From The Final Hour:
Remembering Oct0ber 13, 1917, one recalls the apparitions at Fatima that concluded on that date.
Before the apparitions, signs of evil influence were cropping up everywhere.
In Russia Czar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra were under the spell of a Siberian occultist and “healer” known as Rasputin.
Rasputin had been introduced to the monarchy by two princesses from Montenegro who were leaders in the East European Spiritualistic movement. He was a vile, foul-smelling man with long coal-black hair, long large fingers, and unforgettable blue-gray eyes. His was a shocking visage, but his hypnotic personality and reputation as a healer endeared him to Russia’s ruling elite. He weakened the czar and exerted unusual power over palace decision-making.
When four men, including Prince Felix Yusupov, sought to save Russia by killing Rasputin, it was a scene out of a horror movie. Neither cyanide-laced wine nor a gunshot close to the heart could immediately kill him. As Yusupov told it, “All of a sudden his expression changed into one of utmost hatred… I felt that, confronted with those satanic eyes, I was beginning to lose my self-control. A strange feeling of numbness took possession of me. My head reeled.” At one point, wounded, Rasputin nonetheless found the supernormal strength to climb a set of stairs and run at his killers.
Rasputin finally succumbed, but Russia and the world were in turmoil. The war was killing men at a rate never before known to the planet. Everything seemed to be in violent flux.
On May 5, 1917, Pope Benedict XV made this strident plea to Heaven: “To Mary, then, who is the Mother of Mercy and omnipotent by Grace, let loving and devout appeal go up from every corner of the earth—from noble temples and thrones to humble royal palaces and mansions of the rich as from the poorest hut—from every place wherein a faithful soul finds shelter—from blood-drenched plains and seas. Let it bear to her the anguished cry of mothers and wives, the wailing of innocent little ones, the sighs of every generous heart: that her most tender and benign solicitude may be moved and the peace we ask for obtained for our agitated world.”
In the midst of that chaos, and with Portugal ready to join World War I, an angel had appeared to a broad-faced seven-year-old shepherdess named Lucia dos Santos about 90 miles north of Lisbon, in the hilly, impoverished farm region of Fatima.
This was in 1915, just before the assassination of Rasputin.
“We were just about to start praying the Rosary when I saw, poised in the air above the trees that stretched down to the valley which lay at our feet, what appeared to be a cloud in human form,” Lucia recalled. It looked like a statue made of snow or a person wrapped in a sheet. A year later the angel appeared again, this time while she and two younger cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, were tossing rocks into the valley.
“As it drew closer, we were able to distinguish its features,” said Lucia. “It was a young man, about 14 or 15 years old, whiter than snow, transparent as crystal when the sun shines through it, and of great beauty. As he drew nearer, we could distinguish his features more and more clearly. We were surprised, absorbed, and struck dumb with amazement. On reaching us, he said: “Do not be afraid. I am the Angel of Peace. Pray with me.”
So forceful was the presence of God that it “almost annihilated us. It seemed to deprive us even of the use of our bodily senses for a considerable length of time.” The angel came twice more and granted the children special prayers and blessings.
“Pray,” said the angel. “Pray a great deal. The hearts of Jesus and Mary have merciful designs on you. Offer prayers and sacrifices continually to the Most High. Make everything you do a sacrifice.”
He explained that God was greatly insulted by the epidemic of evil spreading across the physical and spiritual horizon. “With all your power offer a sacrifice as an act of reparation for the sinners by whom He is offended, and of supplication for the conversion of sinners,” the angel told them, adding that they should often repeat the words, “My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love You! I beg pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love You!”
At his last apparition the celestial messenger held a chalice in his left hand. Suspended above was a Host that dripped blood into the cup. He gave them another prayer for the conversion of sinners, then placed the Host on Lucia’s tongue: “Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men! Make reparation for their crimes and console your God.”
Francisco and Jacinta were given to drink from the chalice before the angel prostrated himself, prayed to the Holy Trinity, and as Lucia said, “disappeared into the immense distance of the firmament.”
Starting on May 13, 1917, eight days after Pope Benedict’s plea, at nearly the exact spot where the angel appeared, Lucia, now 10, Francisco, 9, and Jacinta, 7, were visited by another apparition, but this time of the Virgin Mary. “It was a lady dressed all in white,” recalled Lucia, “more brilliant than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal glass filled with the most sparkling water and pierced by the burning rays of the sun.”
The Virgin appeared to be only 16 years old, with a garment of the finest white and a star near the hem of her flowing robe. She held white rosary beads, her hands delicate, her expression one of wistful solemnity—not sad, not happy, but serious. “I am from Heaven,” she explained to the awestruck Fatima children.
“And what is it you want of me?” asked Lucia.
“I come to ask you to come here for six months in succession, on the thirteenth day at the same hour. Then I will tell you who I am and what I want.” The ethereal woman asked for recitation of the Rosary every day to end the war and bring peace.
She promised to take them to Heaven and asked, “Are you willing to
“Offer yourselves to God to bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and of supplication for the conversion of sinners?”
“Yes, we are willing,” was their reply.
“Then, you are going to have much to suffer, but the grace of God will be your comfort.”
The Blessed Virgin appeared on the 13th of each of the following five months, preceded by three flashes of light, accompanied at least once by a luminous globe, and leaving to the sound of thunder. At first local clergy feared the children were fabricating the story, or that they were encountering a deception by the devil. A white cloud was seen to descend on a small limb of oak tree during the apparitions and a fragrant, unnatural odor issued from its branches.
As at Rue du Bac (the Miraculous Medal), streams of light issued from the Virgin’s hands, encompassing the transfigured youngsters. Mary emphasized reciting the Rosary as a means to end the war and showed them a heart pierced by thorns. “Jesus wishes to make use of you to have me acknowledged and loved,” she told Lucia. “He wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. . . My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.”
The children were given visions of both Jesus and Mary, and following each decade of the Rosary, the Blessed Mother asked them to say the following prayer: “Oh my Jesus, forgive us, save us from the fire of Hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who are most in need.”
During one of her apparitions Mary opened her hands, directed rays of light into the earth, and showed them the inferno of Hell. “Plunged in this fire were demons and souls 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 a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear,” said Lucia. “The demons could be distinguished by their terrible and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by the promise of the first apparition, to take us to Heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.”
That was the destiny for “poor sinners,” and to save them, said Mary, God wished to establish devotion to her Immaculate Heart. “If what I say 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 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 against the Church and of the Holy Father.”
That warning, on July 13, was in some ways similar to that of the 1914 apparition of Fatima, which had accurately predicted World War One. It also included the request for a policy. Russia, said Mary, should be “converted.”
After warning of the spread of Russia’s “errors” (presumably Stalinism) to “various nations,” she asked for the consecration of her Immaculate Heart and Communion of reparation on the first Saturday of every month. “If what I say is 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, and various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”
The final part of the message, which described the vision of Hell, were kept secret for years, revealed in snippets, and dubbed the Third Secret. It was never publicly released. Messages hinting at the turmoil surrounding the Third Secret put the world on edge. “Why do you look so sad?” people asked her, when the apparition was over.
“I was seeing a secret,” insisted Lucia. “It is a secret.”
“Good for some, for others, bad.”
The final apparition at Fatima was on October 13, when Mary appeared to the children along with the Child and Saint Joseph and, beyond cosmic laws, tens of thousands in attendance saw the famous “miracle of the sun.”
[resources: The Final Hour]
