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Our Lady of Fatima
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Jacinta Marto, Lucia Santos and Francisco Marto - visionary children of Fatima - Wikipedia
Our Lady of Fatima is the number 3 pick in my countdown of the Top Ten Apparitions of the Virgin Mary. This one has it all: secret prophesies in sealed envelopes, visions of Hell, angels sharing communion with children, heroic children bravely refusing to betray the Virgin Mary - even when jailed and threatened with being boiled alive - bodies dug up and found to be incorrupt, conspiracy theories galore and, of course, UFO cover up theorists. Oh, and did I mention that there was a solar phenomenon viewed by tens of thousands of people? The story of Our Lady's apparition at Fatima makes The DaVinci Code look boring.
The story begins in a small, village in Portugal in 1916, when the 'angel of Peace' appeared to 3 small children, Lucia Santos and Jacinta and Francisco Marto, Lucia's cousins. The angel asked the children to do penance and pray. On his third visit the angel gives holy communion to Lucia (aged 10) and the chalice of communion wine to Jacinta and Francisco (7 and 8 years of age respectively.) The supposed purpose of the angel's visits is to prepare the children for their future encounters with the Virgin Mary. This angel is sometimes reported to be the Archangel Michael but other sources claim his name is 'Muriel.'
Our Lady then appeared to the children on the 13th day of the month for 6 months in 1917. The children reported that the Blessed Mother identified herself as 'the Lady of the Rosary.' She gave them three secret messages and told them the future dates when they could reveal each one. The children were arrested by the provincial administrator of their region and put in jail for being a disruptive, political influence. Other inmates of the jail reported that the three cousins were told they would be boiled in oil if they did not reveal the secret messages of Our Lady. The children refused to betray the trust of Our Lady and, reportedly,led the inmates in praying the rosary.
The Virgin Mary also promised the three children that she would create a miracle so that all would believe in her. On the 13th of October of 1917, around 70,000 people supposedly saw the sun dancing around in the sky, turning strange colors and approaching the Earth as if it were going to fall into the Earth. Not everyone present saw the same thing, nor did everyone present see anything unusual, but most saw something strange and frightening. This event was reported around the world.
The first of the three mysterious secrets was a vision of Hell. Our lady allowed the children to see souls suffering eternal torment, demons in the shapes of strange animals, and a sea of fire . This frightened the smallest of the three, seven year old Jacinta, so much that she spent much of the rest of her short life doing penance and praying.
The second secret had to do with Russia. Our Lady warned the three children that Russia must be 'consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary' and that Catholic people should take communion on the first Saturdays of the month and turn away from their sinful ways. If these conditions were not met, she warned that Russia's 'errors' would spread around the world and there would be war, famine and persecution of the church. (Fatima occurred at the tail end of the Russian Revolution.)
Our Lady of Fatima - source: Wikipedia
The third secret was supposed to be revealed between 1957 and 1960. For some reason, the Vatican did not release this secret until the year 2,000. This was a public relations disaster and, of course, rumors spread like wildfire about what could be in the mysterious third secret of Fatima. Some said it warned of the end of the world in great floods, fires and other destruction. Others claimed the secret was about the nuclear destruction of the Earth. Still others believed that the secret foretold the end of the Catholic Church and the assassination of the Pope. Despite the Pope finally revealing the third secret in 2000, the debate about whether he revealed the 'true' secret still rages today.
Here is the Vatican's official version of the third message:
Pope John Paul II believed that Our Lady of Fatima saved his life during the assassination attempt in 1981, on the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima. In 1982, the Pope went to Fatima to thank the Blessed Virgin for saving his life. He also met with Lucia Santos, now Sister Lucia, during his visit.
