symbolised in the Book of Esther
We are interested now in the description of Mordecai at the peak of his triumph, as described in the scriptural texts at the head of this chapter, when “Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white, with a great golden crown and a mantle of fine linen and purple, while the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced” (8:15). What is truly amazing is that the successive Rosary tableaux that appeared during the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, seem to be, in a sense, symbolically emblazoned upon Mordecai’s apparel. Thus:
- Mordecai wears royal robes of blue and white. In the Joyful tableau, the children saw Our Lady of the Rosary wearing a white dress and a blue mantle.
- Mordecai also wears the colour purple. In the Sorrowful tableau, the Blessed Virgin wore the purple robes of Our Lady of Sorrows.
- Finally, Mordecai wears a golden crown and a mantle of fine linen. The crown is symbolic of the Glorious mysteries, represented in the third tableau. The Brown Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is perhaps foreshadowed by Mordecai’s “mantle of fine linen”.
Nor was the tripe Rosary symbolism of the great Miracle at Fatima lost on John Paul II, as is evidenced by the structure of his world-wide Rosary in 1987. In keeping with the universality of the occasion, but no doubt also with the Miracle of the 13th of October well in mind, John Paul II led a five-decade Rosary which included a mixture of Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious mysteries. Following the example of Our Lady of the Rosary, the Pope had publicized this memorable event months in advance, so that all would join him in the recitation at that same hour. The entire Church, according to the Holy Father’s intentions, was to be involved. “And all Israel cried out mightily, for their death was before their eyes” (Esther 13:18).
Like Mordecai, the Holy Father “roared terribly” against the forces of evil through this powerful Rosary of his. Observers say that John Paul II on that day had an uncharacteristic aspect about him of “solemn defiance”, as if “launching a battle”. This must have been the exact impression that Mordecai also conveyed, when he went out from the presence of the king in his glorious apparel, to rouse the Jewish people throughout the kingdom of Medo-Persia to defend themselves against Haman’s edict.
And again, how wondrously does the description of Mordecai in his resplendent apparel compare with that of the Holy Father on that eve of Pentecost, bedecked in his Marian robes and wearing the same glorious mitre that was presented to Pope Pius IX on the day that he proclaimed the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Pope John Paul II had deliberately chosen to wear this mitre at the Mass of Pentecost Vigil in St. Peter’s Square; a Mass that he presented as the crowning experience of the papal Rosary.
Conclusion
After Haman was hanged, king Ahasuerus gave his entire house and possessions over to Queen Esther (8:1). Mordecai went forth and inspired the Jews throughout the entire Medo-Persian kingdom to a great victory over their enemies; for “the fear of the Jews” fell upon all the nations (8:17). The Book of Esther concludes after Mordecai had fully explained the meaning of his dream.
Inasmuch as the Book of Esther tells us nothing further about Queen Esther herself, its main character, this ending is rather abrupt. It is as of the remaining chapters had yet to be written…?
Chapter Four
REPARATION TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY
“Our Lady has already drawn … a picture of contemporary events, with persecutions in the Soviet Union [now defunct] and the destruction of certain nations. At the same time She has given us the remedy: the consecration of the world to her Immaculate Heart. In these apocalyptic times, it is you yourselves who have the remedy in your hands. Many are concerned about the revelation of the third part of the Secret of Fatima [since revealed]. They forget, however, that the essential message has already been given, and that is what we most need to know; that we are not to offend God, and that we are to live in His grace”.
(Cardinal Cerejeira of Lisbon, May 1960).
These important words echo the public complaint, expressed by a previous bishop of Leiria-Fatima, the Most Reverend John Venancio, ‘that curiosity about the unknown third part of a secret was occupying the masses, while few were living the essence of the message long published’.
‘It is you yourselves who have the remedy in your hands’ ….
How fittingly do these words of the Cardinal Patriarch of Portugal introduce us to the next phase in which the great drama of Fatima is being unfolded for us by Heaven. If then, learning from hindsight, we ponder these words in the light of the truth expressed by a previous bishop of Fatima:
“… yet how few are living the essence of the message long published’,
then once again we shall allow the weight of the Esther chronicle to have its full impact on our own contemporary history and the understanding of it. If the Jews in the time of Queen Esther had given such scant regard to the ‘rival operation’ given them with so much courage and solicitude against the plot towards their annihilation, they would not have defended themselves sufficiently against those who had vowed their destruction. As a consequence, any last-minute resistance would have been hopelessly inadequate for many. They would have been wiped out and thus the courageous intercession on their behalf by their beloved Queen would have been in vain.
Convinced then of the gravity of the situation by both the extremely late hour as well as the advanced deterioration of our world all around us – due to the almost universal and suicidal rejection by Catholics ‘of the message long published’, we now enter the next episode of the Fatima story: The Apparitions of the 1920’s.
1925: Our lady Fulfils Her Promise
On the 10th of December, 1925, Our Lady of the Rosary fulfilled her promise of the 13th of July with regard to the First Saturdays, when She told the three children: “I shall come to ask for … the Communion of Reparation on the first Saturdays of the month”.
Lucia was by then a Dorothean postulant at Pontevedra in Spain. The most holy Virgin appeared to her in her room, and by her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was a Child. In order perhaps to appreciate Our Lady’s first gesture at this particular, intimate apparition, we must take the reader back to the biblical scene before the throne of king Ahasuerus, at the very moment when Queen Esther had presented herself in all her majesty, unannounced - and not summoned - before the Medo-Persian king.
“On the third day, when [Esther] ended her prayer, she took off the garments in which she had worshipped, and arrayed herself in splendid attire. Then, majestically adorned, after invoking the all-seeing God and Saviour, she took her two maids with her, leaning daintily on one, while the other followed carrying her train. She was radiant with perfect beauty, and she looked happy, as if beloved, but her heart was frozen with fear. When she had gone through all the doors, she stood before the king.
He was seated on his royal throne, clothed in the full array of his majesty, all covered with gold and precious stones. And he was most terrifying. Lifting his face, flushed with splendour, he looked at her in fierce anger. And the queen faltered, and turned pale and faint, and collapsed upon the head of the maid who went before her. Then God changed the spirit of the king to gentleness, and in alarm he sprang from his throne and took her in his arms until she came to herself. And he comforted her with soothing words, and said to her,
‘What is it Esther? I am your brother. Take courage, you shall not die, for our law applies only to the people. Come near’.
Then he raised the golden sceptre and touched it to her neck; and he embraced her, and said, ‘Speak to me’ …. But as she was speaking, she fell fainting. And the king was agitated, and all his servants sought to comfort her’. (Esther 15:1-16).
As on all the previous occasions when the Esther chronicle has been quoted in this book in relation to the Fatima story, Catholics who read these inspired words cannot fail to be impressed by how perfectly this Old Testament narrative continues to chime in with the details of its New Testament counterpart. It gives us a clear insight into the truth, alas one not sufficiently stressed and so not sufficiently appreciated, as to how truly Our Blessed Lady is placed between the wrath of God on the one hand, and sinful humanity on the other. Or, as She herself showed us, between the wrath of God and an eternal Hell!
As an immediate consequence of this neglect, we have it that in our days, ‘not all His servants seek to comfort Her …’. If this had been the situation in the presence of king Ahausuerus, he would no doubt have interpreted this neglect on the part of some as a slight on the Queen, and therefore as an insult upon himself.
By the same token, we must now extend and enlarge this scene, and truly see the holy Catholic Church herself as being placed in that perilous position of mediation between God and humankind, between Divine wrath and an eternity in hell. And within that enlarged panorama we begin to discern how first Lucia, and then ‘all those servants who seek to comfort Her’, have been placed in the rôle originally assumed by Queen Esther on behalf of her people, but truly fulfilled by the Lamb of God and the ‘New Eve’, and extended in time by the holy Catholic Church on behalf of all humankind.
There are in fact some distinct similarities between Esther and Sr. Lucia in the more important aspects of their lives. In the first place, both Esther and Lucia were marked out by Heaven for special favour and were raised up by God from obscurity to public prominence, in order to carry out their respective tasks of the utmost importance. But their being in the public eye was a cause of grave anxiety to both Esther and Lucia. Esther wrote about it to Mordecai:
“Thou knowest my necessity – that I abhor the sign of my proud position [i.e. the crown], which is upon my head on the days when I appear in public” (Esther 14:16).
Lucia, too, underwent grievous misery and mental suffering during the apparitions. For instance, she related that for a period of time after the second apparition, she “lost all enthusiasm for making sacrifices and acts of mortification”, and she was temped to say that she had been lying about the apparitions, “and so put an end to the whole thing” (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, p. 69).
Both Queen Esther and Lucia were prepared to risk death rather than quit the task that God had assigned to them. Esther courageously went with her two maids into the presence of Ahasuerus the Great, who had the power of life and death over them. Lucia and her two cousins prepared themselves to suffer an agonising death in boiling oil at the hands of the sub-prefect, Santos, rather than reveal Our Lady’s secret to him. Ultimately the king, and Santos, each relented. In the case of Queen Esther, she so won over the king that his heart and hers were united thereafter in a common cause against the enemy, who had now become their enemy. This bond, this unity of heart and mind, was sealed by the visible gesture of the king, when he raised the golden sceptre and placed it on the shoulder of his terrified Queen.
So when, on the 10th of December, 1925, according to Lucia, “Our Lady rested Her hand on my shoulder”, we may, on the strength of the Esther parallel, take this to mean much more than a simple gesture of maternal reassurance, and see in it the passing on of a royal authority for what was to come next. For,
“as She did so”, Lucia continues, “She showed me a heart encircled by thorns, which She was holding in Her other hand. At the same time the Child said:
‘Have compassion on the Hart of your most holy Mother, covered with thors, with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them’. (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, p. 195).
Next, the Blessed Virgin revealed to Lucia the full program of the Five First Saturdays, as the means by which She was to be consoled for the sins directed against her Immaculate Heart:
“Look, my daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at 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” (ibid.).
This was the long-awaited moment. In the presence of her Divine on, the Queen of Heaven had at last completely unveiled the second phase of Heaven’s wondrous redemptive Plan for the apocalyptic age: the mystical weapon of the Five First Saturdays.
In its components, there is nothing new in this devotion; for essentially it consists of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, sacramental Confession and the holy Rosary, accompanied by meditations on the Mysteries. Thus there is nothing in the devotion with which Catholics should be unfamiliar. It is quite within the reach of all. But what characterises the devotion and makes it perhaps unique, is the purity of intention that is meant to accompany the practice of it. In other words, the Five First Saturdays is a totally unselfish devotion, requiring of those who practice it that they go beyond their own interests, so as to make of themselves an oblation of pure love to Our Blessed Lady.
This wonderful first apparition at Pontevedra seems clearly to have its prefiguration in that scene from the Book of Esther that we have just been discussing. The king reached out with his golden sceptre, saying to Esther,
“‘Speak to me’. And she said to him, ‘I saw you, my lord, like an angel of God, and my heart was shaken with fear at your glory. For you are wonderful, my lord, and your countenance is full of grace’. But as she was speaking, she fell fainting. And the king was agitated, and all his servants sought to comfort her” (15:12-16).
The King of Heaven and earth is there in the Person of the Child Jesus; the Queen of Heaven herself, greatly in distress; the solicitous servants in the person of Lucia, standing in for all those who would take the divine message to heart; and finally there is the mandate to carry the message to the whole world with the authority of the Magisterium. Truly, then, a Catholic would be hard pressed to find a more accurate and better inspired resumé of an old devotion presented under this beautiful new form of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. As the Cardinal had said: It is you yourselves who have the remedy in your own hands”.
1926:The Resplendent Child Returns
On the 15th of February, 1926, Lucia, now at Tuy in Spain, received a further apparition pertaining to the Five First Saturdays devotion. At this point in time Lucia was in a state of great perplexity as to how she might propagate the devotion. Her confessor had written to her that it was necessary for the vision of the 10th of December to be repeated, “for further happenings to prove its credibility” (ibid., p. 197). And despite the fact that Lucia’s Mother Superior was prepared to propagate the devotion, her confessor had insisted that the latter, on her own, “could do nothing to propagate this devotion” (ibid.).
It was at that stage that Sr. Lucia had a further encounter with the Divine Child in the garden. She had also met the Child, “some months earlier”, she says, and, without suspecting who He was, she asked Him if he knew the “Hail Mary”. He said that He did. She then asked Him to say it, but, as He made no attempt to say it by Himself, she said it with Him three times over, at the end of which she again asked Him to say it alone. But as He remained silent and seemed unable to say the “Hail Mary” alone, Lucia asked Him if He knew where the Church of Santa Maria was. To which he replied that He did. Thereupon, Lucia asked Him to go there every day and to say this: “O My heavenly Mother, give me your Child Jesus!” Lucia taught this to Him and then left Him.
When the Child returned on the 15th of February, Lucia questioned Him: “Did you ask out heavenly Mother for the Child Jesus?” The Child turned to her and said:
“and have you spread through the world what our heavenly mother requested of you?”
With that He was transformed into a resplendent Child.
Lucia, knowing then that it was Jesus, explained to Him the difficulties that she was experiencing at that stage with her confessor, who had asked for the vision of Pontevedra to be repeated, and who had said that the Mother Superior alone could not effectively promote the devotion. To this, Our Lord replied with these telling words:
“It is true that your Superior alone can do nothing, but with My grace she can do all. It is enough that your confessor gives you permission and that your Superior speaks of it, even without people knowing to whom it has been revealed” (Ibid., pp. 196-197).
But that was not the only problem that poor Lucia had to clarify with the Divine Child. Her confessor had also suggested in his letter to her that the devotion which she had described to him in honour of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was fairly widespread throughout the world at that time. Were there not many souls who receive Holy Communion on the First Saturdays, in honour of Our Lady and the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, he argued? Again Our Lord’s reply is highly instructive; for He insists that not just any devotional routine will do. He is very specific about what he wants. Essentially it is obedience that he is after:
“It is true, My daughter, that many souls begin the First Saturdays, BUT FEW FINISH THEM, and those who do complete them do so in order to receive the graces that are promised thereby. It would please Me more if they did Five with fervour and with the intention of making reparation to the Heart of your Heavenly Mother, than if they did Fifteen, in a tepid and indifferent manner …” (Ibid., p. 197).
We might be surprised to learn that our Divine Lord chose to appear to Sr. Lucia, not as an adult, but as a little Child. But as St. Louis de Montfort had explained in his Love of Eternal Wisdom:
“… when the Incarnate and glorious Wisdom appeared to His friends, He appeared to them, not in thunder and lightning, but meekly and gently; not assuming the majesty of a king or of the Lord of Hosts, but with the tenderness of a spouse, the kindness of a friend. Sometimes, He has appeared in the Holy Eucharist, but I cannot remember having read that He ever did so, EXCEPT UNDER THE FORM OF A MEEK AND BEAUTIFUL CHILD”. .
And so, fittingly, Our Lord appeared to Lucia at Pontevedra and at Tuy in His gentlest possible guise, under the aspect of the “little Lamb” of the Eucharist, to encourage us and to remind us that the devotion that Our Lady of Fatima has named the “Communion of Reparation”, is essentially a Eucharistic-oriented devotion.
1927: The Triple Secret
Towards the end of 1927 Lucia, still at Tuy, was asked by her spiritual director to say if the origin of the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was included in the famous secret that had been confided her by Our Lady on the 13th of July, 1917. Lucia responded with the prudent obedience of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Incarnation, not asking WHY, but going promptly before the Tabernacle to ask Our Divine Lord HOW she might fulfil this request of her spiritual director. According to Lucia, Our Lord made her hear very distinctly the following 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”. (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, ibid.).
We might recall here that the first part of the Secret pertained to Satan’s edict: the vision of Hell. The second part was Heaven’s edict: reparative devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The third part is that about which Our Lord told Sr. Lucia, “continue to keep silence”.
Regarding the second part of the secret, that which was confided to the three children during the 13th of July apparition concerning reparative devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Our Lord’s words were full of consolation. In answer to Lucia’s request that She take the three of them to Heaven, Our Lady promised that She would take Jacinta and Francisco soon, but that Lucia must stay on earth “some time longer”, for Jesus wished to make use of her to spread devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Then the Queen of Heaven added this astounding promise regarding the devotion:
“I PROMISE SALVATION TO THOSE WHO EMBRACE IT, AND THESE SOULS WILL BE LOVED BY GOD. LIKE FLOWERS PACED BY ME TO ADORN HIS THRONE”.
What could be more consoling in our difficult times than these words of our heavenly Mother! The promise that She had made to the three children on the 13th of May: “Yes, you will go to Heaven!”, and repeated on the 13th of July, is reiterated to those who embrace the devotion of the Five First Saturdays according to Heaven’s specifications. Furthermore, Our Lady of Fatima would subsequently promise to assist these souls at the hour of death; perhaps, as St. Alphonsus Liguori might suggest, to enable them to escape Purgatory altogether (cfr. SOUL, May-June, 1986, p. 10).
What a rock of refuge must be the faithful fulfillment of the Five First Saturdays for souls buffeted by the cares and discouragements of life, with its constant temptations to lose heart and to give up altogether! In the midsT of the darkest trials, this devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary becomes a heartening point of reference for them. God will never desert these souls because they are loved by Him, “like flowers placed by Our Lady to adorn His throne”.
It is no accident that Queen Esther, who adorned the throne of the king of Medo-Persia, and who was a sign of salvation to her own people, had another name, “Hadassah”, the (Jewish) name of a FLOWER: the myrtle flower.
The third part of the secret was written down by Lucia and sealed in an envelope until 1960. In that year, according to Heaven’s wish, it was opened and read by the reigning Pontiff, then Pope John XXIII. Prior to its being publicly revealed in our time, the Secret was read by the successive Pontiffs, and also by certain prominent officials in the Church, such as Cardinal Ottaviani and Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI).
