Adoremus Bulletin, July 2017
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Francisco (right) spent long hours each day praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament in the parish church. Jacinta (left), the youngest of the three, distinguished herself by acts of heroic penance to save sinners but, before all else, to console the Sacred Heart of Jesus, wounded by sin. Jacinta had a special love and concern for the Holy Father in Rome.
The Mother of Our Love for Christ: Our Lady of Fatima and The Holy Eucharist This study of Our Lady of Fatima is dedicated to Sister Mary Elizabeth, O.C.D. and Sister Margaret Mary, O.C.D of the Carmel of the Holy Name of Jesus, Denmark, Wisconsin in gratitude for all they have done to promote the Fatima message through their prayers and sacrifices in Carmel.
T
he celebration of the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of the Mother of God in Fatima, Portugal, led me to reflect on the 75th anniversary in 1992. At that time, I was the Executive Director of the World Apostolate of Fatima (The Blue Army) and the rector of the Shrine of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Washington, NJ. As part of the 75th anniversary celebrations, my staff and I organized a symposium on the Fatima message. A week or two before the symposium, one of the speakers, Monsignor Eugene Kevane, founder and director of the Notre Dame Catechetical Institute in Arlington, VA, fell critically ill. We had invited him, a distinguished scholar, to present a paper titled “Mary, Catechist at Fatima.” If my memory serves me well, Monsignor Kevane himself suggested the topic. Since Monsignor Kevane had been one of my esteemed professors in graduate school, I decided to take his topic as my own and compose an essay entitled, “Mary, Catechist at Fatima.” I hid away in a retreat house for a week to prepare the conference that Monsignor Kevane had been scheduled to deliver. I knew that I had to focus on Monsignor Kevane’s amazing understanding of the role of catechesis in the life of the Church. I reread the story of the apparitions with an eye on its pedagogical orientation and content. After a day or two of study, I realized anew Monsignor Kevane’s genius. The apparitions of Our Blessed Mother at Fatima and the supernatural phenomena that surrounded them were from beginning to end a catechetical lesson given to three innocent children. The simplicity and profundity of the insight engulfed me. God had sent the Blessed Mother to Fatima to instruct and form three youngsters, and
through them, the Christian world, in the fundamental message of the Gospel: The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel (Mk 1:15). When I began to reread the accounts of the apparitions, I understood that Monsignor Kevane had grasped with acuity an essential component of what we might call the mystery of Fatima. Certainly, God had sent the Lady of the Rosary to Fatima in 1917, as the First World War raged in Europe, with a plan for peace. She came to alert the Church to the evils of Russian Communism. Above all, she came to call her children, many of whom were and are in danger of eternal loss, to faith, conversion, and a life of prayer and penance for the salvation of all people. The message of Our Lady of Fatima is remarkably simple. The first recipients and beneficiaries of the message were three poor children: Lucia Dos Santos and her cousins, Francisco Marto, and Jacinta Marto, ages 10, 9, and 7 respectively at the time of the apparitions. They understood the message perfectly: Reject sin, pray the rosary, do penance for the salvation of sinners. Twenty-five years ago, my research led me to isolate a number of catechetical truths that Our Lady taught the children of Fatima. I must confess, though, that in 1992 I did not adequately appreciate the central role the Eucharist played in the Fatima mystery. The centenary celebration offered me the opportunity to revisit the topic in “Mary, Catechist at Fatima.” I have come to realize that the Mother of God through the agency of an angel brought the Christian initiation of Jacinta, Francisco, and Lucia to completion. Then, Mary, as the children’s spiritual mother, helped them to internalize the Eucharistic Sacrifice in every facet of their lives. Praying with Angels In 1916, the year before Mary herself came, an angel appeared to the children on at least three occasions. Identifying himself as the “Angel of Peace,” he came from God to teach the children how to exercise their baptismal priesthood. In the first apparition, the Angel bowing pro-
foundly with his forehead on the ground taught the children this prayer: “My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love You. I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love You.” The Eucharistic theme of this prayer was repeated with a slightly different emphasis in the second apparition of the angel. He said to them, “in every way you can offer sacrifice to God in reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for sinners. In this way, you will bring peace to our country, for I am its guardian angel, the Angel of Portugal. Above all, bear and accept with patience the sufferings God will send you.” The third and final apparition of the Angel is explicitly Eucharistic. In fact, in this apparition, the angel gave Jacinta, Francisco, and Lucia their first Holy Communion. The Angel gave the Eucharist to the children under both species. It is worthwhile to ponder the entire description of the marvelous event from the diary of Sr. Lucia: “After we had repeated this prayer, I do not know how many times we saw shining
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By Father Frederick L. Miller
Little Jacinta and Francisco are not saints because they saw an angel and the Mother of God. They are saints because they heard the Word of God, believed it, and put it into practice in their lives through prayer and sacrifice.
over us a strange light. We lifted our heads to see what was happening. The Angel was holding in his left hand a chalice and over it, in the air, was a host from which drops of blood fell into the chalice. The Angel leaves the chalice in the air, kneels near us
and tells us to repeat three times: “‘Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly, and I offer You the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He is offended. And by the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg the conversion of poor sinners.’ “After that he rose, took again in his hand the chalice and the host. The host he gave to me and the contents of the chalice he gave to Jacinta and Francisco, saying at the same time, Eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ terribly outraged by the ingratitude of men. Offer reparation for their sakes and console God. “Once more, he bowed to the ground repeating with us the same prayer thrice: ‘Most Holy Trinity,’ etc. and disappeared. Overwhelmed by the supernatural atmosphere that involved us, we imitated the Angel in everything, kneeling prostrate as he did and repeating the prayers he said.” Messenger of Mystery The Angel taught the children how to worship the mystery of God; how to offer Jesus to the Father in sacrifice, how to offer themselves and their sacrifices in union with Jesus to the Father, how to draw life from the reception of the Lord’s Body and Blood. He catechized the children on the Real Presence and the Real Sacrifice of Christ in the Eucharistic celebration. He taught them how to exercise their baptismal priesthood in making the oblation. He introduced a theme that Our Lady would make much more explicit in the subsequent apparitions: the oblation of Christ, truly present in the Eucharist, must be lived out every day by members of the Church. The significance of the Eucharist in the mystery of Fatima is most evident in these three apparitions of the Angel to the children. It is of some importance to address two thought-provoking questions. First, from whence came the consecrated host and chalice that the Angel gave to the children? Surely, the complete answer to this question is enfolded in the mystery of