THE FIVE FIRST SATURDAYS OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA
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Chapter Two
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”. ….
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”. ….
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”….
“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”. ….
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” ….
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 against 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 with 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”.
If, as according to Saint Peter, "it is hard for the righteous person to be saved” (I Peter 4:18), then would it not be pure folly for us not to hasten to take up Our Lady of the Rosary’s offer:
“… I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all who on the First Saturday of five consecutive months confess their sins, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the purpose of making reparation to my Immaculate Heart."
The Five First Saturdays Devotion
On 5 Consecutive First Saturdays of the Month:
With the intention, in the heart, of making reparation to Mary for the sins committed against her, her name, her initiatives and images of her
• Go to Confession (8 days before or after, better before, but with this intention)
• Receive Communion in a state of grace
• Say a five-decade rosary
• Meditate on the 15 mysteries for 15 minutes
http://www.fivefirstsaturdays.com/#devotion
On May 13, 2010, Pope Benedict told us that FATIMA'S PROPHETIC MISSION IS NOT COMPLETE.
The pontiff concluded with the prayer:
“MAY THE SEVEN YEARS WHICH SEPARATE US FROM THE CENTENARY OF THE APPARITIONS HASTEN THE FULFILLMENT OF THE PROPHECY OF THE TRIUMPH OF THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY, to the glory of the Most Holy Trinity.”
This July 2012 marks the 95th anniversary of the revealing of the famous three secrets by Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima. The “seven years” until the Fatima centenary as spoken of by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 have become a mere five years.
So let us now embrace Fatima and the salvific Communion of Reparation.
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