1929: The Consecration of Russia
In June of 1929, the Mother of God appeared to Lucia as Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, to fulfil that other promise that She had made on the 13th of July, 1917:
“In order to prevent [war, hunger, and persecution of the Church and the Holy Father], I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart …”
In her memoirs, Lucia wrote concerning this final apparition:
“Suddenly the whole chapel was illumined by a supernatural light, and a Cross of light appeared above the altar, reaching to the ceiling. In a bright light at the upper part of the Cross could be seen the face of a Man and His body to the waist [God the Father]; on His breast there was a Dove also of light [God the Holy Spirit] and, nailed to the Cross, was the body of another Man [God the Son]. Somewhat above the waist, I could see a chalice and a large Host suspended in the air, onto which drops of blood were falling from the face of Jesus crucified and from the wound in His side. These drops ran down onto the Host and fell into the chalice. 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 of crystal clear water which ran down over the altar, formed these words: “Graces 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”. (Lucia’s own words taken from Fatima Family Messenger, Oct-Dec, 1989, p. 35).
Lucia added that, on this occasion of Her last visit, Our Lady had said to her,
“… the moment has come when God asks the Holy Father, in union with all the bishops of the world, to make the consecration of Russia to My Heart, promising to save it by this means” (ibid.).
[For a detailed discussion on the collegial Consecration of Russia, see Chapter 6].
It seems that, several years before the visitations by Our Lady and also by the angel, to the Cova da Iria, the Church had begin the practice of specifically conditioning the Catholic faithful in preparation for the message of Fatima and the acceptance of the Communion of Reparation.
In 1912, Pope St. Pius X granted indulgences to encourage exercises of reparation to Mary. Wonderfully anticipating the devotion of the Five First Saturdays, the Holy Father granted a plenary indulgence for special devotions on the first Saturday of the month in honour of the Immaculate Virgin, in a spirit of reparation for the blasphemies uttered against Her. Moreover, Pope St. Pius X granted this indulgence on the 13th of June of that year.
Furthermore, may we not see in this holy Pontiff’s efforts for the daily reception of Holy Communion [Decree “Sacra Tridentina Synodus” of 1905] and the lowering of the age to seven years for the reception of First Communion [Decree “Quam Singulari” of 1910] an anticipation of Our Lady of Fatima’s wish ‘to adorn the throne of God with flowers’?
1920’s
In the 1920’s, Fatima, by the provident Wisdom of God, had not yet been officially approved by the Church. The simple narrative of the events which took place in 1917, though meaning the same as it does today, must of necessity have been viewed from a different perspective by the faithful of that era. When Our Lady and her Divine Child appeared to Lucia at Pontevedra and at Tuy between 1925 and 1929, there had been little by way of positive reaction form the official Church in regard to the Fatima apparitions. This is understandable enough as, outwardly, the Church can never pronounce on a series of apparitions unless the series has been completed, which, as far as the Fatima apparitions are concerned, did not take place until 1929. A notable exception in this regard had been the encouraging letter written by Pope Benedict XV in 1918, in reply to a report by the Portuguese bishops. The Holy Father had informed the bishops on this occasion that he had always hoped that the depressing situation of the Church in Portugal was a passing one, because the ardent devotion of that country to the Immaculate Conception merited for it an extraordinary aid from the Mother of God (Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, p. 195).
Back in the 1920’s, without the full body of Church teaching on Fatima that we enjoy today, and, yes, even without the strong support of ecclesiastical approbation, Lucia and the other chosen souls of that time were taught by God to build the universal and global destiny of Fatima on prayer and suffering, in the light of Faith and Hope alone; but firmly anchored on the unprecedented public Miracle of the Sun. Like Esther of old, these chosen souls had been called by God to follow Him in tremendous Faith; to trust Him in His apparently impossible demands. They were to be the suffering members of His Mystical Body, at the same time allowing Christ to be the omnipotent Head of that Body, so as to achieve the seemingly impossible: saving the world by hastening the triumph of the Immaculate Heart.
In this way Lucia, and the other chosen souls of the 1920’s era, were called in anticipation of all the subsequent teaching of the Catholic Church, which, ultimately, would make their seemingly impossible Faith look so reasonable.
The historical perspective is a highly important factor for us to keep in mind when looking back on the events which occurred in 1917 and in the 1920’s. Again we find comfort and understanding in the analogy of the drama of Queen Esther, a development which is quite obscure in its early stages, and cannot be fully comprehended until near the end, when it has all been unravelled. Similarly, neither shall we properly unravel the meaning of Fatima if we go no further than studying the early events, up to and including the 1920’s. We most be careful, therefore, not to look at Fatima of 1917, and Fatima of the 1920’s, merely from a 1920’s perspective; otherwise there will be for us a certain strangeness, something enigmatic, about what Lucia was called to do prior to official Church approval of the Fatima apparitions in 1930.
In other words, our restrospective view of Fatima from the vantage point of the [now early Third Millennium], must consider Fatima in the light of the subsequent decades of Church teaching, from the 1930’s until now, which Lucia naturally did not have in those early days, but that were, of course, known to God. Today, the age of Mary has grown, from a fresh beginning at Fatima in 1917, to a great maturity in our own time, through the action of the Holy Spirit. We live in the age of the second Vatican Council, whose fruits have included a host of Marian initiatives, especially during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. We shall return to discuss in more detail these initiatives, and Fatima in the modern world, in Chapter 6.
It is therefore a great mistake to overlook the Church’s teachings and to try to assess Fatima outside that context. Such an approach would lead only to a misunderstanding of the real meaning of Fatima’s vital message, and would hence become an obstacle to a universal acceptance of that message; which would then be ‘found wanting’ by the majority, and would become virtually extinct. This is in fact what has already happened in many parts of the world.
From an apostolic point of view, therefore, the inclusion of the Church’s teaching in the entire Fatima perspective is so important that it needs to be stressed. In those early days of the 1920’s, God was in the process of preparing a message for the world that was meant to be the same for all humankind, and was meant to be universally embraced. Towards achieving His objectives, Almighty God used different ways and means: which shows that the Divine pedagogy affects people differently.
With regard to Fatima, then, Catholics in all subsequent generations had to be very receptive to the nuances and refinements being used by the Divine Master in developing its message, since these nuances and refinements were attuned to the requirements of each of their respective eras, as well as to the degree of development reached by Fatima in any given era.
Between 1917 and 1930, not only Lucia, but all Catholics who had become aware of the Fatima apparitions – people such as family members and friends of the three seers, bishops, priest, confessors, Mothers Superior, and so on – were given by God the tremendous Grace of accepting Fatima, and living its central Gospel message, on faith alone! They did not have the advantage that we today of seeing the unfolding of the greater part of the Fatima drama.
For Lucia, the high point would undoubtedly have been the great solar miracle on the 13th of October, 1917. On that same day, the Lady of Light had revealed who She was: ‘I AM OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY’, and She had asked that a Chapel be built on the site of the apparitions in her honour. But not long after that, in 1919, Francisco died, followed by his sister, Jacinta, in 1920. Thus Lucia was very soon bereft of her two dearest friends: the only ones in whom she could confide about all the aspects and details of the apparitions. Finally, in 1921, Lucia also left Fatima to start her new life.
REPARATION TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY
“Our Lady has already drawn … a picture of contemporary events, with persecutions in the Soviet Union [now defunct] and the destruction of certain nations. At the same time She has given us the remedy: the consecration of the world to her Immaculate Heart. In these apocalyptic times, it is you yourselves who have the remedy in your hands. Many are concerned about the revelation of the third part of the Secret of Fatima [since revealed]. They forget, however, that the essential message has already been given, and that is what we most need to know; that we are not to offend God, and that we are to live in His grace”.
(Cardinal Cerejeira of Lisbon, May 1960).
These important words echo the public complaint, expressed by a previous bishop of Leiria-Fatima, the Most Reverend John Venancio, ‘that curiosity about the unknown third part of a secret was occupying the masses, while few were living the essence of the message long published’.
‘It is you yourselves who have the remedy in your hands’ ….
How fittingly do these words of the Cardinal Patriarch of Portugal introduce us to the next phase in which the great drama of Fatima is being unfolded for us by Heaven. If then, learning from hindsight, we ponder these words in the light of the truth expressed by a previous bishop of Fatima:
“… yet how few are living the essence of the message long published’,
then once again we shall allow the weight of the Esther chronicle to have its full impact on our own contemporary history and the understanding of it. If the Jews in the time of Queen Esther had given such scant regard to the ‘rival operation’ given them with so much courage and solicitude against the plot towards their annihilation, they would not have defended themselves sufficiently against those who had vowed their destruction. As a consequence, any last-minute resistance would have been hopelessly inadequate for many. They would have been wiped out and thus the courageous intercession on their behalf by their beloved Queen would have been in vain.
Convinced then of the gravity of the situation by both the extremely late hour as well as the advanced deterioration of our world all around us – due to the almost universal and suicidal rejection by Catholics ‘of the message long published’, we now enter the next episode of the Fatima story: The Apparitions of the 1920’s.
1925: Our lady Fulfils Her Promise
On the 10th of December, 1925, Our Lady of the Rosary fulfilled her promise of the 13th of July with regard to the First Saturdays, when She told the three children: “I shall come to ask for … the Communion of Reparation on the first Saturdays of the month”.
Lucia was by then a Dorothean postulant at Pontevedra in Spain. The most holy Virgin appeared to her in her room, and by her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was a Child. In order perhaps to appreciate Our Lady’s first gesture at this particular, intimate apparition, we must take the reader back to the biblical scene before the throne of king Ahasuerus, at the very moment when Queen Esther had presented herself in all her majesty, unannounced - and not summoned - before the Medo-Persian king.
“On the third day, when [Esther] ended her prayer, she took off the garments in which she had worshipped, and arrayed herself in splendid attire. Then, majestically adorned, after invoking the all-seeing God and Saviour, she took her two maids with her, leaning daintily on one, while the other followed carrying her train. She was radiant with perfect beauty, and she looked happy, as if beloved, but her heart was frozen with fear. When she had gone through all the doors, she stood before the king.
He was seated on his royal throne, clothed in the full array of his majesty, all covered with gold and precious stones. And he was most terrifying. Lifting his face, flushed with splendour, he looked at her in fierce anger. And the queen faltered, and turned pale and faint, and collapsed upon the head of the maid who went before her. Then God changed the spirit of the king to gentleness, and in alarm he sprang from his throne and took her in his arms until she came to herself. And he comforted her with soothing words, and said to her,
‘What is it Esther? I am your brother. Take courage, you shall not die, for our law applies only to the people. Come near’.
Then he raised the golden sceptre and touched it to her neck; and he embraced her, and said, ‘Speak to me’ …. But as she was speaking, she fell fainting. And the king was agitated, and all his servants sought to comfort her’. (Esther 15:1-16).
As on all the previous occasions when the Esther chronicle has been quoted in this book in relation to the Fatima story, Catholics who read these inspired words cannot fail to be impressed by how perfectly this Old Testament narrative continues to chime in with the details of its New Testament counterpart. It gives us a clear insight into the truth, alas one not sufficiently stressed and so not sufficiently appreciated, as to how truly Our Blessed Lady is placed between the wrath of God on the one hand, and sinful humanity on the other. Or, as She herself showed us, between the wrath of God and an eternal Hell!
As an immediate consequence of this neglect, we have it that in our days, ‘not all His servants seek to comfort Her …’. If this had been the situation in the presence of king Ahausuerus, he would no doubt have interpreted this neglect on the part of some as a slight on the Queen, and therefore as an insult upon himself.
By the same token, we must now extend and enlarge this scene, and truly see the holy Catholic Church herself as being placed in that perilous position of mediation between God and humankind, between Divine wrath and an eternity in hell. And within that enlarged panorama we begin to discern how first Lucia, and then ‘all those servants who seek to comfort Her’, have been placed in the rôle originally assumed by Queen Esther on behalf of her people, but truly fulfilled by the Lamb of God and the ‘New Eve’, and extended in time by the holy Catholic Church on behalf of all humankind.
There are in fact some distinct similarities between Esther and Sr. Lucia in the more important aspects of their lives. In the first place, both Esther and Lucia were marked out by Heaven for special favour and were raised up by God from obscurity to public prominence, in order to carry out their respective tasks of the utmost importance. But their being in the public eye was a cause of grave anxiety to both Esther and Lucia. Esther wrote about it to Mordecai:
“Thou knowest my necessity – that I abhor the sign of my proud position [i.e. the crown], which is upon my head on the days when I appear in public” (Esther 14:16).
Lucia, too, underwent grievous misery and mental suffering during the apparitions. For instance, she related that for a period of time after the second apparition, she “lost all enthusiasm for making sacrifices and acts of mortification”, and she was temped to say that she had been lying about the apparitions, “and so put an end to the whole thing” (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, p. 69).
Both Queen Esther and Lucia were prepared to risk death rather than quit the task that God had assigned to them. Esther courageously went with her two maids into the presence of Ahasuerus the Great, who had the power of life and death over them. Lucia and her two cousins prepared themselves to suffer an agonising death in boiling oil at the hands of the sub-prefect, Santos, rather than reveal Our Lady’s secret to him. Ultimately the king, and Santos, each relented. In the case of Queen Esther, she so won over the king that his heart and hers were united thereafter in a common cause against the enemy, who had now become their enemy. This bond, this unity of heart and mind, was sealed by the visible gesture of the king, when he raised the golden sceptre and placed it on the shoulder of his terrified Queen.
So when, on the 10th of December, 1925, according to Lucia, “Our Lady rested Her hand on my shoulder”, we may, on the strength of the Esther parallel, take this to mean much more than a simple gesture of maternal reassurance, and see in it the passing on of a royal authority for what was to come next. For,
“as She did so”, Lucia continues, “She showed me a heart encircled by thorns, which She was holding in Her other hand. At the same time the Child said:
‘Have compassion on the Hart of your most holy Mother, covered with thors, with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them’. (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, p. 195).
Next, the Blessed Virgin revealed to Lucia the full program of the Five First Saturdays, as the means by which She was to be consoled for the sins directed against her Immaculate Heart:
“Look, my daughter, at My Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce Me at 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” (ibid.).
This was the long-awaited moment. In the presence of her Divine on, the Queen of Heaven had at last completely unveiled the second phase of Heaven’s wondrous redemptive Plan for the apocalyptic age: the mystical weapon of the Five First Saturdays.
In its components, there is nothing new in this devotion; for essentially it consists of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, sacramental Confession and the holy Rosary, accompanied by meditations on the Mysteries. Thus there is nothing in the devotion with which Catholics should be unfamiliar. It is quite within the reach of all. But what characterises the devotion and makes it perhaps unique, is the purity of intention that is meant to accompany the practice of it. In other words, the Five First Saturdays is a totally unselfish devotion, requiring of those who practice it that they go beyond their own interests, so as to make of themselves an oblation of pure love to Our Blessed Lady.
This wonderful first apparition at Pontevedra seems clearly to have its prefiguration in that scene from the Book of Esther that we have just been discussing. The king reached out with his golden sceptre, saying to Esther,
“‘Speak to me’. And she said to him, ‘I saw you, my lord, like an angel of God, and my heart was shaken with fear at your glory. For you are wonderful, my lord, and your countenance is full of grace’. But as she was speaking, she fell fainting. And the king was agitated, and all his servants sought to comfort her” (15:12-16).
The King of Heaven and earth is there in the Person of the Child Jesus; the Queen of Heaven herself, greatly in distress; the solicitous servants in the person of Lucia, standing in for all those who would take the divine message to heart; and finally there is the mandate to carry the message to the whole world with the authority of the Magisterium. Truly, then, a Catholic would be hard pressed to find a more accurate and better inspired resumé of an old devotion presented under this beautiful new form of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. As the Cardinal had said: It is you yourselves who have the remedy in your own hands”.
1926:The Resplendent Child Returns
On the 15th of February, 1926, Lucia, now at Tuy in Spain, received a further apparition pertaining to the Five First Saturdays devotion. At this point in time Lucia was in a state of great perplexity as to how she might propagate the devotion. Her confessor had written to her that it was necessary for the vision of the 10th of December to be repeated, “for further happenings to prove its credibility” (ibid., p. 197). And despite the fact that Lucia’s Mother Superior was prepared to propagate the devotion, her confessor had insisted that the latter, on her own, “could do nothing to propagate this devotion” (ibid.).
It was at that stage that Sr. Lucia had a further encounter with the Divine Child in the garden. She had also met the Child, “some months earlier”, she says, and, without suspecting who He was, she asked Him if he knew the “Hail Mary”. He said that He did. She then asked Him to say it, but, as He made no attempt to say it by Himself, she said it with Him three times over, at the end of which she again asked Him to say it alone. But as He remained silent and seemed unable to say the “Hail Mary” alone, Lucia asked Him if He knew where the Church of Santa Maria was. To which he replied that He did. Thereupon, Lucia asked Him to go there every day and to say this: “O My heavenly Mother, give me your Child Jesus!” Lucia taught this to Him and then left Him.
When the Child returned on the 15th of February, Lucia questioned Him: “Did you ask out heavenly Mother for the Child Jesus?” The Child turned to her and said:
“and have you spread through the world what our heavenly mother requested of you?”
With that He was transformed into a resplendent Child.
Lucia, knowing then that it was Jesus, explained to Him the difficulties that she was experiencing at that stage with her confessor, who had asked for the vision of Pontevedra to be repeated, and who had said that the Mother Superior alone could not effectively promote the devotion. To this, Our Lord replied with these telling words:
“It is true that your Superior alone can do nothing, but with My grace she can do all. It is enough that your confessor gives you permission and that your Superior speaks of it, even without people knowing to whom it has been revealed” (Ibid., pp. 196-197).
But that was not the only problem that poor Lucia had to clarify with the Divine Child. Her confessor had also suggested in his letter to her that the devotion which she had described to him in honour of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was fairly widespread throughout the world at that time. Were there not many souls who receive Holy Communion on the First Saturdays, in honour of Our Lady and the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, he argued? Again Our Lord’s reply is highly instructive; for He insists that not just any devotional routine will do. He is very specific about what he wants. Essentially it is obedience that he is after:
“It is true, My daughter, that many souls begin the First Saturdays, BUT FEW FINISH THEM, and those who do complete them do so in order to receive the graces that are promised thereby. It would please Me more if they did Five with fervour and with the intention of making reparation to the Heart of your Heavenly Mother, than if they did Fifteen, in a tepid and indifferent manner …” (Ibid., p. 197).
