536. May 13, Our Lady of Fatima

Meditations no. 469 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The Blessed Virgin appears to us as a Mother eager for the eternal salvation of her children.

The apparitions of the Blessed Virgin have a very specific purpose - to be visible signs of her motherly love in particularly difficult times in the lives of men. She is not trying to solve merely material problems, although she sometimes does so. Rather, she is seeking the conversion of souls. Sometimes, when men appear to be hardened in sinful ways, the Blessed Virgin makes an extraordinary intervention, like a mother who uses all the means at hand to move her children to repentance and to lead them once again to Christ.

One of these maternal interventions by our Lady took place on the 13th of May in 1917. On that day, the Blessed Virgin chose to reveal herself in Fatima, in Portugal, to three shepherd children in a place called Cova de Iria. In the following months, until the 13th of October of the same year, our Lady returned to the same place, instructing the visionaries about the need for reparation for men’s sins and confirming the truth of the apparitions with a memorable miracle.

It is up to the Church to assess and judge private revelations by their conformity with the deposit of divine Revelation, and it has accepted the message of Fatima, which presents one truth and one message, which in their essential content, are the truth and the message of the Gospel itself). In fact, Jesus Christ began his public ministry with an imperious invitation to conversion and penance: ‘Repent, and believe the Gospel…’ (Mark 1: 15) The message of Fatima is, fundamentally, a summons to conversion and penance, as in the Gospel. This summons was made at the beginning of the twentieth century, and therefore, directed particularly at this century. The Lady of the message seemed to read with a special discernment the ‘signs of the times’, the signs of our tunes).

Moreover, this feastday of the Blessed Virgin tugs on our heartstrings in a special way, because our founder travelled there many times as a Marian pilgrim, to pray for the Church, for the world, for Opus Dei.

Whenever I am in Portugal I go to Fatima to pray to our Lady, he once said. Sometimes I come for that alone, and I leave without seeing anyone.

I have great affection for all the shrines of the Blessed Virgin, and I can just about say that I have visited all of those in Europe. But Fatima enchants me in a special way -because of your people, who have a touching faithfulness to the Blessed Virgin, because they are united to piety, penance and to praying the Holy Rosary.

Our Lady encourages us to make reparation for sins.

In her apparitions at Fatima, the Blessed Virgin insisted on the urgency of making reparation for the sins which are committed throughout the world. In the third apparition, on the 13th of July, the shepherd children say that she asked them for sacrifices for the conversion of sinners; at the same time she showed them the torments suffered by the damned. And in August, she once again insisted: Pray, pray a lot, and do sacrifices for sinners, because many souls are going to hell because they have no one who sacrifices himself and prays for them.

It is in the light of maternal love, John Paul II has stated, that we understand the whole message of Our Lady of Fatima. What is most directly opposed to the path of man towards God is sin, perseverance in sin. And the Pope added, in the act of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary which he read before the image of our Lady, what pain we feel, therefore, for everything in the Church and in each one of us which is opposed to sanctity and to this consecration! What pain we feel that the invitation to penance, to conversion and to prayer has not been welcomed as it should have been! What pain we feel that many participate so coldly in the redemptive work of Christ, that we make such a small contribution in our flesh to ‘the debt which the afflictions of Christ still leave to be paid!’ (Col 1: 24).

These words of the Holy Father should ring in the hearts of all Christians, but especially in those of us who truly wish to have a priestly soul. And not this alone - they should move us to make very specific resolutions to make atonement to our Lord with our whole life.

The situation is serious, my daughters and sons, our Father said in 1972. The whole battle front is threatened. Let it not be breached because of one of us… How many offences against God there are! We are as fragile, and even more fragile, than others; but, as I have already said, we have a commitment of Love; we must now give our existence a sense of reparation. Cor Iesu Sacratissimum et Misericors, dona nobis pacem!

My children, you have a big heart that is young and burning. Don’t you feel the need to make amends? Lead your soul along this path: the path of praise of God, each one seeing how he must be firmly tenacious. It is the path of reparation, of putting love where the lack of fidelity of other Christians has created a vacuum…

We have repaid light with darkness. We have repaid generosity with egoism. We have repaid love with coldness and contempt. My daughters and sons, do not be ashamed to acknowledge our constant misery; rather let us ask for forgiveness: Spare, O Lord, your people, and make not your heritage a reproach, with the nations ruling over them! (Ash Wednesday, Epistle, Joel 2: 17).

Every day I become more aware of these realities, and every day I am seeking more intimacy with God in reparation and in atonement. Let us place before Him the number of souls who are being lost and would not have to be lost if they had not been exposed. They are souls that have abandoned the Faith, since nowadays one can make unrestricted propaganda of every type of falsehood and heresy; souls that have been scandalised by so much apostasy and by so much malice; souls that have been deprived of the help of the Sacraments and of sound doctrine…

You, O Lord, have asked us to cry out, clama, ne cesses! (Is 58: 1). All over the world we are fulfilling Your desires, asking You for forgiveness; because in the midst of our miseries You have given us faith and love. To you I lift up my eyes who are enthroned in heaven. Behold, as the eyes of servants are on the hands of their master, as the eyes of a maid are on the hands of her mistress, so are our eyes on the Lord, our God, till he have pity on us (Ps 122: 1-2).

Through the intercession of Holy Mary and of the Holy Patriarch, St Joseph, ask our Lord to increase our spirit of reparation, that we have sorrow for our sins and that we know how to have recourse to the Sacrament of Penance.

The Rosary is an especially pleasing prayer to the Blessed Virgin.

In Fatima, the summons to penance is a maternal summons; and, at the same time, it is energetic and resolute… The call to penance is united, as always, with a call to prayer. In accordance with a tradition of many centuries, the Lady of the message of Fatima points out the Rosary, which can rightly be defined as ‘the prayer of Mary’, the prayer in which she feels particularly united to us. She herself prays with us.

Our Lady has often recommended praying the Rosary: to win peace for the world (the First World War was being fought at the time), to ask for the conversion of sinners, to speed up the passage of the souls in purgatory into heaven…

Praying the Rosary has been recommended for centuries by the Roman Pontiffs, because it is the prayer which the Blessed Virgin hears with special pleasure and which has the power to steal many graces from heaven. Our founder also recommended it, insistently: To say the Holy Rosary, considering the mysteries, repeating the Our Father and Hail Mary, with the praises to the Blessed Trinity and the constant invocation to the Mother of God, is a continuous act of faith, hope and love, of adoration and reparation.

On several occasions, our Father commented on an event related to his devotion to the Rosary which actually happened in Fatima, during the pilgrimage he made in 1970: I went there to pray, with the spirit of the ancient pilgrims. I took off my shoes, and I walked barefoot up to the feet of the Blessed Virgin. I followed the custom of kissing the medals, and a few days afterwards in Rome I received a letter from a Portuguese son of mine… , who told me: ‘Father, we were very happy to have watched you pray the Rosary, because you kiss the medals like the old ladies do…’ So you and I agree - we must pray the Rosary, my children!

We conclude our time of prayer, by recalling some words spoken in confidence from our Father during his catechesis in the Iberian peninsula: I repeat to the Blessed Virgin many times each day, in different tones - some asking for help, others thanking her, but always with Love - Mother, my Mother! That is what I am saying to Our Lady of Fatima.