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FATHER JOHN S. GRIMM
OUR LADY OF FATIMA AND THE MIRACLE OF THE SUN
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NOTES the people who witnessed it, it was an overwhelming display of God’s supernatural willful suspension or alteration of the normal physical laws of the universe as the behest of some prayer of faith. Even at the large audience that witnessed the Miracle of the Sun is a tiny percentage of the population of Portugal, let alone the world. Thus, for the great percentage of humanity, which will never witness a miracle, their access to this proof of God’s existence and power is dependent on the eye witnesses of the event, as was the case in the greatest miracle of all, the Resurrection of the Son of God. Who will believe such witnesses? Again, only those who “desire to see.”Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, captures well this complex interaction of faith, reason and the miraculous. Using the term “realist” not in the abstract philosophical manner but colloquially to mean a sensible, clear-minded individual, he once wrote: “it is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always fact, he will sooner doubt his own sense than to admit it as [a miracle but] as a fact of nature previously unknown to him. In the realist, faith is not born of miracles, but miracles from faith. Once the realist comes to believe, then precisely because of his realism, he must allow for miracles. The apostle Thomas declared that he would not believe until he saw, and when he saw, he said: ‘My Lord and my God!’ Was it the miracle that made him believe? Most likely not; Thomas believed because he wished to believe, and maybe already fully believed in his secret heart even when he was saying ‘I will not believe until I see him.’”25
1. See C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (New York:Harcourt Brace & Company, 1980). 2. See Vatican: “Apostolic Journeys Outside of Rome,” http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/ travels/index_outside-italy_en.htm (accessed October 12, 2011). 3. In Fatima, she appeared to three peasant children, Lucia de Jesus Dos Santos, age ten, Francisco Marto, age nine, and his sister Jacinta, age seven. At Lourdes, our Lady appeared to St Bernadette, age 14. At Knock, the vision was seen by a group of people, some children, some young adult. At Paris (Miraculous Medal) and Guadalupe, Our Lady appear to adults, but both St Catherine Laboure and Saint Juan Diego, were simple-hearted peasants who displayed childlike simplicity and devotion all his life. 4. Indeed, young Francisco of Fatima saw the BVM but never was able to hear her. When he asked why, Our Lady told the others that he had committed too many sins to be worthy to hear her—and this at the tender age of nine! 5. Mark Miravalle, Introduction to Mary: The Heart of Marian Devotion (Goleta: CA, Queenship Pub. Co., 1997), 132. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Our Lady appeared once to Lucia alone in 1925, long after the other two children died. 9. Lucia Santos, Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words: Sister Lucia’s Memoirs, Vol. 2: 5th and 6th Memoirs (Still River, MA:Ravengate Press, 2000). 10. John De Marchi, Fatima from the Beginning, 14th ed., (Fatima, Portugal: Edicoes Missoes Consolata, 2006). 11. Ibid, 78. 12. John Paul II, Encyclical, Redemptoris Missio, 33. 13. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Homily for Mass for the Election of the Roma Pontiff,” April 2005. 14. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. Trans., Peyer and Volokhonsky (New York: Farrar, Strous & Giroux, 1990). 15. Thomas seemed to think it was both. (Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, 180.) 16. Dostoyevsky, 312. 17. Costa Brochado, Fatima in the Light of History (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Co.,1955). 18. Joseph A. Pelletier, The Sun Danced at Fatima (Worchester, MA: Caron Press, 1951). 19. Ibid, 126-26. 20. Dictionary of Mary, (Totowa, NJ: Catholic Book Pub. Co., 1999), 135. 21. Costa Brochado, 183-84. 22. Ibid, 184. 23. William Shakespeare, Hamlet (New York: Penguin Classics, 1981), Act 1- Scene 5. 24. Blaise Pascal, Pensées. Trans., W.F. Trotter and T.S. Eliot (Oxford: Benediction Classics, 2011), 149. 25. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 25-26.
Thus to him who has the desire for God and the truth, more will be given him. To him who has not the desire for God, he will lose what little he has. Our Lady appears to
spiritual ardor will then pour itself out in active love of our neighbors, including making reparation for those who refuse to believe in Him and to adore Him and to love Him. Father John S. Grimm received his S.T.L. with a concentration in Moral Theology of Studies, Washington, D.C. . Upon ordination in 2002, Father Grimm was appointed a Bioethics Spokesman for the Diocese of Wilmington, and he subsequently has written on questions related to bioethics in both Ethics and Media and National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly. He also has presented a three-part Spirituality and Ethics lecture series addressing end-of-life issues in medicine and law as part of the Institute for Christian Spirituality. Father Grimm is currently serving at the Diocese of Wilmington in Delaware and was a faculty member and is currently an Adjunct Professor at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology. INSTITUTE FOR CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY
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