We might be surprised to learn that our Divine Lord chose to appear to Sr. Lucia, not as an adult, but as a little Child. But as St. Louis de Montfort had explained in his Love of Eternal Wisdom:
“… when the Incarnate and glorious Wisdom appeared to His friends, He appeared to them, not in thunder and lightning, but meekly and gently; not assuming the majesty of a king or of the Lord of Hosts, but with the tenderness of a spouse, the kindness of a friend. Sometimes, He has appeared in the Holy Eucharist, but I cannot remember having read that He ever did so, EXCEPT UNDER THE FORM OF A MEEK AND BEAUTIFUL CHILD”. .
And so, fittingly, Our Lord appeared to Lucia at Pontevedra and at Tuy in His gentlest possible guise, under the aspect of the “little Lamb” of the Eucharist, to encourage us and to remind us that the devotion that Our Lady of Fatima has named the “Communion of Reparation”, is essentially a Eucharistic-oriented devotion.
1927: The Triple Secret
Towards the end of 1927 Lucia, still at Tuy, was asked by her spiritual director to say if the origin of the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was included in the famous secret that had been confided her by Our Lady on the 13th of July, 1917. Lucia responded with the prudent obedience of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Incarnation, not asking WHY, but going promptly before the Tabernacle to ask Our Divine Lord HOW she might fulfil this request of her spiritual director. According to Lucia, Our Lord made her hear very distinctly the following 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”. (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, ibid.).
We might recall here that the first part of the Secret pertained to Satan’s edict: the vision of Hell. The second part was Heaven’s edict: reparative devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The third part is that about which Our Lord told Sr. Lucia, “continue to keep silence”.
Regarding the second part of the secret, that which was confided to the three children during the 13th of July apparition concerning reparative devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Our Lord’s words were full of consolation. In answer to Lucia’s request that She take the three of them to Heaven, Our Lady promised that She would take Jacinta and Francisco soon, but that Lucia must stay on earth “some time longer”, for Jesus wished to make use of her to spread devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Then the Queen of Heaven added this astounding promise regarding the devotion:
“I PROMISE SALVATION TO THOSE WHO EMBRACE IT, AND THESE SOULS WILL BE LOVED BY GOD. LIKE FLOWERS PACED BY ME TO ADORN HIS THRONE”.
What could be more consoling in our difficult times than these words of our heavenly Mother! The promise that She had made to the three children on the 13th of May: “Yes, you will go to Heaven!”, and repeated on the 13th of July, is reiterated to those who embrace the devotion of the Five First Saturdays according to Heaven’s specifications. Furthermore, Our Lady of Fatima would subsequently promise to assist these souls at the hour of death; perhaps, as St. Alphonsus Liguori might suggest, to enable them to escape Purgatory altogether (cfr. SOUL, May-June, 1986, p. 10).
What a rock of refuge must be the faithful fulfillment of the Five First Saturdays for souls buffeted by the cares and discouragements of life, with its constant temptations to lose heart and to give up altogether! In the midsT of the darkest trials, this devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary becomes a heartening point of reference for them. God will never desert these souls because they are loved by Him, “like flowers placed by Our Lady to adorn His throne”.
It is no accident that Queen Esther, who adorned the throne of the king of Medo-Persia, and who was a sign of salvation to her own people, had another name, “Hadassah”, the (Jewish) name of a FLOWER: the myrtle flower.
The third part of the secret was written down by Lucia and sealed in an envelope until 1960. In that year, according to Heaven’s wish, it was opened and read by the reigning Pontiff, then Pope John XXIII. Prior to its being publicly revealed in our time, the Secret was read by the successive Pontiffs, and also by certain prominent officials in the Church, such as Cardinal Ottaviani and Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI).
1929: The Consecration of Russia
In June of 1929, the Mother of God appeared to Lucia as Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, to fulfil that other promise that She had made on the 13th of July, 1917:
“In order to prevent [war, hunger, and persecution of the Church and the Holy Father], I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart …”
In her memoirs, Lucia wrote concerning this final apparition:
“Suddenly the whole chapel was illumined by a supernatural light, and a Cross of light appeared above the altar, reaching to the ceiling. In a bright light at the upper part of the Cross could be seen the face of a Man and His body to the waist [God the Father]; on His breast there was a Dove also of light [God the Holy Spirit] and, nailed to the Cross, was the body of another Man [God the Son]. Somewhat above the waist, I could see a chalice and a large Host suspended in the air, onto which drops of blood were falling from the face of Jesus crucified and from the wound in His side. These drops ran down onto the Host and fell into the chalice. 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 of crystal clear water which ran down over the altar, formed these words: “Graces 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”. (Lucia’s own words taken from Fatima Family Messenger, Oct-Dec, 1989, p. 35).
Lucia added that, on this occasion of Her last visit, Our Lady had said to her,
“… the moment has come when God asks the Holy Father, in union with all the bishops of the world, to make the consecration of Russia to My Heart, promising to save it by this means” (ibid.).
[For a detailed discussion on the collegial Consecration of Russia, see Chapter 6].
It seems that, several years before the visitations by Our Lady and also by the angel, to the Cova da Iria, the Church had begin the practice of specifically conditioning the Catholic faithful in preparation for the message of Fatima and the acceptance of the Communion of Reparation.
In 1912, Pope St. Pius X granted indulgences to encourage exercises of reparation to Mary. Wonderfully anticipating the devotion of the Five First Saturdays, the Holy Father granted a plenary indulgence for special devotions on the first Saturday of the month in honour of the Immaculate Virgin, in a spirit of reparation for the blasphemies uttered against Her. Moreover, Pope St. Pius X granted this indulgence on the 13th of June of that year.
Furthermore, may we not see in this holy Pontiff’s efforts for the daily reception of Holy Communion [Decree “Sacra Tridentina Synodus” of 1905] and the lowering of the age to seven years for the reception of First Communion [Decree “Quam Singulari” of 1910] an anticipation of Our Lady of Fatima’s wish ‘to adorn the throne of God with flowers’?
1920’s
In the 1920’s, Fatima, by the provident Wisdom of God, had not yet been officially approved by the Church. The simple narrative of the events which took place in 1917, though meaning the same as it does today, must of necessity have been viewed from a different perspective by the faithful of that era. When Our Lady and her Divine Child appeared to Lucia at Pontevedra and at Tuy between 1925 and 1929, there had been little by way of positive reaction form the official Church in regard to the Fatima apparitions. This is understandable enough as, outwardly, the Church can never pronounce on a series of apparitions unless the series has been completed, which, as far as the Fatima apparitions are concerned, did not take place until 1929. A notable exception in this regard had been the encouraging letter written by Pope Benedict XV in 1918, in reply to a report by the Portuguese bishops. The Holy Father had informed the bishops on this occasion that he had always hoped that the depressing situation of the Church in Portugal was a passing one, because the ardent devotion of that country to the Immaculate Conception merited for it an extraordinary aid from the Mother of God (Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, p. 195).
Back in the 1920’s, without the full body of Church teaching on Fatima that we enjoy today, and, yes, even without the strong support of ecclesiastical approbation, Lucia and the other chosen souls of that time were taught by God to build the universal and global destiny of Fatima on prayer and suffering, in the light of Faith and Hope alone; but firmly anchored on the unprecedented public Miracle of the Sun. Like Esther of old, these chosen souls had been called by God to follow Him in tremendous Faith; to trust Him in His apparently impossible demands. They were to be the suffering members of His Mystical Body, at the same time allowing Christ to be the omnipotent Head of that Body, so as to achieve the seemingly impossible: saving the world by hastening the triumph of the Immaculate Heart.
In this way Lucia, and the other chosen souls of the 1920’s era, were called in anticipation of all the subsequent teaching of the Catholic Church, which, ultimately, would make their seemingly impossible Faith look so reasonable.
The historical perspective is a highly important factor for us to keep in mind when looking back on the events which occurred in 1917 and in the 1920’s. Again we find comfort and understanding in the analogy of the drama of Queen Esther, a development which is quite obscure in its early stages, and cannot be fully comprehended until near the end, when it has all been unravelled. Similarly, neither shall we properly unravel the meaning of Fatima if we go no further than studying the early events, up to and including the 1920’s. We most be careful, therefore, not to look at Fatima of 1917, and Fatima of the 1920’s, merely from a 1920’s perspective; otherwise there will be for us a certain strangeness, something enigmatic, about what Lucia was called to do prior to official Church approval of the Fatima apparitions in 1930.
In other words, our restrospective view of Fatima from the vantage point of the [now early Third Millennium], must consider Fatima in the light of the subsequent decades of Church teaching, from the 1930’s until now, which Lucia naturally did not have in those early days, but that were, of course, known to God. Today, the age of Mary has grown, from a fresh beginning at Fatima in 1917, to a great maturity in our own time, through the action of the Holy Spirit. We live in the age of the second Vatican Council, whose fruits have included a host of Marian initiatives, especially during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. We shall return to discuss in more detail these initiatives, and Fatima in the modern world, in Chapter 6.
It is therefore a great mistake to overlook the Church’s teachings and to try to assess Fatima outside that context. Such an approach would lead only to a misunderstanding of the real meaning of Fatima’s vital message, and would hence become an obstacle to a universal acceptance of that message; which would then be ‘found wanting’ by the majority, and would become virtually extinct. This is in fact what has already happened in many parts of the world.
From an apostolic point of view, therefore, the inclusion of the Church’s teaching in the entire Fatima perspective is so important that it needs to be stressed. In those early days of the 1920’s, God was in the process of preparing a message for the world that was meant to be the same for all humankind, and was meant to be universally embraced. Towards achieving His objectives, Almighty God used different ways and means: which shows that the Divine pedagogy affects people differently.
With regard to Fatima, then, Catholics in all subsequent generations had to be very receptive to the nuances and refinements being used by the Divine Master in developing its message, since these nuances and refinements were attuned to the requirements of each of their respective eras, as well as to the degree of development reached by Fatima in any given era.
Between 1917 and 1930, not only Lucia, but all Catholics who had become aware of the Fatima apparitions – people such as family members and friends of the three seers, bishops, priest, confessors, Mothers Superior, and so on – were given by God the tremendous Grace of accepting Fatima, and living its central Gospel message, on faith alone! They did not have the advantage that we today of seeing the unfolding of the greater part of the Fatima drama.
For Lucia, the high point would undoubtedly have been the great solar miracle on the 13th of October, 1917. On that same day, the Lady of Light had revealed who She was: ‘I AM OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY’, and She had asked that a Chapel be built on the site of the apparitions in her honour. But not long after that, in 1919, Francisco died, followed by his sister, Jacinta, in 1920. Thus Lucia was very soon bereft of her two dearest friends: the only ones in whom she could confide about all the aspects and details of the apparitions. Finally, in 1921, Lucia also left Fatima to start her new life.
Lucia’s Obedience
Unfortunately the historical lesson, and the lesson of obedience to the Church, can be lost on some who may fail to perceive the importance of Fatima in its relation and relevance to our own era, and may thus regard it instead as being somewhat old-fashioned and irrelevant. And there are those who seem only too willing to become mesmerised by supposed ‘contemporary manifestations’ of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which the Church has either condemned or ignored. Such apparitions may in fact be the devil’s clumsy attempts to emulate Lourdes, Fatima, and the like; a diabolical parody to lure away disobedient souls from solid devotion, who thereby run the risk of losing the great promises associated with the obedient fulfillment of the Fatima message.
Nothing has changed. The stratagem used by the devil is the same worn out one that he employed to bring down our First Parents, deluding them into believing that their disobedient action would lead to their eyes being opened, and to their becoming more God-like. That, too, is the treacherous ‘promise’ associated with the messages of the pseudo-apparitions.
By contrast with the behaviour of false ‘visionaries’, who are always a law unto themselves, Lucia – like Esther of old – is a model of the virtue of obedience. Right from the start, in the early days of Fatima, Lucia always observed the strictest obedience towards her parents, her parish priest and to the Lady. Nor did her willingness to obey diminish as Lucia’s fame as a visionary grew: instead, it increased proportionally with her status. So too with Esther. She had obeyed Mordecai and
“… had not made known her people and kindred, for Mordecai had charged her not to make it known” (2:10).
Similarly, when her turn had come to be presented to the king, Esther
“… asked for nothing except what Hegai the king’s eunuch, who had charge of the women, advised” (2:15).
And even after Esther had become Queen, she kept in close touch with Mordecai, whose advice she followed to the letter regarding the plot against the Jews (4:8-16).
Unlike those imprudent ‘visionaries’, Lucia too never fell into the trap of imagining that she was beyond the need for taking obedient counsel from her confessor, even though he might be less highly favoured by Heaven than she was. Quite the contrary! Lucia was always most scrupulous about obeying his least instruction, despite the fact that he – on the surface of things – almost seemed to be placing obstacles in her path, as if preventing her from doing the very thing that Our Lord had commanded her to do. Because of this, Lucia’s confessor became a further source of trial and perplexity for her.
Here again, in her obedience to one less favoured than she, Lucia was following a pattern of behaviour that had already been marked out by Queen Esther in Old Testament times. For Esther, when she had risen to the rank of Queen, did not all of a sudden begin to spurn Mordecai’s advice. Instead, she continued to regard whatever instructions he conveyed to her, even though, by reason of the crown, Mordecai was now her subject and must obey her:”
“Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him” (4:17).
Consecration and Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
St. John Eudes, a seventeenth century Saint, composed two Masses in honour of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He, echoing the words of St. Augustine, said that these two Hearts are so closely attuned that, in a certain sense, they constitute one single Harp, vibrating in unison, giving forth but one sound, and one song, singing the same canticle of love. (Taken from SOUL magazine, May-June, 1986, p. 13).
Adding words which Vatican II’s doctrine on Our Lady’s rôle in the Church would later parallel quite closely, St. John Eudes maintained that, “after God and His Son Jesus”, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary “is the first foundation from which we cannot separate ourselves without incurring the evident danger of eternal damnation”, since our salvation had been wrought in and through Mary’s Immaculate Heart (ibid.).
Earlier saints had already testified to the fact that our salvation was wrought in and through Mary’s Immaculate Heart. Two contemporaries, St. Jerome and St. Augustine concur that all the afflictions that Our Lord endured during His Passion and Death on the Cross, had their counterpart in Mary’s Heart. Every blow rending the Body of the Son had its cruel echo in the Heart of His mother (ibid., p. 14). St. Bonaventure (d. 1274) said the same, and he asked: “Why wouldst Thou, most honoured Lady, be immolated for us? Is not Our Saviour’s Passion sufficient for our salvation? Must the Mother also be crucified with Her Son?” (ibid.).
John Paul II, when explaining the meaning of Consecration at Fatima in 1982, also acknowledged this profound link in the Plan of God between the Hearts of Jesus and Mary:
“The Immaculate heart of Mary, opened with the words ‘Woman, behold Your son!’ is spiritually united with the Heart of her Son opened by the soldier’s spear” (In Fatima’s Gospel Call, pp. 8-9).
And again:
“Mary’s Heart was opened by the same love for man and for the world with which Christ loved man and the world, offering Himself for them on the Cross, until the soldier’s spear struck that blow …” (ibid., p. 9).
Three years later, John Paul II, mindful that Our Lord had stated explicitly to Sister Lucia that he wished for devotion to the Immaculate Heart to be placed alongside devotion to his own Sacred Heart, used the term
“…'admirable alliance of Hearts’ of the Son of God and of His Mother (Angelus Address of September 15, 1985)
to attest the unfathomable bond that exists between the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Unfortunately the historical lesson, and the lesson of obedience to the Church, can be lost on some who may fail to perceive the importance of Fatima in its relation and relevance to our own era, and may thus regard it instead as being somewhat old-fashioned and irrelevant. And there are those who seem only too willing to become mesmerised by supposed ‘contemporary manifestations’ of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which the Church has either condemned or ignored. Such apparitions may in fact be the devil’s clumsy attempts to emulate Lourdes, Fatima, and the like; a diabolical parody to lure away disobedient souls from solid devotion, who thereby run the risk of losing the great promises associated with the obedient fulfillment of the Fatima message.
Nothing has changed. The stratagem used by the devil is the same worn out one that he employed to bring down our First Parents, deluding them into believing that their disobedient action would lead to their eyes being opened, and to their becoming more God-like. That, too, is the treacherous ‘promise’ associated with the messages of the pseudo-apparitions.
By contrast with the behaviour of false ‘visionaries’, who are always a law unto themselves, Lucia – like Esther of old – is a model of the virtue of obedience. Right from the start, in the early days of Fatima, Lucia always observed the strictest obedience towards her parents, her parish priest and to the Lady. Nor did her willingness to obey diminish as Lucia’s fame as a visionary grew: instead, it increased proportionally with her status. So too with Esther. She had obeyed Mordecai and
“… had not made known her people and kindred, for Mordecai had charged her not to make it known” (2:10).
Similarly, when her turn had come to be presented to the king, Esther
“… asked for nothing except what Hegai the king’s eunuch, who had charge of the women, advised” (2:15).
And even after Esther had become Queen, she kept in close touch with Mordecai, whose advice she followed to the letter regarding the plot against the Jews (4:8-16).
Unlike those imprudent ‘visionaries’, Lucia too never fell into the trap of imagining that she was beyond the need for taking obedient counsel from her confessor, even though he might be less highly favoured by Heaven than she was. Quite the contrary! Lucia was always most scrupulous about obeying his least instruction, despite the fact that he – on the surface of things – almost seemed to be placing obstacles in her path, as if preventing her from doing the very thing that Our Lord had commanded her to do. Because of this, Lucia’s confessor became a further source of trial and perplexity for her.
Here again, in her obedience to one less favoured than she, Lucia was following a pattern of behaviour that had already been marked out by Queen Esther in Old Testament times. For Esther, when she had risen to the rank of Queen, did not all of a sudden begin to spurn Mordecai’s advice. Instead, she continued to regard whatever instructions he conveyed to her, even though, by reason of the crown, Mordecai was now her subject and must obey her:”
“Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him” (4:17).
