By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
One of the most beautiful aspects of the Nativity story is that it is an invitation to the silent worship of the earth-shattering fact that the God who created the universe, in all its dazzling complexity, chose to become a feeble little Babe cradled in the arms of His Mother Mary.
We are not specifically told that the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph worshiped the newborn Redeemer, but surely they did and we cannot really imagine the depth of love and devotion that that worship involved. What we are told by St. Luke is that after the shepherds came to see the Child Jesus, following the vision of angels they saw in the sky over Bethlehem, that our Lady pondered all that happened in her heart.
It is in St. Matthew’s Gospel that we read of the visit of the Magi, and it is here that worship is specifically mentioned regarding the Infant Jesus. The Three Kings had made the long journey to Jerusalem in search of the King of the Jews, following the star they had seen in the East. After their meeting with the evil-minded King Herod, they traveled on to Bethlehem where, to their great joy, they found the Child Jesus with Mary His Mother, “and they fell down and worshiped Him.”
The Magi had had no instruction as to the divinity of the Baby before them, but nonetheless they followed the inner promptings of their hearts and worshiped Him.
When faced with the stupendous reality of the Incarnation, surely that is the only real way we can approach such a mystery — that is to become devout adorers and worshipers.
If we move forward nearer our own time, we can see that while the Message of Fatima isn’t usually associated with worship, there are aspects of the message which can be best appreciated in that way.
This is particularly the case if we look at the third angelic apparition to the young shepherds Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco, in the autumn of 1916, the year before our Lady appeared to them on six occasions between May and October 1917, at the Cova da Iria in Fatima.
The third apparition of the angel of Portugal, or the Angel of Peace, took place in the autumn of 1916, at a place near their village of Aljustrel called the Loca do Cabeço. During the two previous apparitions he had taught the seers various prayers, and shown them how to adopt a prayer posture of adoration. As Sr. Lucia tells us in the book of her memoirs, Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, during the first apparition, the angel knelt and bowed down until his forehead touched the ground. He then asked the children to repeat the following words three times:
“My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love you! I ask pardon of you for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love you.”
During the third apparition, the children were praying this prayer, adopting the posture they had seen the angel use, when in Lucia’s words, “an extraordinary light shone upon us.” She relates how they then saw the angel, who was holding a chalice in his left hand with a Host suspended above it, from which some drops of blood fell into the chalice. He then left the chalice suspended in the air, knelt down beside the seers, and made them repeat three times a trinitarian prayer of adoration and reparation for the “outrages, sacrileges, and indifference” by which God is offended.
Then he took the chalice and host in his hands, and after giving the Sacred Host to Lucia, and while sharing the Blood from the chalice between Jacinta and Francisco, he said: “Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men! Make reparation for their crimes and console your God.”
Here we have eucharistic adoration, and the reception of Holy Communion, promoted as a particular way of worshiping God and making reparation to Him. It is easy to skip over the apparitions of the angel in a desire to focus on the actual messages given by our Lady, but it is important to linger awhile, as we have done, on the implications of what the angel said and did.
Later on, after they had seen our Lady, they entered more deeply into the mystery of God’s love for mankind and for them. In Francisco’s case, particularly after he had experienced in some way the reality of God’s presence during the June 1917 apparition, in which “light from our Lady’s hands” streamed upon the seers, he focused on ways he could console God.
This is what he said to Lucia about this: “I loved seeing the angel, but I loved still more seeing our Lady. What I loved most of all was to see our Lord in that light from our Lady which penetrated our hearts. I love God so much! But He is very sad because of so many sins! We must never commit any sins again.”
Thus it became his personal mission to do all he could to console God for the sinfulness of mankind. He preferred to pray on his own so he could think and “console our Lord, who is so sad!” To this end, toward the end of his life, when he knew he would die young, instead of going to school he would stay in the parish church at Fatima, while his cousin and sister went to their lessons.
“Listen! You go to school, and I’ll stay here in the church, close to the Hidden Jesus. It’s not worth my while learning to read, as I’ll be going to Heaven very soon. On your way home, come here and call me.”
So he would spend whole days in church, adoring Christ in the tabernacle, giving us a very powerful witness to the importance of eucharistic adoration and worship.
The Timeless Mystery
The centenary of the Fatima apparitions is in 2017, and so we are called to imitate the children of Fatima in giving ourselves wholeheartedly to God through our Lady.
The other thing to note is that when the Magi saw Christ in the manger, they saw Him in a feeding trough in Bethlehem, a name which literally means “House of Bread.” So there were overtones focusing on food and bread at the first Christmas, and thus it could be said that the manger was the first ciborium, and the cave at Bethlehem the first tabernacle of the New Covenant.
The first Christmas was 2,000 years ago, but each year the liturgy calls us to re-immerse ourselves in the timeless mystery of the Incarnation, and the best and most appropriate way we can do this is by getting away from the unnecessary razzamatazz surrounding Christmas, and kneel in humble and profound adoration before Christ, the newborn King, so that He can be born again in our hearts.
Or as the famous Christmas carol says: “O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him, O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.”
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk. He has also a written a time-travel/adventure book for young people — details can be found at: http://glaston-chronicles.co.uk/.)
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