Taken from the book,
The Five First Saturdays
(AMAIC, Sydney, 1994), pp. 68-73:
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 chil¬dren. 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 not until two 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 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 abun¬dant Rosary images in the Book of Esther were a clue to Her identification, much more would the situation of 1917 in Russia indicate that the Woman must enter this conflict in Her most powerful guise of Our Lady of the Rosary. The impending Communist takeover of Russia, with all 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?
Pope John Paul II’s Rosary
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 astoni¬shing 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 Her 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 victory at a point in 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 recommen¬ded 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 centre 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 stop 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 side 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 sins. The sun halted, stopping short in its precipitous fall, and then 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 Laraona 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 have also been intended to represent one of the conditions of the Five First Saturday devotion: fifteen minutes 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, incor¬porated some of the most spectacular elements of renowned Old Testament miracles. Fr. Smolenski (Op cit., 11-12) has compared Noah's time for instance, when it rained for forty days and nights, with Fatima on that day, when everything was drenched with rain. The dove with the branch indica¬ted 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 there is 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 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 caused by Isaiah for the benefit of king Hezekiah.
Pope Pius XII, 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 is 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 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'.
….
The entire book can now be read at this site (post for April 27, 2008):
http://amaic2.blogspot.com/2008/04/five-first-saturdays-of-our-lady-of.html
(Vatican Radio) The relationship between Christianity and the Cross and our own sins was the focus of Pope Francis’s reflections at his Mass on Tuesday in the Santa Marta residence.
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