Consecration and Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
St. John Eudes, a seventeenth century Saint, composed two Masses in honour of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. He, echoing the words of St. Augustine, said that these two Hearts are so closely attuned that, in a certain sense, they constitute one single Harp, vibrating in unison, giving forth but one sound, and one song, singing the same canticle of love. (Taken from SOUL magazine, May-June, 1986, p. 13).
Adding words which Vatican II’s doctrine on Our Lady’s rôle in the Church would later parallel quite closely, St. John Eudes maintained that, “after God and His Son Jesus”, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary “is the first foundation from which we cannot separate ourselves without incurring the evident danger of eternal damnation”, since our salvation had been wrought in and through Mary’s Immaculate Heart (ibid.).
Earlier saints had already testified to the fact that our salvation was wrought in and through Mary’s Immaculate Heart. Two contemporaries, St. Jerome and St. Augustine concur that all the afflictions that Our Lord endured during His Passion and Death on the Cross, had their counterpart in Mary’s Heart. Every blow rending the Body of the Son had its cruel echo in the Heart of His mother (ibid., p. 14). St. Bonaventure (d. 1274) said the same, and he asked: “Why wouldst Thou, most honoured Lady, be immolated for us? Is not Our Saviour’s Passion sufficient for our salvation? Must the Mother also be crucified with Her Son?” (ibid.).
John Paul II, when explaining the meaning of Consecration at Fatima in 1982, also acknowledged this profound link in the Plan of God between the Hearts of Jesus and Mary:
“The Immaculate heart of Mary, opened with the words ‘Woman, behold Your son!’ is spiritually united with the Heart of her Son opened by the soldier’s spear” (In Fatima’s Gospel Call, pp. 8-9).
And again:
“Mary’s Heart was opened by the same love for man and for the world with which Christ loved man and the world, offering Himself for them on the Cross, until the soldier’s spear struck that blow …” (ibid., p. 9).
Three years later, John Paul II, mindful that Our Lord had stated explicitly to Sister Lucia that he wished for devotion to the Immaculate Heart to be placed alongside devotion to his own Sacred Heart, used the term
“…'admirable alliance of Hearts’ of the Son of God and of His Mother (Angelus Address of September 15, 1985)
to attest the unfathomable bond that exists between the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
In a later speech, when addressing a Symposium of theologians on the same subject, the Holy Father elaborated on this theme in these words:
“We can indeed say that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has been an important part of the ‘sense of Faith’ of the People of God during recent centuries. These devotions seek to direct our attention to Christ and to the role of His Mother in the mystery of Redemption, and, though distinct, they are inter-related by reason of the enduring relation of love that exists between the Son and His Mother”. (Soul, Jan-Feb, 1987, p. 18).
It is because of this “enduring relation of love that exists between the Son and His Mother” that we might regard the devotion of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as being a necessary complement to devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the same way as we look upon the doctrine of the New Eve as being necessary to complete that of the New Adam. John Paul II has used the context of his two solemn acts of entrusting to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (in 1982, and again in 1984) to clarify for us the nature of the relationships between the two Hearts:
“Our act of consecration refers ultimately to the Heart of her Son, for as the Mother of Christ She is wholly united to His redemptive mission. As at the marriage feast of Cana, when She said ‘Do whatever He tells you’, Mary directs all things to her Son, who answers our prayers and forgives our sins. Thus by dedicating ourselves to the Heart of Mary we discover a sure way to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, symbol of the love of our Saviour”.
Our Blessed Lord, therefore, did not suffer some strange lapse of memory when He, after informing St. Margaret Mary in the seventeenth century that the reparative devotion to His Sacred Heart was to be, in the Saint’s own words, “the last effort of His Love” to the world, He then, now in our modern era, asked for – even insisted upon – the practice of systematic devotion to the Immaculate Heart of His Mother. This may need some further elaboration.
The Most Blessed Trinity has devised an ingenious Plan for the Redemption of the modern world. We can confidently apply to this great Plan the sublime title, ‘New Redemption, because, as we find, Our Lord Himself used this very same title to convey to St. Margaret Mary a sense of the powerful efficacy of the new program of reparation. The essence of this Divine Plan consists in Consecration and Reparation. These two elements are specially focussed upon by Pope Pius XI when he, in his classic encyclical on devotion to the Sacred Heart, proclaimed:
“But certainly … if the first and chief thing in consecration is the repayment of the love of the creature to the love of the Creator, the second thing at once follows from it, that, if the Uncreated love has been neglected by forgetfulness or violated by offences, compensation should be made in some way for the injustice that has been inflicted: in common language we call this debt one of reparation …”. (“Miserentissiimus Redemptor”, May 8, 1928, AAS 20: 167-168).
The first phase of the redemptive Plan: to pour out through the Sacred Heart of Jesus an abundant excess of love upon humankind, was revealed to St. Margaret Mary in the seventeenth century. Its practices include the
Nine First Fridays of Reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
and
the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the home.
This plan was revealed to St. Margaret Mary in terms of a ‘New Redemption’; a phrase which needs to be properly understood, since there was nothing at all lacking – either for our age or for any other age – in Christ’s original act of Redemption upon the Cross.
Fr. Larkin’s simple but effective explanation of the phrase ‘New Redemption’ in his book, The Enthronement of the Sacred Heart, that its ‘meaning is of course that the effects of the Redemption would be renewed through devotion to His Heart’, should suffice for the average reader who is not a theologian.
The second, and concluding phase of the redemptive Plan, as we saw, was first revealed by Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima in 1917 to the three shepherd children, but was explained in detail by Sr. Lucia alone in the 1920’s. It consists in Consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary and reparative devotion to her Immaculate Heart. The Church sees Mary, not as the goal, but as the guide, who always leads souls who honour her properly to her Son, but especially to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament (cf. “Redemptoris Mater”, # 44).
The reparative aspect of devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is summarised in the Reparation program, commonly known as The Five First Saturdays, as has been outlined and explained in this chapter.
Now, as we come to regard the Fatima revelations about the Immaculate Heart of Mary in terms of their being a concluding phase in this Divine redemptive Plan – whose first phase consisted in the seventeenth century revelations – it become apparent that St. Margaret Mary’s same description, “last effort of His Love”, may legitimately be applied also to the Marian devotion of the Five First Saturdays. Our Lord meant what He said. There is no contradiction whatsoever.
The Blessed Trinity had no intention of revealing all at once to humankind the full extent of so ineffable a plan for reparation in the new-fashioned world. A certain amount of time would be required for this all-encompassing spiritual program to be brought to a state of mature actuality on earth, so as to be susceptible of being absorbed into the minds and hearts of finite and sinful creatures. It was as if Heaven must painstakingly craft and design its program of reparation, allowing some centuries to pass before the mystical weapon, honed and shaped to perfection, was ready to be unveiled in all its grandeur and solemnity.
It is foreshadowed by the mystical “two-edged sword” of Scripture, to sing about which the Psalmist composed “a new song to the Lord” (Psalm 149:1, 6). This finely honed sword pf double devotion is goven only to God’s faithful, in their spiritual warfare with the rampant forces of evil:
“… to deal out vengeance to the nations and punishment on all the peoples; to bind their kings in chains and their nobles in fetters of iron”. (vv. 7-8).
John Paul II had put it another way, when he had reminded us that:
“If we turn to Mary’s Immaculate Heart, She will surely help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths toward the future”. (Symposium, with reference to “Redemptor Hominis”).
We may be sure that this great Pope with his acute sense of destiny was guided here by his awareness of how history has shown that nations may either heed the warnings made by Almighty God through His prophets and saints, and be saved, like the Ninevites at the preaching of Jonah, and like the entire Jewish nation in Queen Esther’s time; or they can refuse to listen and to repent, and so suffer the terrible consequences of their ill-will, such as the majority of the Jewish nation when confronted by the Messiah, preceded by His own great prophet St John the Baptist.
In our own age God has sent to warn us, not a prophet, but Our Lady Queen of Prophets. She, exercising as Queen the rôle of the ancient Hebrew prophets, and of St. John the Baptist, has in her visitations of the modern era warned the world of impending catastrophes and chastisements without satisfactory repentance.
John Paul II had in fact likened the tone of Our Lady of Fatima’s plea: “Be converted and do penance”, to the vehement call to penance by the Precursor:
“It sounds severe. It sounds like john the Baptist speaking on the banks of the Jordan. It invites to repentance. It gives a warning. It calls to prayer. It recommends the Rosary”. (“Speech at Fatima, in 1982).
Universal prayer and penance have always been the remedy for averting disaster and for turning away God’s wrath from the face of the earth. But it is only in modern times that Heaven has specified, through Mary the Queen of prophets, that the prayer and penance be of a reparative nature in relation to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
“It is through the Immaculate Heart of Mary that peace must be asked, because God has entrusted the peace of the world to her”. (Jacinta’s words to Lucia in 1919).
Unfortunately however, despite the signs and miracles that the Mother of Christ has provided in abundance at places like Lourdes and Fatima, we of the modern era have generally allowed her solemn message to fall to the ground unheeded. Her most precious gift to us, the request of the Communion of Reparation of the Five First Saturdays, far from becoming known ever more perfectly throughout the Catholic community with the passing of time, has – until very recently – been almost universally spurned by the majority. Part of the reason for this is no doubt ignorance. Catholics would have hardly ever, in the post-Vatican II era, had this devotion even mentioned to them from the pulpit, let alone properly explained. In the case of genuine ignorance, those true words: ‘One cannot love what one does not know’, would certainly apply. But, whatever be the cause of this unhappy neglect, the best remedy will always be that Catholics take upon themselves the personal responsibility of ensuring that they, in obedience to Our Lady’s clear directives, become conversant with the devotion, so as to practice it properly and to lead others to do likewise.
It is foreshadowed by the mystical “two-edged sword” of Scripture, to sing about which the Psalmist composed “a new song to the Lord” (Psalm 149:1, 6). This finely honed sword pf double devotion is goven only to God’s faithful, in their spiritual warfare with the rampant forces of evil:
“… to deal out vengeance to the nations and punishment on all the peoples; to bind their kings in chains and their nobles in fetters of iron”. (vv. 7-8).
John Paul II had put it another way, when he had reminded us that:
“If we turn to Mary’s Immaculate Heart, She will surely help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths toward the future”. (Symposium, with reference to “Redemptor Hominis”).
We may be sure that this great Pope with his acute sense of destiny was guided here by his awareness of how history has shown that nations may either heed the warnings made by Almighty God through His prophets and saints, and be saved, like the Ninevites at the preaching of Jonah, and like the entire Jewish nation in Queen Esther’s time; or they can refuse to listen and to repent, and so suffer the terrible consequences of their ill-will, such as the majority of the Jewish nation when confronted by the Messiah, preceded by His own great prophet St John the Baptist.
In our own age God has sent to warn us, not a prophet, but Our Lady Queen of Prophets. She, exercising as Queen the rôle of the ancient Hebrew prophets, and of St. John the Baptist, has in her visitations of the modern era warned the world of impending catastrophes and chastisements without satisfactory repentance.
John Paul II had in fact likened the tone of Our Lady of Fatima’s plea: “Be converted and do penance”, to the vehement call to penance by the Precursor:
“It sounds severe. It sounds like john the Baptist speaking on the banks of the Jordan. It invites to repentance. It gives a warning. It calls to prayer. It recommends the Rosary”. (“Speech at Fatima, in 1982).
Universal prayer and penance have always been the remedy for averting disaster and for turning away God’s wrath from the face of the earth. But it is only in modern times that Heaven has specified, through Mary the Queen of prophets, that the prayer and penance be of a reparative nature in relation to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
“It is through the Immaculate Heart of Mary that peace must be asked, because God has entrusted the peace of the world to her”. (Jacinta’s words to Lucia in 1919).
Unfortunately however, despite the signs and miracles that the Mother of Christ has provided in abundance at places like Lourdes and Fatima, we of the modern era have generally allowed her solemn message to fall to the ground unheeded. Her most precious gift to us, the request of the Communion of Reparation of the Five First Saturdays, far from becoming known ever more perfectly throughout the Catholic community with the passing of time, has – until very recently – been almost universally spurned by the majority. Part of the reason for this is no doubt ignorance. Catholics would have hardly ever, in the post-Vatican II era, had this devotion even mentioned to them from the pulpit, let alone properly explained. In the case of genuine ignorance, those true words: ‘One cannot love what one does not know’, would certainly apply. But, whatever be the cause of this unhappy neglect, the best remedy will always be that Catholics take upon themselves the personal responsibility of ensuring that they, in obedience to Our Lady’s clear directives, become conversant with the devotion, so as to practice it properly and to lead others to do likewise.
But we will never understand how central reparation is to the fullness of the message of Fatima if we go no further than Our Lady’s six apparitions from May to October of 1917; for that is only the first part of the Fatima revelations. It is essential that we also study the subsequent important apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her Divine Son in the 1920’s. Situated as they are between the spectacular events of 1917 and the Church’s official approval of the Fatima message in 1930 (on the 13th of October), the apparitions of the 1920’s are not nearly so well known. Inasmuch, however, as they constitute the important second phase of the revelations – the fulfillment of certain promises made by Our Lady in 1917, and the full explanation of what was only hinted at then – they ought not to be overlooked.
By the 1920’s Lucia, the only one of the seers to be still alive, was a Dorothean nun in Spain. At Pontevedra, and later at Tuy, in Spain, Sister Lucia received further heavenly visitations from Our Lady, and even form the Divine Child, during which were fully explained to her the significance and the practice of the Five First Saturdays. Intimately linked with the request for the observance of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was the further request by Our Lady that Russia be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart. The promised conversion of Russia, which had been entrusted to her, would ensue from this consecration.
Now, with the wisdom of hindsight, and by reading between the lines, we can begin to realise why it has taken so long for the conversion of Russia – a not yet accomplished fact – to come about. The blame is not due to the five successive Pontiffs, prior to John Paul II, who did not make the collegial Consecration of Russia, but to the fact that Catholics in general, by ignoring Our Lady’s requests for the Communion of Reparation, have failed so far to obtain the graces necessary for so marvellous a conversion. We can probably assume then that the conversion of Russia will not be fully realised until Catholics show their willingness for reparation by enbracing wholesale the devotion of the Five First Saturdays.
To be secure, our devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary must be founded on the two principles: Consecration and Reparation, as laid down by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical on the Sacred Heart (“Miserentissimus Redemptor”).
“Consecration”, the Holy Father calls “the repayment of the love of the creature to the love of the Creator”. Inseparable from it, for it “at once follows from it”, is ‘Reparation”, meaning, he says, “that, if that Uncreated Love has been neglected by forgetfulness or violated by offences, compensation should be made in some way for the injustice that has been inflicted”.
As the recent Popes have reiterated time and time again, the most consistent message arising from Fatima is that sin is a reality, that it offends God, and that repentance for sin is needed through reparation. One has only to read Our Lady’s chief statements in every one of her apparitions to realise that this was her major concern.
Now, because sin is principally an offence against God’s love and mercy for man, we owe reparation to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. As Fr. William Most has explained,
“… sin not only was the cause of the Passion of Christ, but also of the Compassion of Mary” (“Mary in Our Life”, p. 165).
Sin is therefore an offence against the sensitive, spiritual and Divine love of Jesus Christ; an offence against the maternal and merciful love of the Virgin Mary for humankind. On the same subject, Cardinal Ciappi had this to say:
“Now the physical Hearts of Jesus and Mary are the symbols of such love [of Jesus and Mary for humankind], and to them are due the cult of reparation” (International Seminar of the World Apostolate of Fatima, 1971).
We therefore, whilst offering our reparation to the Heart of Jesus, should not forget to offer reparation to Our Lady’s own Heart as well, for the pain that we have caused Her. Poor though in itself our own reparation might be, we must remember that we are not alone. Our reparation ought to be joined to the infinite reparation that Jesus Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body, made on Calvary, and which is re-presented in the Mass. At the same time, we ought to unite ourselves also to the reparation that Mary made with Him. In this way, and without presumption, we can endeavour to repair for the sins of others.
Fatima, furthermore, has provided some compact and easily remembered prayers of Eucharistic reparation to the Most Blessed Trinity, for the salvation of souls. We do well to memorise these and to make a habit of reciting them frequently throughout the day.
By the 1920’s Lucia, the only one of the seers to be still alive, was a Dorothean nun in Spain. At Pontevedra, and later at Tuy, in Spain, Sister Lucia received further heavenly visitations from Our Lady, and even form the Divine Child, during which were fully explained to her the significance and the practice of the Five First Saturdays. Intimately linked with the request for the observance of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was the further request by Our Lady that Russia be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart. The promised conversion of Russia, which had been entrusted to her, would ensue from this consecration.
Now, with the wisdom of hindsight, and by reading between the lines, we can begin to realise why it has taken so long for the conversion of Russia – a not yet accomplished fact – to come about. The blame is not due to the five successive Pontiffs, prior to John Paul II, who did not make the collegial Consecration of Russia, but to the fact that Catholics in general, by ignoring Our Lady’s requests for the Communion of Reparation, have failed so far to obtain the graces necessary for so marvellous a conversion. We can probably assume then that the conversion of Russia will not be fully realised until Catholics show their willingness for reparation by enbracing wholesale the devotion of the Five First Saturdays.
To be secure, our devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary must be founded on the two principles: Consecration and Reparation, as laid down by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical on the Sacred Heart (“Miserentissimus Redemptor”).
“Consecration”, the Holy Father calls “the repayment of the love of the creature to the love of the Creator”. Inseparable from it, for it “at once follows from it”, is ‘Reparation”, meaning, he says, “that, if that Uncreated Love has been neglected by forgetfulness or violated by offences, compensation should be made in some way for the injustice that has been inflicted”.
As the recent Popes have reiterated time and time again, the most consistent message arising from Fatima is that sin is a reality, that it offends God, and that repentance for sin is needed through reparation. One has only to read Our Lady’s chief statements in every one of her apparitions to realise that this was her major concern.
