THE APPEARANCE OF THE BLESSED
VIRGIN MARY AT FATIMA, PORTUGAL
In 1917, Our Blessed Mother appeared to three shepherd children in the town of Fatima, Portugal. She appeared to them on every Sunday from May 13 through October 13. On October 13th, she gave a great sign, known as the Miracle Of The Sun. One of the children, Lucia, continued to have visitations from the blessed Mother with instructions to the faithful and to the Hierarchy. The messages that she conveyed to the were dire in nature in regards to the Church. She also gave predictions of what is about to take place.
The general message:
- Starting with the Angel that appeared to the three children; “Make of everything you can a sacrifice and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication, for the conversion of sinners.” In his third and final apparition to the children, the Angel gave them Holy Communion, and demonstrated the proper way to receive Our Lord in the Eucharist: all three children knelt to receive Communion; and Lucy was given the Sacred Host on the tongue and the Angel shared the Blood of the Chalice between Francisco and Jacinta.
- Our Lady asked the children to pray the Rosary every day for peace. Another principal part of the Message of Fatima is devotion to Our Ladys Immaculate Heart, which is terribly outraged and offended by the sins of humanity, and we are lovingly urged to console Her by making reparation. She showed Her Heart, surrounded by piercing thorns (which represented the sins against Her Immaculate Heart), to the children, who understood that their sacrifices could help to console Her. Our Lady sadly pleaded: “Do not offend the Lord our God any more, for He is already too much offended!”
- The children were also told to pray and sacrifice themselves for sinners, in order to save them from hell. The children were briefly shown a vision of hell, after which Our Lady told them: “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.”
- She said that if people did not stop offending God, He would punish the world severely by means of war, famine, persecution of the Church, and persecution of the Holy Father. To prevent these chastisements, Our Lady offered a remedy: She would return to ask for the Consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the Five First Saturdays. If Her requests were heeded, there would be peace. If not, Russias errors would spread throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions against the Church, the Holy Father to suffer much, martyrdom of the good and the annihilation of various nations.
- When Sister Lucy questioned Our Lord as to why He would not convert Russia without the solemn public consecration of that nation specifically, Jesus answered:
Because I want My whole Church to acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that it may extend its homage later on, and put the devotion to This Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to My Sacred Heart.
- Besides these general points, given in the Fatima Message over 6 months, Our Lady confided a Secret to the three shepherd children on July 13, 1917. This Secret was meant for all Catholics, but was to be given to them later (at the latest, in 1960) since no one was prepared to understand it all in 1917. In her Third and Fourth Memoirs, which were both written in 1941, Sister Lucy revealed to a wider audience the first two parts of the Secret. The third part of the Secret or, as it is called, the Third Secret was written down for the first time between January 2 and January 9, 1944.
- FIRST PART OF THE SECRET – The Secret imparted to the three shepherd children at Fatima on July 13, 1917 had three parts. The first part was fully revealed in Sr. Lucys Third and Fourth Memoirs, written at the command of her bishop, in 1941. This first part of the Secret of Fatima describes what Lucy, Jacinta and Francisco saw on that day. We quote from Sister Lucys memoirs:
She [Our Lady of Fatima] opened Her hands once more, as She had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls [of the damned] in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. (It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me). The demons could be distinguished [from the souls of the damned] by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals.1 This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, Who had already prepared us by promising, in the first apparition, to take us to Heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.2
Our Lady then explained to the children, “You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go.”
- SECOND PART OF THE SECRET – Having just shown the fate of the damned (in the first part of the Secret of Fatima) to the three shepherd children of Fatima, on July 13, 1917, Our Lady then confided to them the second part of the Secret. This second part primarily concerns Heavens requests for the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and for the Communions of Reparation on theFirst Saturdays and the consequences of failing to heed these requests. As recorded in Sister Lucys memoirs, the second part of the Secret is as follows:Text of Second Part of Secret
To save them [poor sinners who are on the road to hell], God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse war will break out during the reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions against the Church and against the Holy Father.
To prevent this, 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 requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.1
- THE PARTIAL PART OF THE THIRD SECRET – In her Fourth Memoir (dated December 8, 1941), Sister Lucy copied the first two parts of the Fatima Secret word-for-word including what appears to be the conclusion to the whole Secret:
In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.
Partial Text of the Third Secret
Sister Lucy then immediately added the following text to her Fourth Memoir: “In Portugal the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc.”
- THE THIRD PART OF THE SECRET – The Pope of 1960 is to read the third part of The Secret to the world and do what it says. 1960 comes, Pope John XXIII decides to NOT reveal the secret, writes on the envelope “not for our time” and puts it back. It is eventually released in 2000, but immediately the question is raised that it is not the entire text.
In the conclusion to his study of the Third Secret, Frère Michel sums up his findings as follows:
“Having reached the end of our inquiry, we are able to discern, with near certainty, the essential elements of Our Lady’s final secret: While ‘in Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved,’ in many nations, perhaps in almost the entire world, the Faith will be lost. The pastors of the Church will fail gravely in the duties of their office. Through their fault, consecrated souls and the Faithful in great number will let themselves be seduced by pernicious errors spread everywhere. This will be the time of the decisive battle between the Blessed Virgin and the devil. A wave of diabolical disorientation will be hurled over the world. Satan will introduce himself even to the highest summit of the Church. He will blind the minds and harden the hearts of pastors. And God will deliver them to themselves as a chastisement for their refusal to obey the requests of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This will be the great apostasy predicted for the ‘last times’; ‘the False Lamb’ and ‘False Prophet’ will betray the Church to the profit of ‘the Beast,’ according to the prophecy of the Apocalypse.”
Conclusion to the Whole Secret of Fatima
“In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”
The Third Secret Of Fatima
