By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
This is the Centenary year of the Fatima apparitions, and so this is a good moment to look back exactly one hundred years this very month of July, to the July 13, 1917 apparition of our Lady to the three Fatima children.
This was the most important of all six apparitions in terms of content, since it was on this occasion that she gave them a secret in three parts. The first part was a momentary but terrifying vision of Hell, while the third part was revealed in the year 2000, and showed a Pope being killed at the top of a mountain before a rugged cross.
This article, though, is essentially about the second part of the secret, since in this our Lady made a specific request which is very important if we are to bring about peace in our world. This request was for the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays, a devotion which involves Confession, Holy Communion, and praying the rosary and mediating on it for 15 minutes, all done in a spirit of reparation.
This is what our Lady said. “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. The war (World War I) is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the pontificate 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 of the Church and of the Holy Father.”
So here our Lady set the scene, and pointed out that unless people did what she said, a worse war — World War II — would break out.
Then she went on to say something which is really quite extraordinary: “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.”
In other words, in effect she said, “I have just described all the evils that are going to come about because mankind continues on its path of sinfulness — but I am also giving you the solution.”
And that solution is the Consecration of Russia and the Five First Saturdays devotion.
We know these two points are crucial, not only because our Lady emphasized them in July 1917, but also because she focused on them when she revisited Sr. Lucia twice in the 1920s — in 1925 at Pontevedra in Spain, and in 1929 at Tuy, also in Spain.
In short, there is an important link between the First Saturdays devotion and the Consecration of Russia — but this link is little understood or appreciated by most people. The implication of this link, though, is that the full conversion of Russia will probably not take place until enough Catholics are carrying out the Five First Saturdays devotion of reparation.
Our Lady then continued with the rest of the second part of the Secret.
“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 of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.”
As 20th-century history demonstrates, Russia did indeed spread its errors throughout the world, firstly through Communism, but now, those errors have been diffused in the West through atheistic materialism, secularism, and our modern “culture of death.”
Finally, our Lady made this great promise to the children and hence to us:
“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.”
But the Blessed Virgin didn’t just give a message at Fatima in 1917, important as that is, but she also gave us a “great sign” at the last apparition, on October 13, 1917, when she performed the stupendous “miracle of the sun,” a miracle which was seen by at least 70,000 people, and which was the greatest public miracle since biblical times. And it was a miracle which was also prophesied three months in advance.
So the message given by Our Lady at Fatima has been validated by this tremendous miracle, which makes it even more urgent that we do what she requested.
On Thursday, December 10, 1925, the Blessed Virgin, and our Lord as a child, appeared to Lucia at her convent at Pontevedra in Spain. She was then a postulant in the Dorothean Order. The Child Jesus spoke first asking for reparation, and then our Lady said:
“My daughter, look at My Heart surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You, at least, try to console me, and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months go to Confession and receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary and keep me company for a quarter of an hour while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.”
So each part of the devotion — with its wonderful promise of Heaven — needs to be made with the intention of making reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months.
Sr. Lucia saw a vision of the Trinity with our Lady, on June 13, 1929. This took place as she was making a Holy Hour in the convent chapel at Tuy in Spain. She then heard Mary speak to her. “The moment has come in which God asks the Holy Father, in union with all the Bishops of the world, to make the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means.”
This consecration was finally carried out by Pope St. John Paul II on March 15, 1984, in union with many of the world’s bishops, in line with her request. That was something that could only be done by the Pope and bishops, but the Five First Saturdays devotion is really in the domain of priests and lay people, since it is something that can, and should, be done in parishes.
So the centenary year of Fatima is a renewed call for us all to listen to the message given by Our Lady at Fatima, and in particular to do what we can to live and promote the Five First Saturdays devotion, especially now that, last May, in Fatima, Pope Francis canonized Jacinta and Francisco Marto, a further sign of Church approval for the Fatima message as a whole.
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, including Medjugorje Revisited, and maintains a related web site at www.theotokos.org.uk. He has also written two time-travel/adventure books for young people — details can be found at: http://glaston-chronicles.co.uk/.)
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