Now, because sin is principally an offence against God’s love and mercy for man, we owe reparation to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. As Fr. William Most has explained,
“… sin not only was the cause of the Passion of Christ, but also of the Compassion of Mary” (“Mary in Our Life”, p. 165).
Sin is therefore an offence against the sensitive, spiritual and Divine love of Jesus Christ; an offence against the maternal and merciful love of the Virgin Mary for humankind. On the same subject, Cardinal Ciappi had this to say:
“Now the physical Hearts of Jesus and Mary are the symbols of such love [of Jesus and Mary for humankind], and to them are due the cult of reparation” (International Seminar of the World Apostolate of Fatima, 1971).
We therefore, whilst offering our reparation to the Heart of Jesus, should not forget to offer reparation to Our Lady’s own Heart as well, for the pain that we have caused Her. Poor though in itself our own reparation might be, we must remember that we are not alone. Our reparation ought to be joined to the infinite reparation that Jesus Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body, made on Calvary, and which is re-presented in the Mass. At the same time, we ought to unite ourselves also to the reparation that Mary made with Him. In this way, and without presumption, we can endeavour to repair for the sins of others.
Fatima, furthermore, has provided some compact and easily remembered prayers of Eucharistic reparation to the Most Blessed Trinity, for the salvation of souls. We do well to memorise these and to make a habit of reciting them frequently throughout the day.
Besides penance, both interior and exterior, as a very effective form of reparation for sins, we must not neglect consecration; first of all to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, God and Man, and then to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, united with the Divine Heart of Jesus in the work of salvation. The Scapular, featured during the Miracle of the Sun on October 13th, is meant to be worn as an outward sign of our interior consecration.
When we are consecrated to our Lady, we have the same heart as She has towards her Son, towards God; so we love God.
Thus, in our love for God, says Monsignor Guerra, we consecrate ourselves, and we consecrate all others, even our enemies; and so did Our Lord Jesus Christ who, according to his own words in St. John’s Gospel, says: ‘Father, I consecrate Myself for the world, the entire world’ (17:19) (In Soul magazine, ibid., p. 19).
Consecration of Russia
But God wishes that, not just individuals, but entire nations, be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our Lady of Fatima specifically asked for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, because otherwise it would be from Russia that errors would be spread that would infect the whole world. Commenting on the Consecration of Russia, Monsignor Guerra explains: “If we consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we love Russia with the same love of Our Lord and Our Lady”. We offer ourselves, our lives, as Our Lord Jesus Christ offers His for we who were enemies to him. We offer our lives in the act of consecration of Russia and other countries which might be “enemies’ of the Cross of Christ (ibid.).
The Two Feasts
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has long been recognized as belonging to the essence of the Church founded by Christ. This Church, Christ chose to create “in the image and likeness” of the Woman, as She herself is so much “in the image and likeness” of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Now, with the doctrine of the New Eve as a counterpart to, and completion of, the doctrine of the New Adam, fully explained, it is only fitting that the consoling devotion of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary be allowed – as Our Divine Lord has asked – to take its rightful place alongside devotion to His Sacred Heart.
Today we have the Feasts of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary placed side by side on the calendar, and it is customary in some parts of the world to have an all-night Vigil of Reparation, commencing with a late Mass on the Feast of the Sacred Heart and concluding with a second Mass in the early morning, on the Feast of the Immaculate Heart.
Even this concept of the juxtaposing of major feast days is already found in the Book of Esther. According to the king’s decree, a feast was to be celebrated in honour of the Jews’ triumph over their enemies. But, since the Jews who lived in the king’s provinces, and those who lived in the capital city of Susa, were victorious on different but consecutive days, the former came to celebrate the feast of Purim, or “Lots” – as it was called – on the 14th of Adar, whilst for the latter it occurred on the next day, the 15th (cf. 8:17, 18 & 16:22).
“Therefore … the Jews ordained and took it upon themselves and their descendants and all who joined them, that without fail they would keep these two days according to what was written and at the time appointed every year, that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, in every family, province and city, and that these days of Purim should never fall into disuse amongst the Jews, nor should the commemoration of these days cease among their descendants” (9:26, 27-28).
What an inspired example for us …!
Chapter Five
WHY ‘FIVE’ FIRST SATURDAYS?
“And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from Heaven to earth, and he was given the key of the shaft of the bottomless pit; he opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth; they were told not to harm the grass of the earth and any green growth or any tree, but only those of mankind who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads; they were allowed to torture them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torture was like the torture of a scorpion, when it stings a man. And in those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death will fly from them.”
“In appearance the locusts were like horses arrayed for battle; on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces wee like human faces, their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; they had scales like iron breastplates, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails like scorpions, and stings, and their power of hurting men for five months lies in their tails. They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon”.
[Revelation 9:1-11].
The Duration of the Five Months
Our attention is drawn immediately to the fact that these locusts of strange aspect, unleashed from the bottomless pit, were given the power to harm any human beings who did not have the seal of the living God upon their foreheads, by torturing them for five months. Here we are interested only in an allegorical (not literal or historico-chronological) interpretation. For a first appreciation as to a possible meaning of this passage from St. John’s Book of Revelation, we can turn to Fr. Herman Kramer’s erudite commentary on St. John’s Apocalypse, “The Book of Destiny”. We shall consider only what he has to say about those “five months”. To what, according to Fr. Kramer, does the torture of five months’ duration refer? The author is of the opinion that the torture here refers to spiritual torment, pangs of conscience and remorse, which the lukewarm undergo once they have come into contact with a rapidly spreading heresy. God, he says, allows them a period of “five months” of experiencing terrible pangs of conscience, in which time they have a chance to repent. But once the “five months” have passed, for those who do not have recourse to prayer and penance during this time of spiritual torment, their consciences become deadened, and they are swept away irrevocably by the heresy.
During those crucial “five months”, the anguish and spiritual torment of the lukewarm is so acute that, according to Revelation, “men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death will fly from them” (9:6). Commenting on this dramatic situation, and putting it into a modern Fatima setting, Frits Albers has written: “If these victims succeeded in praying the Holy Rosary for those five months, and meditated on the Passion and Death of our Blessed Saviour, then, according to the Apocalypse, they would have been saved from apostasy from the Catholic Faith. FIVE MONTHS OF PRAYER against an eternity to regret the neglect …”. (The Marian Dimension in the Apocalypse of St. John, p. 83).
History may now be repeating itself with the “second woe” of Revelation 9 (verses 13-21). For in our own times, it seems, “fallen stars” a many have been delving into the abyss, allowing dark smoke to rise up and cover the face of the earth. That is the Devil’s edict. But God’s remedy of the Five First Saturdays is once again very much the same, though even more spiritually intense, to counteract the greater intensity of “the four evil spirits from the ‘Euphrates’.”
Now we today, confronted as we are with the possibility of a worse heretical sting, the sting of Modernism, a “synthesis of all heresies”, are again being allowed five months’ grace, to secure ourselves against this terrible, conscience-deadening evil. For us, the “five months” of the Apocalypse can signify also the devotion of the Five First Saturdays; the practice of which necessitates recourse to the Sacraments, the Mass and Confession, and to the Holy Rosary.
Were not many of the Israelites of the Exodus era bitten by fiery serpents in the desert? And did they not simply have to look upon the bronze serpent that Moses had raised up on high, to be healed?
Indeed St. John in Chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation, echoing the ancient account of the “one hundred and fifty days” (i.e. five months), during which the waters of the Flood prevailed on the face of the earth – and at the conclusion of which period of time the Ark came to rest safely on the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:3, 4) – provides us with the New Testament foundation for the concept of a devotion protecting against five months of spiritual danger.
Our attention is drawn immediately to the fact that these locusts of strange aspect, unleashed from the bottomless pit, were given the power to harm any human beings who did not have the seal of the living God upon their foreheads, by torturing them for five months. Here we are interested only in an allegorical (not literal or historico-chronological) interpretation. For a first appreciation as to a possible meaning of this passage from St. John’s Book of Revelation, we can turn to Fr. Herman Kramer’s erudite commentary on St. John’s Apocalypse, “The Book of Destiny”. We shall consider only what he has to say about those “five months”. To what, according to Fr. Kramer, does the torture of five months’ duration refer? The author is of the opinion that the torture here refers to spiritual torment, pangs of conscience and remorse, which the lukewarm undergo once they have come into contact with a rapidly spreading heresy. God, he says, allows them a period of “five months” of experiencing terrible pangs of conscience, in which time they have a chance to repent. But once the “five months” have passed, for those who do not have recourse to prayer and penance during this time of spiritual torment, their consciences become deadened, and they are swept away irrevocably by the heresy.
During those crucial “five months”, the anguish and spiritual torment of the lukewarm is so acute that, according to Revelation, “men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death will fly from them” (9:6). Commenting on this dramatic situation, and putting it into a modern Fatima setting, Frits Albers has written: “If these victims succeeded in praying the Holy Rosary for those five months, and meditated on the Passion and Death of our Blessed Saviour, then, according to the Apocalypse, they would have been saved from apostasy from the Catholic Faith. FIVE MONTHS OF PRAYER against an eternity to regret the neglect …”. (The Marian Dimension in the Apocalypse of St. John, p. 83).
History may now be repeating itself with the “second woe” of Revelation 9 (verses 13-21). For in our own times, it seems, “fallen stars” a many have been delving into the abyss, allowing dark smoke to rise up and cover the face of the earth. That is the Devil’s edict. But God’s remedy of the Five First Saturdays is once again very much the same, though even more spiritually intense, to counteract the greater intensity of “the four evil spirits from the ‘Euphrates’.”
Now we today, confronted as we are with the possibility of a worse heretical sting, the sting of Modernism, a “synthesis of all heresies”, are again being allowed five months’ grace, to secure ourselves against this terrible, conscience-deadening evil. For us, the “five months” of the Apocalypse can signify also the devotion of the Five First Saturdays; the practice of which necessitates recourse to the Sacraments, the Mass and Confession, and to the Holy Rosary.
Were not many of the Israelites of the Exodus era bitten by fiery serpents in the desert? And did they not simply have to look upon the bronze serpent that Moses had raised up on high, to be healed?
Indeed St. John in Chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation, echoing the ancient account of the “one hundred and fifty days” (i.e. five months), during which the waters of the Flood prevailed on the face of the earth – and at the conclusion of which period of time the Ark came to rest safely on the mountains of Ararat (Genesis 8:3, 4) – provides us with the New Testament foundation for the concept of a devotion protecting against five months of spiritual danger.
That may explain the duration of five months. But the actual number of five is explained in the next section.
The Five Blasphemies Against Our Lady
As Our Blessed Lord went on to explain to Sr. Lucia in 1930, there is a simple, and quite specific, reason why his Mother has asked for Five First Saturdays. Our Lord’s explanation was prompted by Sr. Lucia’s confessor, who, wondering about the reason for the “Five”, had requested in May 1930 that Lucia ask Our Lord what that number was mean to signify. Thus, towards the end of May, our Lord gave Lucia – who was still at Tuy in Spain – the following reason:
“My daughter, the motive is simple: there are FIVE ways in which people offend and blaspheme against the Immaculate Heart of Mary …”.
- “blasphemies against the immaculate conception”.
- “blasphemies against her virginity”.
- “against the divine maternity, refusing at the same time to accept her as the mother of all mankind”.
- “those who try publicly to implant in the children’s hearts indifference, contempt and even hatred against this immaculate mother”.
- “those who insult her directly in her sacred images”.
In regard to which five blasphemies, our Lord added:
“Here, My daughter, is the reason why the Immaculate Heart of Mary, My Mother, causes Me to ask for this little act of reparation and due to It”.
During the previous year of 1929, on the occasion when She had come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart – and just after She had shown Lucia the splendid vision of the Most Holy Trinity – Our Lady made an important statement that only highlights the urgency of our fulfilling the program of reparation of the Five First Saturdays. She said:
“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”.
And her Divine Son complemented this statement when He, in conclusion to His words of 1930, told Lucia that the act of reparation of the Five First Saturdays would obtain more of His mercy,
“to forgive those souls who had the misfortune of offending Her”.
When we put these various statements together, it becomes quite apparent that it is for the five types of blasphemies against the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, that so many souls are condemned and for whom reparation is so sorely needed. That souls provide such reparation is an even more urgent requirement of Charity than that other necessary one of rescuing souls from Purgatory. For at least the souls in Purgatory are saved.
We hear of such blasphemies almost daily now, for clearly Satan, knowing that his time is short, is waging fierce warfare against the Woman and her “seed”. The fervent practice of the Five First Saturdays, being the great act of Charity that it is towards one’s neighbour, is therefore a wonderful way of fulfilling Almighty God’s Law of Love. But, according to Cardinal Larraona, our efforts in this regard must multiply:
“… we must be assiduous in practicing the First Saturdays devotion of reparation – and the First Fridays – not just once, but continually, as victims, for those who do not or will not heed Our Lady’s pleas”.
The various Pontiffs have spoken of the “great mystery” of one particular aspect of the doctrine of the Mystical Body; a mystery that they claim is not sufficiently meditated upon nor understood by Catholics. The “great mystery” is this; that the good done by the members of the Mystical Body can help other members, just as the evil that is done will harm others.
Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical on the Mystical Body, “Mystici Corporis” (1943), has explained the reason why this is the case:
“That the Church is a Body we find asserted again and again in the Sacred Scriptures. “Christ”, says the Apostle, “is the Head of the Body, the Church” (Colossians 1:18) …. But a body requires a number of members so connected that they help one another. And, in fact, as in our mortal organism when one member suffers the others suffer with it, and the healthy members come to the assistance of those that are ailing, so in the Church individual members do not live for themselves; they also help their fellow-members, all co-operating with one another for their mutual support and for the constant growth of the whole Body” (#’s 14 & 15).
Our Lady of Fatima had already spoken along the same lines:
“Many souls go to Hell, because there is no one to pray and make sacrifices for them”.
The Program of the Five First Saturdays
In order to fulfil the devotion of the Five First Saturdays, the following conditions – listed according to the order in which Our Lady named them – are necessary:
- go to confession (reconciliation).
- receive holy communion.
- say five decades of the rosary; and
- keep our lady company for fifteen minutes whilst meditating on the mysteries of the rosary.
- all of which are to be done with the intention of making reparation to the immaculate heart of mary.
Although a first glance this program appears to be quite straight-forward, some of the above points do need a bit of explanation. In 1926 Our Divine Lord clarified a few points raised by Sr. Lucia. For instance, Lucia had placed before Him the difficulty that certain people might have about confessing on Saturday, and she asked if it might be valid to go to Confession within eight days. Jesus answered her as follows:
“Yes, and it could be longer still provided that, when they receive Me, they are in a state of grace and have the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary” (“Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words”, p. 196).
Lucia then asked:
“My Jesus, what about those who forget to make this intention?”
To which Our Lord replied:
“They can do it at their next Confession, taking advantage of the next opportunity to go to Confession” (ibid.).
Some Further Clarifications
Confession
For those who like to make the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary concurrently with the Nine First Fridays, the Confession of reparation during the week can count for both devotions, provided that the right intentions are there for both.
Holy Communion
Our Lady never directly referred to the Mass as being part of the program, but mentioned only Communion. Normally, however, one receives Holy Communion within the context of the Mass. Our Lady was undoubtedly making an allowance here for the sick and bed-ridden, or, in the case where a particular parish might not have Mass on a given first Saturday, but only a Communion service. Under such unavoidable circumstances, one’s chance of fulfilling the Five First Saturdays would not be jeopardised.
The Rosary
For the Rosary, only five decades are required, not fifteen.
Fifteen Minutes’ Meditation
The Meditation, whilst keeping Our Lady company, may be on one, or on several, or on all of the Mysteries of the Holy Rosary, according to individual preference.
All done with the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The Devotion Must be Done Properly
It is important that one takes pains to fulfil the devotion strictly according to what Our Lord has commanded. For He made it absolutely clear at Tuy in 1926 that He would rather one does five first Saturdays well, with the right intention, than more than five, completed in a careless fashion. It is our obedience that is being put to the test here. And so one should not quibble about certain aspects of the devotion, or try to “improve” on it. This word of caution is more necessary than one might think. Sometimes the piously inclined choose to worship God according to their own terms, rather than his. But the form of worship that really pleases God is that of obedient co-operation with his holy Will. It is this factor that will ensure that pious souls gain for themselves, and for their neighbour, the full benefit of the Five First Saturdays.
The Story of Naaman
There are so many passages throughout the Sacred Scriptures that prove that God prefers obedience and the immolation of one’s will, to a multitude of sacrifices offered in a spirit of self-love. In other words, God is especially concerned about the intention that motivates our worship of Him. Perhaps no scriptural episode is more illustrative of this particular fact than the story of Naaman, army commander to the king of Syria. We find the account of Naaman in the Second Book of Kings, chapter 2.
This Naaman was a leper, who approached the prophet Elisha for a cure. But when Elisha laid down his God-inspired terms, namely that Naaman “go and bathe seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will become clean once more”, Naaman was indignant (vv. 10-11). Elisha’s terms were not to his liking. He wanted the cure to be effected according to his own terms. Surely, he argued, Elisha could simply have come and waved his hand over the leprous part, and invoke the Lord God, and he would have been cured. Or, failing that, at least the prophet could have allowed him to bathe, not in the insignificant Jordan river, but rather in the impressive rivers Abana and Pharpar of his own country, Syria, “better than any water in Israel!” And he turned around contemptuously “and went off in a rage”; and, needless to say, without a cure (vv. 11-12).
Fortunately for Naaman, however, this was not the end of the story. We are told that his own servants reproached him for saying that, had the prophet Elisha told him “to do something difficult”, would he not have done it? All the more reason, then, should he have for obeying the simple request: “bathe, and you will become clean” (v. 13).
This common sense argument of his servants had the necessary effect of Naaman, who now went off and did exactly what Elisha had commanded him to do, “and his flesh became once more like the flesh of a little child” (vv. 11-14).