As if all of this were not strange enough, there is also a sizable group of people who believe that what occurred at Fatima was actually an encounter with alien life forms and the people who saw the dancing, falling sun were actually witnessing UFOs. Was Fatima actually an alien encounter?
www.anomalistbooks.com/fatima-trilogy.html
Another prediction from Our Lady of Fatima had to do with the deaths of Jacinta and Francisco Marto. The Virgin Mary told them that they would die very young. Francisco died in 1919 and Jacinta in 1920; both were victims of the Spanish Flu Pandemic. They were exhumed in 1935 and, while Francisco had decayed, Jacinta's face was said to be incorrupt or immune from decay. They were exhumed again in 1951, so that they could be buried in the basilica of Our Lady of Fatima and, again, Jacinta's face was said to be incorrupt. The two were declared 'Blessed,' one step below sainthood, by Pope John Paul II in 2000.
Lucia lived to the age of 97. She continued to receive visits from the Virgin Mary for the rest of her life. She wrote several biographical accounts of the apparitions at Fatima. She died in 2005. There is some controversy about whether she was kept from speaking out about the third secret of Fatima by the Catholic Church, and there are reports that her cell in the convent has been sealed off. The church is currently studying her as candidate for sainthood.
For more information, and a very touching photo of Pope John Paul II in prayer at the Fatima Shrine click the link below:
www.marypages.com/fatimaEng.htm
While it is certainly compelling, the story of Our Lady of Fatima has many troubling aspects to it. Many scholars and historians point out that apparitions of the Virgin Mary often have political overtones to them, and they appear to be more about creating obedience to the priests and church hierarchy than fostering belief in God. Fatima is one of the most political apparitions of the Virgin Mary ever. Even today, it is the cause of widespread hand wringing over the terrible punishment that we will all receive if we do not end communism ('Russia's Error') and/or reject the modernization of the Catholic Church brought about in the Second Vatican Council ('Vatican II.') There is an entire 'Blue Army' of conservative Catholics who use the apparition of Our Lady at Fatima to whip up fear of a vengeful God, fear of un-repressed sexuality both heterosexual and homosexual, and fear of a Vatican cover up that denies the truth of the Fatima apparition to the 'faithful' Catholic conservatives.
You can see a link to an example of this type of doom-and-gloom Fatima website below. The first paragraph on this site reads, 'Fatima is Heaven’s intervention to save us from persecution, war, annihilation, enslavement and hell.'
www.fatimacrusader.com/cr49/cr49ap2.asp
There is so much information and mis-information available about Our Lady of Fatima, that it is really impossible to sort the truth from the fiction. I find the idea of Our Lady showing Hell to three small children and encouraging them to do penance by going hungry, wearing painfully tight cords around their waists, lying on the cold ground when they are already sick, and purposely engaging in other types of suffering, appalling. Where is her love and concern for these children? And what about the angel giving them holy communion? When has the Virgin Mary ever used an angel as a warm up act? The idea that we should all go to communion more often, pray the rosary every day and fight against the spread of communism doesn't seem like something Our Lady would be discussing with small children. It does seem like something the children may have heard from a priest though. Then again, it may just be the Fatima Conspiracy Fever taking over my brain after far too many hours spent reading the strange story of Our Lady of Fatima. Final verdict on Our Lady of Fatima - this apparition is for old school, hard-line Catholics only.
I looked at many books and videos about Our Lady of Fatima before finding the following one, which is very beautiful and informative. In addition, it features Karen Carpenter singing the Ave Maria. She's not the singer who first comes to mind when one thinks of the Ave Maria, but she sings it wonderfully.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boh6Qn5ARfk&feature=related
You can read more about Our Lady of Fatima here:
As a child growing up in a Catholic family, my siblings and I owned plastic glow-in-the-dark rosaries. We kept them on the posts of our beds. They still make these and you can buy one here:
Plastic Glow in the Dark Rosary
www.totallycatholic.com/product.php
For those who want a more modern rosary experience, you can get a rosary application for your iPod touch or iPhone here:
and you can download a virtual rosary for your computer here:
www.virtualrosary.org/dload.php
I downloaded the virtual rosary and found it serviceable but not very inspiring.
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