And so we find that God wanted Naaman to be cured more than Naaman himself wanted it. Despite the fact that the program that God had revealed to the Syrian through his prophet was an entirely simple one, Naaman initially lacked the necessary disposition of humble obedience that would enable him to fulfil it. And so Naamnan was cured only when, eventually, he renounced his own will in preference to that of God.
Now, it is exactly the same in the case of the Five First Saturdays. Heaven has made a simple request through Our Lady of the Rosary. Her program is not difficult, but is well within the reach of all Catholics, provided that they have the right disposition. And the promise associated with its proper fulfillment is one of being cleansed of spiritual leprosy and restored to perfect health in the sight of God.
But, unfortunately, Naaman’s much more deep-seated affliction of indignant pride, causing him to look to complicate a simple matter when it was not to his liking, is an all-too common ailment. Many are of the entrenched position that, if a thing is not difficult to accomplish, then it cannot be worthwhile. It is vitally necessary therefore that the less complicated souls, those who love obedience and who are already properly practising the Communion of Reparation, persist (like Naaman’s wise servants) in their efforts to persuade others to relinquish their own haughtiness and to obey Heaven’s simple request in regard to the Five First Saturdays. God wants our simple obedience much more than He wants great effort from us. Our Lady of the Rosary has promised that those who wholeheartedly embrace the devotion to her Immaculate Heart will be saved. As Naaman’s flesh became like the flesh of a little child – but only after he had submitted to the will of God – so will the souls of those who obediently practice the devotion of reparation become childlike and innocent, even if previously they were not so.
The wonderful effects of such obedience will be out of all proportion to the small degree of self-sacrifice involved.
Part of Our Daily Duty
Our Blessed Mother, in emphasising her central message of prayer and sacrifice for sinners, has specified the Communion of Reparation as being a most efficacious means for overcoming sin and for saving souls from destruction. As we well know, the greatest remedy against sin and the rampant forces of evil is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Nothing on earth can compare with the supernatural grace and power unleashed by just one single Mass.
After the Mass, the Sacrament of Confession, or Reconciliation, and the Rosary (Divine Office for those who can say it), are the most powerful spiritual resources readily available to Catholics.
Some might ask, then, why do we need the Five First Saturdays? Because this devotion harnesses together, in a single program of reparation, all of these most powerful sources of graces. Catholics can equip themselves with no greater weapons in their fight against sin than the reparative devotions in honour of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. According to the saying of the Apostle: “Where sin increased, grace abounded even more” (Romans 5:20).
Such an abundance of graces is so desperately needed in our times, in order to counteract the menace of sin. But Lucia has made it clear that the Blessed Virgin Mary is not asking for anything that is beyond the capacity of the average person; and that by “sacrifice”, She meant essentially “the faithful fulfilment of one’s daily duty” (Lucia in 1946). Now part of this “daily duty” is the recitation of the five decades of the Rosary. Our Lady asked for this in all of her apparitions, and Lucia has since been quite adamant that we must pray the Rosary each day, if we are to fulfil our daily duty.
But it might surprise us to learn that the practice of the Five First Saturdays does have an important bearing on our daily duty as well. Again, Lucia has explained that this devotion is very important in this regard, “because if people make it, they will purge themselves of sin once a month and renew their purpose to fulfil their daily duty”. It is a kind of safety check for enabling Catholics to persevere in the sacrificial offering of their daily duty.
Lucia later added by way of caution, however, that “all God wishes in the way of mortification is the simple, dutiful performance of one’s everyday tasks and the acceptance of their difficulties and tedium”. She warned that great austerities could lead to discouragement and then to indifference and a life of sin. Finally, Lucia said that Our Lord had told her:
“The sacrifice that each one can make is to do his duty and obey My law.
THIS IS THE FORM OF PENANCE I NOW DEMAND”.
Chapter Six
FATIMA IN THE THIRD MILLENNIUM
“When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you …. I have manifested your Name to the men whom you gave me out of the world; yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word …. I am praying for them I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours; all mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them …. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your Name, which you have given me; I have guarded them, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled …. I have given them your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep the from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth”.
“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they may also be in us …. The glory which you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:1,6,9-10,11-12,14-23).
As we are going to discuss in this chapter, the message of Fatima is essentially a spiritual one, not a political one. Like Our Lord’s prayer to God the Father on Holy Thursday night, it is built around truth-centred consecration. But to be “consecrated in truth”, as Our Lord has termed it, presupposes repentance on our part and rejection of the errors which poison truth. Whilst the truth is liberating, as well as unifying, error – which is continually being fostered by “the evil one” – has always the opposite effect. Those who are united in the truth have “become perfectly one”. For, according to St. Thomas Aquinas: “All truths are in the Divine mind”, which must necessarily be so since “God is Truth”. But this God who is Truth, eternal, absolute, sovereign and infinite, is also a Unity, “substantially existing as one with the undivided Divine Nature and substance” (cf. S.T., Ia, q.16, a’s 5 & 6).
At Fatima, in 1982, John Paul II brilliantly linked together these various elements of truth, repentance and (Marian) consecration, by specifically examining them from the perspective of Our Lord’s Last Supper discourse on consecration (John 17).
Firstly the Holy Father spoke of the “call to repentance” at Fatima as being “a motherly one, and at the same time it is strong and decisive”. Next he associated it with truth: “The love that ‘rejoices in the truth’ (cf. I Cor. 13) is capable of being clearcut and firm”.
Finally, Marian consecration is explained from the perspective of Our Lord’s universal and lasting consecration:
“Consecrating ourselves to Mary means accepting her help to offer ourselves and the whole of mankind to Him who is Holy, infinitely Holy; it means accepting her help – by having recourse to her motherly Heart, which beneath the Cross was opened to love for every human being, for the whole world – in order to offer the world, the individual human being, mankind as a whole, and all the nations to Him who is infinitely Holy. God’s holiness showed itself in the Redemption of man, of the world, of the whole of mankind, and of the nations: a Redemption brought about through the Sacrifice of the Cross. ‘For their sake I consecrate myself’, Jesus had said (Jn 17:19)”.
Then, whilst addressing his Act of Consecration to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, John Paul II specifically united himself with Our Lord in His act of universal consecration to God the Father:
“Before you, Mother of Christ, before your Immaculate Heart, I today, together with the whole Church, unite myself with our Redeemer in this His consecration for the world and for people, which only in His Divine Heart has the power to obtain pardon and to secure reparation”.
This universal consecration by the Holy Father, united with that of Christ, has the power to overcome any evil, even the widespread evil of our own age:
“The power of this consecration lasts for all time and embraces all individuals, peoples and nations. It overcomes every evil, that the spirit of darkness is able to awaken, and has in fact awakened in our times, in the heart of man and in his history”.
Then, after expressing “how deeply” he felt the need for this consecration in union with Christ, on behalf of humanity and the world – a consecration to which the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, unites herself to the Redeemer through Peter’s successor – John Paul II went on to tell of his grief in the face of the opposition, or lukewarmness, of Catholics towards the consecration:
“Oh, how pained we are by all the things in the Church and in each one of us that are opposed to holiness and consecration! How pained we are that the invitation to repentance, to conversion, to prayer, has not met with the acceptance that it should have received! How pained we are that many share so coldly in Christ’s work of Redemption! That ‘what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions’ is so insufficiently completed in our flesh”.
Finally, John Paul II spoke of the blessedness of those who are responding with generous and persevering hearts to the will of God, as expressed through Our Lady’s requests at Fatima:
“And so, blessed be all those souls that obey the call of eternal Love! Blessed be all those who, day after day, with undiminished generosity, accept your invitation, O Mother, to do what your Jesus tells them (cf. Jn 2:5) and give the Church and the world a serene testimony of lives inspired by the Gospel”.
The Church’s “Constant Aim”
The continual tension that exists between those who respond with generous hearts to the holy Will of God, and those who resist and oppose it, is already apparent in Our Lord’s own prayer of universal consecration, where his loyal Apostles are radically distinguished from “the son of perdition”. It is again apparent in the above quotations, as the cause of the Holy Father’s anguish. This dichotomy between good and evil, truth and error – and their utter irreconcilability – has indeed been a constant theme right throughout this book. So now, in our concluding chapter, it will be fitting that we follow the conflict right through into the early Third Millennium, our time. As we look at Fatima now from the perspective of the last eighty years - that is, from the time that the Church officially approved the apparitions in 1930, until our present day – it will be interesting to see which of Our Lady’s prophecies have already been fulfilled, and which ones may still have to be.
Pope Leo XIII set the pattern for Catholics to make a clear distinction between truth and error when he, on the eve of the twentieth century, wrote his magnificent encyclical on the restoration of St. Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy, “Aeterni Patris” (1879), inaugurating a new era for Catholicism. With this encyclical its author explained how Our Lord, before He ascended into Heaven, commanded his Apostles – “men whom the truth has set free” and who “were to be preserved by the truth” - to go and teach all nations:
“And the Church built upon the promises of its own Divine Author, whose Charity it imitated, so faithfully followed out His commands, that its constant aim and chief wish was this: to teach true religion and contend forever against error”.
Thus, by re-awakening in Catholic minds the necessity for the perennial philosophy of being, a philosophy of truth whose greatest exponent was St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope Leo was determined to lay the foundation for what has rightly been called the “Corpus Leonis”, that awesome collection of the next 80-odd encyclicals written during his pontificate, and to arm his flock with the indispensable mental equipment that would be needed on the impending confrontation with the errors of Freemasonry and those particularly of the twentieth century. Behind the socio-political front of Freemasonry ran a deeper current; a Satan-inspired conspiracy for the annihilation of “true religion” and the ruin of souls. It was the same as in the case of Haman and his allies in the Book of Esther, whose real aim, “covenanted with their idols” as Esther had said, and underlying their political machinations, was “to abolish what God’s mouth has ordained …, to stop the mouths of those who praise him and to quench His altar and the glory of His house” (Esther 14:8,9). In both cases, old and new, the ultimate aim was still for universal conquest: “… to open the mouths of the nations for the praise of vain idols, and to magnify for ever a mortal king” (v. 10).
Today, at the beginning of the Third Millennium, there has become most evident a distinct polarisation between the forces of good and evil. As John Paul II would warn early in his Pontificate, ours is the era of the confrontation between the Church and the Antichurch. Apparently the message of Fatima, with its focus on reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, has an indispensable rôle to play in this great conflict. For as John Paul II said, again in 1982:
“When Jesus on the Cross said: ‘Woman, behold your son’ (Jn. 19:26), in a new way He opened his Mother’s Heart, the Immaculate Heart, and revealed to it the new dimension and extent of the love to which She was called in the Holy Spirit by the power of the sacrifice of the Cross”.
“In the words of Fatima we seem to find this dimension of motherly love, whose range covers the whole of man’s path towards God; … it is difficult to fail to notice how the range of this salvific love of the Mother embraces, in a particular way, our century”.
The Fatima Prophecies
In his article, “Several Entire Nations Will be Annihilated” (October, 1989), Frank Calneggia has observed that the major Fatima prophecies, apart from being conditional, all imply a confrontation between truth and error. In this way, he says, the message of Fatima is perfectly consonant with what Pope Leo XIII had shown to be the “constant aim and chief wish” of the Catholic Church: viz, “to teach true religion and contend forever against error”.
Here let us review these major Fatima prophecies, using Frank Calneggia’s comments as a guide:
1. “Russia will spread her errors throughout the world fomenting wars and persecution of the Church”.
Comment: The Church, “the pillar and ground of truth” (1 Tim. 3:15), will be persecuted by the protagonists of error. Communist Russia’s principal error, as we know, is Atheism. The nature of this prophecy is therefore this: truth versus error.
2. “The good will be martyred”.
Comment: In the history of the Catholic Church, martyrs are those who have died for the truth of the Catholic Faith rather than accept prevailing error.
So this prophecy too is about truth versus error.
3. “The Holy Father will have much to suffer”.
Comment: The primary act of the Papacy is one of teaching: “to teach true religion and contend forever against error”. The Papacy in fact has a Divine guarantee of teaching the truth. As exemplified in John Paul II’s 1982 speech at Fatima, the Supreme Pontiff feels most keenly any opposition or resistance by Catholics to God’s loving invitation for them to become consecrated to Him in truth. We know that bishops share in the Holy Father’s infallible teachings whenever – and only when – they are united with him in mind and heart. As Head of the Apostolic College, the Pope must experience the most acute suffering when any of his fellow bishops are not of the same mind and heart as he, and so fail to uphold his truth, thereby allowing error and immorality to flourish.
I conclude therefore that the nature of this prophecy is also one of truth versus error.
4. “Several entire nations will be annihilated”.
Comment: This prophecy deserves special treatments and will be considered separately, after prophecies (5) and (6) have been discussed.
5. “In the end my Immaculate heart will triumph, Russia will be converted and an era of peace will be granted to the world”.
Comment: Quite clearly, Russia will be converted from error and sin, to truth and holiness. In other words, Russia’s conversion will be to the truth of the Catholic Faith, and will be seen as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
This prophecy too is about truth versus error, with truth inevitably triumphant.
6. “In Portugal the Dogma of the Faith will always be kept”.
Comment: When speaking of the “Dogma of the Faith”, Our Lady is pointing to eternal Truths. Keeping the Dogma of the Faith means perfect obedience to the Teaching Office of the Church.
Once again, the nature of this prophecy is truth versus error, with truth remaining triumphant.
There is thus a real consistency in this sequence of prophecies given by Our Lady of the Rosary on July 13th of 1917, in that all of them pertain to the mission of the Church: “to teach true religion and contend forever against error”. Frank Calneggia therefore thinks that prophecy #4 above is also meant to be interpreted in the light of this most significant context. Here, then, is his explanation of the prophecy: The Annihilation of Several Nations:
“One interpretation of this prophecy suggests that it meant the spread of the Russian communist state. Proponents of this view have pointed out that some nations have already been ‘annihilated’ in the sense that they have lost their national identity by being absorbed into Russia. For example, the Baltic States had become part of Russia. I reject this view because it is a political one; namely, the replacement of national governments by Moscow-controlled dictatorships. As we have seen, Our Lady made no reference to politics at all. Her concern is primarily for the mission of the Church: the preservation of the Catholic Faith, and the salvation of souls”.
“The Portuguese revolution of 1974 brought down a dictatorship that had been in power for 48 years. The Socialists ruled from then on until 1980. Yet Our Lady, in her words about Portugal, spoke only of the Catholic Faith. It would be illogical and inconsistent according to the context of this sequence of prophecies to project a political interpretation upon this particular prophecy”.
“A more common interpretation of this prophecy suggests that nations will be physically annihilated. This view may appear realistic in the light of a very sinful contemporary world, coupled with the ever-present threat of a nuclear holocaust. The modern world may seem to deserve such punishment. However, let us look a little deeper into the ramifications of this interpretation”.
“Consider the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, which were both physically annihilated; and Abraham’s bold pleas before God that these cities be spared if an ever decreasing number of just men could be found in one of these places, Sodom. Finally, one just man, Lot, could be found. After Lot’s departure from Sodom, the cities of Pentapolis were annihilated because justice had first been annihilated there. [Cf. Genesis 18:16 & 19:29]”.
“Now for we who live in the time of the New Law, the Law of Grace, it is important that we know exactly wherein our justification lies. So, we might ask the pertinent question: ‘What, in the light of Catholic Teaching, is a just man?’ The Council of Trent in its treatment of justification had defined for all time – with explicit reference to the text of Hebrews 11:6 – that it is our Catholic Faith which is “the beginning, the foundation and the root of all justification” [Sess. 6], and “without which it is impossible to please God” [Sess. 5]. Therefore everyone’s justification before God depends totally on the existence and the strict maintenance of Catholic Faith”.
“To understand what Our Lady meant by the annihilation of nations, we must view her words in the light of the authentic pronouncements and teaching of the Church. It is worth our while, therefore, to search for a statement in papal teaching about an ‘annihilation’ and to see in what context it has been made”.
“Ten years before the Fatima apparitions, Pope St. Pius X wrote an extraordinary encyclical: ‘Pascendi Dominici Gregis’ – On the Errors of the Modernists, in which he begins by explaining that Modernists believe in “the intrinsic evolution of dogma”. But such a conception of ‘dogma’ will, according to the Holy Father, “ruin and wreck all religion”.
“In the same vein, and by way of conclusion, Pope St. Pius X had this to say about the effects of the Modernistic synthesis:
“These reasons suffice to show superabundantly by how many roads Modernism leads to atheism and the annihilation of all religion. The error of Protestantism made the first step on this road, that of Modernism makes the second; Atheism makes the next” [p. 51].
We could not ask for clearer language. The Vicar of Christ has taught us authoritatively that Modernism leads to Atheism and the annihilation of all religion. In our context of truth versus error, it is truth that is being eclipsed. It is my considered opinion that, when Our Lady foretold that several entire nations would be annihilated, She was speaking of an annihilation of religion, in particular the Catholic Faith”.
[End of quote from Calneggia, op. cit., pp. 1-4].
Of course, physical annihilation could follow on from the annihilation of religion in places. And, with this eclipse of the Catholic religion – we may add – comes the terrible loss (‘annihilation’) of a nation’s spiritual, moral and material wellbeing, which all depend on Divine grace that flows from this dynamic presence of a vigorous and youthful Catholicism with a nation’s boundaries.
Fatima and the Papacy
Pope Pius XI, 1922-1939
Pope Pius XI, during whose Pontificate the Fatima apparitions were officially approved (i.e. on the 13th of October, 1930), was actually mentioned by name by Our Lady of the Rosary, when, on the 13th of July, She predicted:
“The war [1914-1918] will end soon. But if men do not stop offending God, it will not be long before another and worse one begins: that will be in the reign of Pius XI”.
Lucia was asked by some historians of Fatima (in 1946) whether the Blessed Virgin really mentioned the name of Pope Pius XI; to which question she replied: “Yes. We did not know if he were a Pope or a king; but the Blessed Virgin spoke of Pius XI”. When the same historians suggested to her that the Second World War did not begin during the reign of Pius XI, she informed them: “The annexation of Austria was the decisive cause. When the Treaty of Munich was concluded, my sisters [religious] rejoiced saying that peace had been preserved. Alas! I knew better!”
Pope Pius XI died on the eve of the beginning of the chastisements that Our Lady had continually predicted. Any reasonable person in those days reading his encyclical on the Sacred Heart, Miserentissimus Redemptor, in which he lamented the corrupt state of the world, would have realised that there was no longer any hope of the world’s escaping those chastisements. Pope Pius XI wrote that his times “foretold and portended” those times of sorrow which “the man of sin, who … is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, is to bring”.
Our Lady of the Rosary had warned on July 13th that:
“When you see the night illumined by an unknown light know that it is the great sign which God is giving you, indicating that the world, on account of its innumerable crimes, will soon be punished by war, famine, and persecutions against the Church and the Holy Father. In order to stop it, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, as well as Communion of reparation on the first Saturdays of the month”.
That “unknown light” of warning occurred very near the end of Pope Pius XI’s life, on the night of 25th-26th January, 1938. Lucia later identified the extraordinary light of that night as that which Our Lady had foretold.
Pope Pius XII, 1939-1958
Pope Pius XII’s immediate predecessors had written beautifully about Our Lady of Fatima. But the new occupant of the See of St. Peter would outdo in word and action their sanction of Her.
On May 13, 1942, Fatima’s silver jubilee, Pope Pius XII inserted into the Catholic Liturgy the feast of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart and, later on, the feast of Mary’s Queenship. In his encyclical on her Queenship, the Vicar of Christ explained why: “The time of doubting Fatima has passed. It is now time for action” (Encyclical ‘Ad Coeli Reginam’, 1954).
In 1942 also, this Pope of action had consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and had followed this up in 1952 by consecrating Russia to her Heart.
On another occasion, he sent his legate to Fatima to crown Our Lady’s new statue there, while 600,000 jubilant pilgrims looked on.
Then in 1951 he broke a precedent, having the Holy Year (begun in 1950) conclude, not in Rome, but at Fatima on October 13, the 34th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun.
Nor was he yet satisfied. Two years later Pope Pius XII elevated the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima to the rank of a basilica because in it, he remarked as his justification, “lie the bodies of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who were favoured with a wonderful vision of the Mother of God”. (Taken from SOUL magazine, Jan-Feb, 1990, p. 6).
This ‘Fatima Pope’, as he has been called, who had pointed to “the Message of Fatima” as being “the only anchor of salvation” and also “the summation of my thinking”, embarked upon two other Marian initiatives which must not be overlooked here. By far the more important of the two was, of course, his proclamation of the Dogma of Our Lady’s Assumption into Heaven. This momentous proclamation occurred on the 1st of November in the Holy Year of 1950. It was by means of Mary’s victimhood as the New Eve that the defining Pope was able at last to trace this Dogma to ‘the sources of revelation’; and it is her victimhood also which is the central teaching of the Papal Bull of this dogmatic declaration, “Munificentissimus Deus”.
Secondly, by this mid-point in the twentieth century, Pope Pius XII had also proclaimed for the Church a new Marian Saint, the great “Apostle of Mary”, St. Louis Grignion de Montfort. When canonizing him in 1947, the Holy Father referred to St. Louis as “the guide who leads you to Mary and from Mary to Jesus”. During the previous year, someone had spoken in the presence of Sr. Lucia regarding St. Louis’ doctrine that the reign of Jesus would come through the Blessed Virgin, after knowledge of true devotion to Mary had been spread throughout the world. Sister Lucia apparently reacted at once to this suggestion and added: “And after the conversion of Russia”.
Fatima fully supports the doctrine of victimhood, or of offering oneself as an oblation to God for sinners, which is so central also to the Dogma of the Assumption; and Fatima, too, is of course perfectly in harmony with St. Louis’ explanation of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which Pius XII deemed to be free from error. Likewise, standing in with Mary as a victim at the foot of the Cross fully explains Fatima and all its integral parts.
The Blessed Virgin’s immense joy at having this privilege of hers proclaimed as a Dogma of the Church, and her gratitude to Pope Pius XII in general, seemed to overflow upon this blessed Pontiff. Reliable sources close to the Holy Father have reported that, on four occasions in 1950, while he was walking in the Vatican gardens, the Pope beheld the Miracle of the Sun. The story was first related by Cardinal Tedeschini who was speaking during a Solemn Pontifical Mass at Fatima on October 13th, 1951. The Mass marked the end of the Holy Year outside Rome. Speaking, as he said, in his own mane only, Cardinal Tedeschini described the four incidents:
“It was at four in the afternoon on October 30 and 31, and on November 1 of the last year, 1950, and on the octave of November 1, the day of the definition of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven. From the Vatican gardens the Holy Father turned his gaze toward the sun and there before his eyes the wonder of this valley [the Cova da Iria at Fatima] and this day [October 13, 1917] was renewed”.
“… Is this not Fatima transported to the Vatican? Is this not the Vatican transformed into Fatima?” (D. Sharkey, The Woman Shall Conquer, p. 182).
Some Prophecies Fulfilled in His Time
The prophecy about the Holy Father having much to suffer, really began to take effect during the Pontificate of Pope Pius XII. That “even worse war”, presaged by the strange light on the eve of his reign, began in earnest with the accession of Pope Pius XII. The Holy Father himself suffered terrible persecution during the Second World War (1939-1945). But this was only the beginning of the chastisement. When the Fatima historians, in their interview with Sr. Lucia in 1946, put to her the question: “At what actual stage are we of the period mentioned in the secret?”, Lucia replied to them: “I think that you are at the period when false doctrine shall propagate its errors throughout the world”.
So began the worst phase of Soviet Communism. Because Our Lady of the Rosary had been banished by the majority of Catholics to the desert of oblivion, the great Red Dragon of Soviet Communism was allowed to spew forth its errors on a worldwide scale, causing unimaginable havoc and suffering (Revelation 12). Wars, revolutions, calamities of every kind, violent earthquakes, severe famines, all have shaken the world ever since that fateful hour. There has been fierce persecution of the Church as well, particularly under Communist régimes, and just as Our Lady had predicted. Amongst the worst crimes of all, according to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, has been that of global abortion; the wanton slaughter of millions of innocents. But according to Cardinal Oddi, despite all that His Holiness had to suffer during the war, and indeed afterwards, “the promises of Our Lady of Fatima were like a bright sun of hope throughout Pius XII’s pontificate”.
Pope John XXIII, 1958-1963
It fell to Pope John XXIII to open and to read the ‘Third Secret’of Fatima in the year that Our Lady had stipulated: 1960. But the Church then chose not to make public its contents.
Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) would later say: “To publish the ‘third secret;’ would mean exposing the Church to the danger of sensationalism, exploitation of the content” (The Ratzinger Report, p. 110).
Considering that the central message of Fatima is a spiritual one, and that the Fatima prophecies pertain essentially to the conflict between truth and error, the third secret of July 13, it was argued, likely had some connection with the crisis of Faith in the world. It was also thought that there must be a connection between the fact that Pope John XXIII read the secret in 1960 and then convened the Second Vatican Council a few years later. This highly significant Council laid bare the underlying discontent with the Church in the hearts of many Catholics. And it strengthened loyal Catholics for the baptism of fire (Cardinal Ratzinger would use a similar phrase) that they would have to undergo in the face of unbridled Modernism and relativism.
But, according to Cardinal Ratzinger, the course that the Council took was not exactly that which Pope John XXIII had anticipated:
“What is certain is that the Council did not take the turn that John XXIII had expected (let us recall that countries like Holland, Switzerland and the United States were strongholds of loyalty to Rome). It must also be admitted that, in respect to the whole Church, the prayer of Pope John that the Council signify a new leap forward for the Church, to renewed life and unity, has not – at least not yet – been granted” (Ibid., p. 42).
Like his predecessors, Pope John XXIII was very much in favour of Fatima. Did he not in fact declare Fatima as “the centre of Christian hope”? (Journal of a Soul). It need not surprise us that this Pope, who prayed fifteen decades of the Rosary daily, donated to the basilica at Fatima his pectoral cross. Cardinal Larraona, his emissary at the shrine on May 13, 1963, assured the audience from the pulpit that the now-dying Pontiff had never missed an opportunity to make “better known and more widely practised the message given here at Fatima for mankind”.
Pope Paul VI, 1963-1979
The persecution that Pope Paul VI had to endure, particularly after he issued his encyclical, Humanae Vitae (1968), forbidding contraception, was of a more insidious kind. By the time of his reign, error had become so widespread – even amongst Catholic clergy – that Pope Paul described the situation as “the smoke of Satan” creeping into the Church through cracks and fissures.
To counteract the deluge of error, Pope Paul VI held up truth; especially as embodied in the teachings of the Second Vatican Council.
And what did Pope Paul VI do to foster devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary? An answer to this question can be found in Fr. V. Long’s article, “Our Lady of Fatima and Her Credentials”:
“Aside from so much else, [Paul VI] has the following historic achievements to his credit. As a suitable finale to the third session of the Second Vatican Council he consecrated the world anew to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and promised his applauding audience to send to her shrine at Fatima a golden rose. And he did. Then in 1967, for the golden jubilee of Mary’s first apparition at the Cova, he appeared there himself. After his outdoor Mass the TV cameras focused – yes, it is no mistake – upon Sister Lucia of the Immaculate Heart, the Lucia of the visions, now a cloistered nun. She was standing alongside Pope Paul who had invited her by all means to come. They both had smiles on their happy faces which more eloquently than words spoke of confidence”. (Soul magazine, Jan-Feb, 1990, p. 6).
Pope John Paul II, 1979-2005
Marian devotion and interest in Fatima seem to have taken a quantum leap during the Pontificate of Pope John Paul II, “whose coat of arms spells out in four words a child’s assurance to his spiritual mother: Totus tuus ego sum (I am all yours)” (ibid.). John Paul II not only acclaimed true devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, but had practised it ardently himself from his youth.
The meaning of Our Lady’s prediction that the Holy Father would have much to suffer was brought home with harsh reality when, on the 13th of May 1981, John Paul II was hit several times nears St. Peter’s basilica by a hired Turkish gunman. Speaking of this tragic episode as an example of the Pope’s total confidence in Our Lady’s maternal care, Fr. Long writes:
“His near-death from a spray of gunshot, when his bleeding body was hurried off to the hospital, may well serve as a typical instance. While some of his doctors could not understand why one bullet made a sharp turn out of his body just in time to save his life, their recovering patient is reported to have attributed it to Mary’s obtaining another of her miracles from God”.
Like the dying king Hezekiah of the Old Testament (see e.g. Isaiah 38), Pope John Paul II had been granted more than a decade of unexpected life. He himself regarded this as “a free gift” from God, and he returned to Fatima exactly a year after the shooting (and again a decade later, in 1991), to thank Our Lady for that precious gift.
Also in 1982 at Fatima, John Paul II made the first of his two acts of consecration of the world and Russia to the Immaculate Heart.
And in that same year he canonised another great Marian Apostle, St. Maximilian Kolbe, his fellow-countryman and hero of Auschwitz.
Since already, in the early part of this book, we have written a good deal about some of the most important Marian initiatives for which this great Pope, now called John Paul II ‘the Great’, had been responsible during his truly breathtaking Pontificate, we shall limit ourselves here to a discussion of the very important issue of:
The Consecration of Russia
We recall that on July 13th of 1917, Our Lady of the Rosary had made this promise:
“I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If My wishes are fulfilled, Russia will be converted and there will be peace …. If not ….”.
In June of 1929, Our Lady came and told Lucia:
“The moment has come when God asks the Holy Father, in union with all the bishops of the world, to make the Consecration of Russia to My Heart, promising to save it by this means”.
In a letter to her confessor, dated May 29, 1930, Sr. Lucia had explained that Our Lord had made her feel his Divine presence in the depth of her heart and had urged her to ask the Holy Father for the approval for the reparative devotion of the first Saturdays. These are the words of the seer, as found in her Memoirs (# 404):
“If I am not mistaken, the good Lord promises to put an end to the persecution in Russia if the Holy Father deigns to make a solemn and public act of reparation and consecration of Russia to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and orders all the bishops of the Catholic world to do the same. The Holy Father must also promise to approve and recommend the reparative devotion already indicated for the cease of this persecution”.
Later, through an interior communication, Our Lord complained to Sr. Lucia that the consecration of Russia had not been made:
“They did not heed to My request. They will repent like the king of France and will make it, but it will be too late. Russia will already have spread its errors throughout the world, promoting wars and persecutions of the Church. The Holy Father will have much to suffer” (ibid., # 412).
Our Lord’s reference here to “the king of France” is an allusion to the promise that He had made to Louis XIV through St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Our Lord had promised to give the king a life of grace and eternal glory, as well as victory over his enemies, if he would consecrate himself to the Sacred Heart, let It reign in his palace, paint It on his banners, and have It engraved on his coat of arms. In 1792, after Louis XIV had been imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, this Divine request still had not been heeded. The king then made the vow to consecrate himself, his family and his kingdom to the Sacred Heart of Jesus if he regained his freedom, the crown, and royal power. It was too late; the king left prison only for his execution.
Lucia, writing again to her spiritual director on January 21, 1935, stated that:
“Our Lord was quite displeased because His request had not been carried out” (ibid.).
In a further letter to him, dated May 18, 1936, she told him of the following fascinating exchange with Our Lord in the subject:
“… I have spoken to Our Lord inwardly about the subject, and not too long ago I asked Him why He would not convert Russia without the Holy Father making that consecration”.
“Because I want My whole Church to acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so as subsequently to extend the devotion to it and place it alongside devotion to My Sacred Heart”.
“But, my God, the Holy Father will not believe me, unless You move him with a special inspiration”.
“The Holy Father. Pray very much for the Holy Father! He will do it, but it will be late. Nevertheless, the Immaculate Heart of Mary will save Russia, who has been entrusted to it” (ibid., 412, 414).
Sr. Lucia wrote a further interesting letter to her spiritual director on August 18, 1940. Here is part of it:
“I suppose it pleases Our Lord that there is someone who is concerned about His Vicar on earth fulfilling His wishes. But the Holy Father will not comply with them now. He doubts they are real, and explicably so. Our good Lord could show clearly through some prodigy that it is He who is asking, but He takes this opportunity to punish the world with His justice for so many crimes and to prepare it for a more complete return to Him. The proof that He gives us is the special protection the Immaculate Heart of Mary affords Portugal in view of the consecration made to it [i.e. the 1931 consecration made by the Portuguese bishops]” (ibid., # 426).
Attempts to Achieve the Collegial Consecration
During 1942, Pope Pius XII consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary; and in 1952 he consecrated Russia to her Heart. Whilst, undoubtedly, these were valuable spiritual acts, they did not fulfil Our Lady’s conditions, because – as Bishop Alberto Cosme do Amaral has noted (1989 “Youth for Fatima” conference) - the Holy Father had made these consecrations alone as Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth.
In 1964 Pope Paul VI, when speaking to the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, renewed Pope Pius XII’s consecration of the world and Russia to the Immaculate Heart. This was in the presence of the world’s more than 2,000 bishops. Again, however, the Pope made the consecration by himself, and not in union with the world’s bishops.
On the 13th of May, 1982, at Fatima, Pope John Paul II made a valiant attempt at the collegial Consecration when he renewed Pope Pius XII’s consecrations of the world and Russia to the Immaculate Heart. However, when the most reverend Sante Portalupi, the Papal Nuncio to Portugal, visited Sr. Lucia at that time, she told him that the Consecration made by John Paul II, like that of Pius XII, was not according to the request of Our Lady, as it was not with all the bishops of the world, each on the same day in a “collegial” Act of Consecration. (Taken from SOUL magazine, Jan-Feb, 1985, p. 9). It was reported that many bishops did not receive the Holy Father’s letter in time to join him in the act.
In 1984, Pope John Paul II made another consecration. In preparation for it, the Holy Father sent a letter to all the bishops of the world asking them to join him in the collegial Consecration of the world as a renewal of the two acts of consecration made by Pope Pius XII. “Implicit therefore”, according to Bishop Amaral, “was the consecration of Russia” (op. cit., ibid.) Bishop Amaral’s further explanation of this Consecration is an important one:
“Not only was it to be a renewal of Pius XII’s two consecrations … but the very words of Pope John Paul II mentioned those peoples ‘most in need’. Likewise, during the actual consecration by Pope John Paul II there were a few moments of pausing during which it was not clear what the Holy Father said. I thanked the Pope later for consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Pope added ‘and Russia’.”
Bishop Amaral then explained that:
“A moral totality of the world’s bishops joined the Pope in this collegial consecration, including Eastern Orthodox bishops”.
For many years now, Fatima devotées have been waiting and praying, and even sacrificing, for this consecration to come about. Some may - and in fact do - find it hard now to accept that it has happened. It seems almost too good to be true. But, on the other hand, is it in fact so difficult to accept that the collegial consecration had been carried out as requested? When John Paul II wrote to all the bishops of the world as to what he was going to do on March 25th, 1984, and what he wanted all the bishops to do with him, he specifically stated that he was going to repeat the twofold consecrations of Pope Pius XII; the one of the whole world of 1942 and the one of Russia of 1952.
We may perhaps draw another analogy here.
Fr. William Most, when discussing the Theology of the Mass in his excellent book on the Second Vatican Council, Vatican II Marian Council, has this to say about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass being the renewal of Calvary:
“If the renewal is twofold (i.e. offered up by Christ and by His Mystical Body the Church) … then would it not be strange if the original, which the renewal repeats, did not have a similar twofold structure? Really, if the renewal were twofold, and the original not, then the renewal would be partly false. It would no repeat fully what it should repeat”.
We may reverse this logical reasoning with regard to the Consecration of 1984 as follows:
“If the original is twofold (i. e. consisting of two separate previous consecrations) then would it not be strange if the repeat, which claims to repeat the original, did not have a similar twofold structure? Really, if the original were twofold, and the repeat not, the latter would be manifestly false …etc”.
But what is being claimed by Church authorities in the case of this 1984 Act of Consecration is that the 1952 Act of Consecration of Russia is being repeated. This was made known to all the bishops. And by making it thus known to them, the Holy Father was fully expressing his explicit intention with regard to Russia’s being included, even had Russia not received a mention!
Fr. M. Coelho, in his article “The Problem of the Consecration Again” (Fatima Family Messenger, Oct-Dec, 1989) had added some further important points on the subject. After noting that Lucia had believed “the request of Our Lady was not perfectly accomplished” in the case of the earlier Consecration, that of 1982, Fr. Coelho went on to add that, with regard to the Consecration of 1984:
“Now, in fact, both the Bishop of Fatima and the Holy Father are convinced that the consecration Our Lady asked for is perfectly made. The main reason is the following. Nobody can prove that the words Our Lady used, asked for a consecration of Russia alone; Russia is a part of the world. If the world is consecrated, Russia becomes consecrated”. (Ibid., p. 6).
Fr. Coelho then proceeded to make a significant theological point: that it is ultimately the Church – not the seers – who interprets apparitions.
“Theologically the problem is clearer. The apparitions and their messages are charisms, i.e. acts of the Holy Spirit. Their interpretation - to be correct - has to be also an act of the Holy Spirit. He is the Soul of the Church. So, the only interpretation is that of the Church and not that of the seers. Usually the charism of seers consists only in receiving and telling the Church what they saw and heard. Reliable people who recently saw Sister Lucia told me Sister Lucia now says that the request of Our Lady is accomplished”.
And we can see already some effects. Many things began changing after 1984” (Ibid.).
We turn now to the actual words spoken by Sr. Lucia on the subject of the 1984 Consecration, its outcome, and the response of the world’s bishops to it. The following quotations of Sr. Lucia are taken from the article, “Sister Lucia says: ‘God will keep His Word’” (in Fatima Family Messenger, pp. 9-11), by Maria do Fetal Neves Rosa, who is a relative of Sr. Lucia and her friend of 40 years. When the author put to Sr. Lucia this point:
“You know some bishops did not unite with the Holy Father in the Consecration?” Sr. Lucia replied:
“The responsibility was theirs. Because of them God did not refuse to accept the Consecration which as made [in 1984] as the one having been requested …. The request for the Consecration was always an appeal for union. The Mystical Body of Christ [the Church] must be united! The members of the same Body are united!” (Ibid).
Then her interviewer pressed Sr. Lucia to be perhaps even more specific as to whether or not the Consecration requested by Our Lady had been achieved, saying:
“People would like very much to know that you, Lucia, are saying that the Consecration has now been made and accepted by God”; to which Sr. Lucia gave the following reply:
“His Excellency, the Bishop of Leiria, was here. He asked me and I told him, ‘Yes. Now it was made’.”
The Apostolic Nuncio has been here recently and asked me, ‘Is Russia now consecrated?’ ‘Yes. Now it is’, I answered. The Nuncio then said, ‘Now we wait for the miracle’.
I answered, ‘God will keep His word’.” (Ibid.).
What Does the Future Hold?
God has allowed for the late C20th and early Third Millennium to be an era of crisis and immense suffering for those two reasons specified by Sr. Lucia in her previously quoted letter of 1940:
“… to punish the world with his justice for so many crimes and to prepare it for a more complete return to him”.
Because of the almost universal rejection of Fatima with its central doctrine of repentance from sin and reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary through the devotion of the Five First Saturdays, Russia was able to spread its errors throughout the entire world. And, like the universal edict of lies and terror issued by Haman in the story of Esther, error is now apparent everywhere. The conspirators of world-wide apostasy, working initially through Freemasonry, have been most successful in establishing their secular ‘religion’ of relativism and atheism.
Fr. Robert Bradley (SJ), who is quite convinced that Our Lady did refer to Masonry at Fatima, only under a different name, “Russia’s errors”, sums up this pernicious doctrine of secular humanism as follows:
“‘Russia’s errors’ could specifically be called Leninism or Marxism, but their real name is secular humanism. And secular humanism’s first and most enduring institutional name is ‘Freemasonry’. Freemasonry claimed to be the predestined instrument of a ‘novus ordo saeculorum’, a new order of the ages. Masonry is secular humanism incarnate. Here is a ‘religion’ of Man, by Man and for Man. Masonry is also Satanism incarnate. For man in revolt against the One True God and his Christ is in bondage to Satan. Satan is that Ancient Serpent and Father of Lies, whose defeat in time is the certain victory of the Woman of the Apocalypse, who appeared to the world at Fatima”. (Taken from Soul magazine, Sept-Oct, 1990, pp. 12-13).
Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical “On Social Concerns” (1987), had listed some of the dangers that were faced late in the C20th:
“We are all called, indeed obliged, to face the tremendous challenge of the last decade of the second Millennium, also because the present dangers threaten everyone: a world economic crisis, a war without frontiers, without winners or losers. In the face of such a threat, the distinction between rich individuals and countries will have little value, except that a greater responsibility rests on those who have more and can do more” (#40).
But because of the “efficacious action of the Holy Spirit” which ‘fills the earth’ (Wisdom 1:7), John Paul II had reminded us that there is “no justification then for despair or pessimism or inertia”. (Ibid.).
Words such as these ought to prompt us to focus on the positive rather than the gloomy aspect of the future. And – thanks to the Church and to the supplementary information provided by Fatima, which the Church has approved – we can now piece together a very hopeful future scenario.
Firstly, we are assured of the following certainties. There is coming a world-wide evangelization. John Paul II made this abundantly clear in his encyclical on the Holy Spirit, “Centesimus Annus”, written just prior to his 1991 visit to Fatima. That world-wide evangelization, in which surely the Five First Saturdays devotion must play an integral part, will apparently lead directly to the next certainty: the conversion of Russia, indeed the world, through the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Now, according to Sr. Lucia, the universal reign of Jesus Christ in the hearts of men and women, through Mary, will become a reality after the conversion of Russia. This must be the same as that further certainty promised by Our Lady of the Rosary: the “era of peace”.
The 1984 Consecration was a kind of death blow to the Devil. Though the effects of that death blow may not be entirely apparent at the moment, they are assured. One of these effects is, presumably, the conversion of Russia. In 1917 it was not in the least apparent that Soviet Russia would become Satan’s instrument for fomenting world-wide error, but Heaven knew otherwise. So it is the case with the conversion of Russia today; not yet entirely apparent, but it is certain.
The conversion of Russia may possibly, like that of the eastern Empire of Medo-Persia in the Book of Esther, occur at a crucial moment in history when all seems lost. Then perhaps, from the east, there will surge forth an irresistible triumph of the Catholic Church that will spread throughout all the nations:
“Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white, with a golden crown and a mantle of fine linen and purple while the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced …. And in every province and in every city, wherever the king’s command and his edict came, there was gladness and joy …. And many from the peoples declared themselves Jews [read ‘Catholics’], for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them” (Esther 8:15, 17).
Is it not logical to suggest that the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary can come about only by means of authentic devotion to her Heart: notably, the reparative devotion of the Five First Saturdays?
Not surprisingly, it has been Fr. Van Straaten’s Fatima-based apostolate of “Aid to the Church in Need”, which has been at the forefront of contemporary efforts to evangelise Russia. We close this chapter with the thrilling testimony of Fr. van Straaten, known as ‘the Bacon Priest’, who has laboured for over forty years, and under every imaginable difficulty, for the conversion of Russia:
“… For decades it was my principal task to help the victims of atheistic persecution. In a world full of disinformation I could only do so by relentlessly denouncing such persecution. It did not trouble me when people called me “the last general of the Cold War”, for the Cold War was better than the false peace which has since done so much damage to the Church”.
“Had I then, in that age of ‘peaceful co-existence’, gone along with the fainthearted who saw Stalin as the founder of an indestructible empire and who therefore came to terms with him, I could not go into Russia now as a friend of the people who suffered first and most under communism”.
“On top of all our other tasks God is now entrusting to us the mission for which I have been waiting for forty-five years: the re-evangelization and re-establishment of love in the communist wasteland …. The conviction is growing that our organisation has a place in the heart of the Fatima message and is perhaps called to be Mary’s instrument for reconciling a divided Christendom …”.
“Now we are throwing ourselves heart and soul into a worldwide ecumenical campaign of prayer. Its objective is that the Church in the West and the Church in the east might be converted together and together take the last step along the road of reconciliation. That we might rise together from the spiritual ruins of the twentieth century and together proclaim the Gospel credibly to a generation which has lost faith in Marx and is now being called to be the herald of the Kingdom of God in the third Christian millennium”.
“But if we are both to be converted, then for Russia, as for us, the grace of this conversion must first be implored through the praying of the Rosary; then it is not merely to the West but to Russia, too, that Mary’s appeal is addressed. For over seventy years Satan prevented Her from being heard in Russia, but on the 13th October 1991 we broke through this blockade with our Fatima-Moscow television link-up. Forty million Russians have seen our broadcasts. Millions want to know more. Millions will be ready to cling to this last spiritual lifeline which Mary is casting to them”.
Finally, we recall the words of John Paul II at Fatima in 1982, that:
“Now that sixty-five years have passed since May 13, 1917, it is difficult to fail to notice how the range of this salvific love of the Mother embraces, in a particular way, our century”.
And now in this early stage of the Third Millennium the message of Our Lady of the Rosary has become ever more urgent, and, yes, ever more relevant.
Conclusion
Today there are needed the most refined spiritual weapons to withstand the forces of evil, which have shown themselves to be more malignant and astute than ever before. It is impossible for anyone morally to survive the onslaught of the corrupt modern world without their being deeply grounded in devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. At Fatima, Our Lady of the Rosary came to the rescue, equipped with all the necessary spiritual armoury and fire-power for the protection of those who would wish to be saved, and who would wish to save others.
In two astonishing apparitions especially, the one accompanied by the Vision of Hell, and the other by the Miracle of the Sun, the Blessed Virgin Mary showed that Heaven has the complete measure of these forces of darkness. On the 13th of July, 1917, Our Blessed Lady announced the most consoling devotion of the Five First Saturdays in honour of her Immaculate Heart. Since this devotion incorporates all that is most efficacious in Catholic worship, it has the power to form the greatest of saints, as well as to save the most hardened of sinners. It was ratified by the awesome Miracle of the Sun on October 13th.
The devotion was to be regarded as a complement to, and perfection of, the Nine First Fridays in honour of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mary’s Divine Son. In these complementary devotions of reparation to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Heaven had designed a plan of redemption which incorporates, all at once,
- the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and
- reparative Communion,
- the Rosary and
- Meditation.
And all this is based on the solid foundations of
- obedience and
- self-sacrifice.
There is nothing lacking to it!
As usual, those whom Our Lady of the Rosary first conscripted into her service were the lowly and the unsophisticated “little ones” of this world. She personally conveyed her message to humanity via three illiterate children, the oldest of whom was only ten. Essentially, Our Lady came to Fatima as a Catechist, to proclaim again those age-old doctrines of the Catholic Faith: Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, the Blessed Trinity, angels and devils, sin and sacrifice. In other words, She came to Fatima to reinforce all the basic Truths; those which She knew beforehand the twentieth century world was going to make it its business to ‘obliterate’ from the minds of men, women and children, but of which a sure knowledge remains as necessary for one’s salvation as it ever was.
Our Lady of the Rosary did not withhold any Truth from Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, even the reality of Hell. Instead, to reinforce her lesson that every Dogma of Catholicism is to be taught to young and old, She went so far as to show the three little seers the terrifying vision of Hell. Again Dogma was to the fore in Our Lady’s prediction that:
“… in Portugal the Dogma of the Faith will always be preserved”.
Her Divine Son also showed His special concern for children by warning against “those who try publicly to implant in the children’s hearts indifference, contempt and even hatred against the Immaculate Mother”. It follows from all this that children ought to be instructed in the whole Fatima message, and be encouraged to embrace reparative devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Nor should the protection of the Scapular be denied to them.
Without a doubt, the reparative devotions to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, when willingly embraced, are a preparation for Heaven. Those who seriously embrace Heaven’s Program for Salvation inevitably tell of the wonderfully transforming effects that it has upon the soul. Numerous graces and blessings, and abundant mercy, are unleashed upon the blessed soul who obediently takes up the practice of reparative devotion. In the case of habitual sinners, bad habits may be promptly uprooted, to be replaced by good habits and a life of virtue. Sinners may become daily communicants; a sign of the deep conversion to God that has taken place in their souls. In some cases, the practice of the Five First Saturdays may lead a soul to that very special and rare grace of total consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary: the Marian devotion of John Paul II.
It would however be a grave mistake to imagine that the devotion of the Five First Saturdays is meant only for the few, a mistake which has its poisonous roots in the context of a much more prevalent misconception: that at Fatima the Mother of God appeared to warn ‘Catholics Only’ …!
As far as the first of these two misconceptions is concerned, the notion that the Fatima message is only for the privileged few, we must point out that, in claiming that the devotion is to be regarded as a means to assist one in the fulfillment of one’s “daily duty”, Lucia has effectively disallowed any exceptions, as she told that Our Lord has demanded the fulfilment of one’s “daily duty” from everyone. The Five First Saturdays, therefore, is a most perfect means whereby individual Catholics may take stock of things on a monthly basis, so as to cleanse their souls from sin, and to renew their resolution to do their daily duty well.
This leaves us with the refutation of the second misconception: that the message of Fatima is so inextricably intertwined with Catholic doctrine and symbolism, that it is impossible to take it to non-Catholics. The Divine Irony is that, in making this objection, ‘Catholic’ objectors unwittingly reveal how far they have strayed from the universality of Catholicism into the narrow, sectarian stream of its adversaries.
The innumerable enemies of the Holy Catholic Church have, for centuries, been at pains to portray the Church as backward, parochial, narrow-minded, and altogether out-of-step and out-of-touch with the real world-on-the-march. Roman Catholicism has been condemned and rejected as an anachronism, a fossilised encrustation on the progress of all human thinking, as a bar to science and technology. Yet Catholic means Universal, and in the Creed on Sundays all Catholics profess in the light of their supernatural Faith, that this One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is the only God-willed ‘Universality’ on this planet for the salvation of all mankind. It was because of the very Name and the indestructible Nature with which Christ graced this Church, that He could command that its message must be proclaimed “to all nations” (Luke 24:47), and “to every creature” (Mark 16:15). So, having now arrived at the point where they object to the Fatima message as being ‘too Catholic for universal transmission’, these ‘Catholic’ objectors plainly reveal how ashamed that have become of their Holy Mother the Catholic Church, and how caught up they are by now in the propaganda of “Satan’s seed” (Genesis 3:15).
But that is far from all. If it can be shown that the bridge which carries the Fatima message has its second pylon deep inside the domain of what is usually referred to as ‘the modern world’, then we would have no difficulty proving that it truly spans the chasm that exists between the Catholic Church and the modern word, and that the message it carries is indeed meant “for all the nations” and “for every creature”. And on the 13th of October, 1917, Our Blessed Lady did show at Fatima that the second pylon is indeed deeply embedded in hostile territory, and that She threw her bridge of Salvation right across the gaping chasm of apostasy and revolt, when She gave to the hordes of sinners and to the legions of her mortal enemies the ultimate command: Stop sinning …!:
“Men must not offend God any more for He is already very much offended …!”
And if believing Catholics fail to take the necessary steps to extend this part of the Fatima message right across this Marian bridge into the heart of our unbelieving world, then these grave words pronounced by God through his prophet Ezekiel could well apply to them:
“Son of man, I have appointed you as a sentry to the House of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from Me, warn them in My Name. If I say to a wicked man: ‘You are to die’, and you do not warn him; if you do not speak and warn him to renounce his evil ways and so live, then he shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death …” (Ezekiel 3:16-18; 33:7-8).
By virtue of our incorporation within the Holy Catholic Church, every member within Her has indeed been appointed ‘as a sentry’ to the nations, and in Fatima we truly have once again ‘hears a Word from God’ ….
And so to stress the fact that She came that day ‘so that all the world may believe’, Our Blessed Mother arrived at Fatima to speak those momentous words, not at noon Portuguese time, but at noon, solar time ….
Yet still more can be added to refute the misconception that the Fatima message is too Catholic to be held up before our lost generation. In one edition of SOUL magazine, we read:
“Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that he believed that Our Lady chose to be known in this hour of history as our Lady of Fatima, because She came not just for the conversion of Russia (which She explicitly promised) but also for the conversion of Mohammedans and for the true unity of men (which She also promised). For She said: “In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph … and an era of peace will be granted to mankind’.”
“Fatima was the only daughter of Mohammed. When she died the prophet said: “She has the highest place in Heaven after the Virgin Mary”. Mohammedans therefore have a great reverence for Our Lady, and particularly for Our Lady of Fatima …. This leads to one of the few contradictions in the Koran (which names Mohammed as the greatest of prophets). The Koran says that Fatima has the second place in Heaven after Mary, therefore Jesus must be the greatest in Heaven. This contradiction has already begun to cause Mohammedans to re-evaluate the claims of Christianity. One might call it the ‘revealed’ loophole to unity” (SOUL magazine, Jane-Feb, 1973).
We are greatly indebted to the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen for this astute extension of the global importance of Fatima.
Our desperate times require desperate remedies. God has anticipated this, of course, and has – through the agency of Our Lady of the Rosary – provided us with the most effective spiritual “reinforcements” – even beyond our wildest imaginings – to enable us to participate in His overwhelming victory over Satan in our era. Let us then hasten to arm ourselves with this invincible, “two-edged sword” of devotion, so that we, now in our own Third Millennium, may be united with the Woman in her perennial work at ‘the centre of the enmity’ of crushing the serpent’s head. In this way we shall assist Her in becoming “more terrible” than ever in Her confrontation with the forces of evil.
Truly we may say, without fearing in any way that we might be contradicting the great Saints of bygone days, that
one day through the reparative devotions to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, as practised by Scapular-wearing, Rosary-praying souls, God will save the world!
Woe to me if I do not promote the Five First Saturdays (the Author).
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