The Message & Prayers of Fatima

The Message and Prayers of Fatima by Timothy Tindal-Robertson and Donal Anthony Foley

All booklets are published thanks to the generous support of the members of the Catholic Truth Society

CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY publishers to the holy see

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Contents The Centenary of Our Lady of Fatima, 1917-2017 . . . . . 3 Fatima Prayers and Devotions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Our Lady of Fatima and the Rosary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Acts of Consecration and Reparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Other Marian Prayers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Novenas to Our Lady of Fatima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Fatima and Immaculate Heart Litanies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Fatima Hymns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Nihil Obstat: Rev Michael Wheaton

Diocesan Censor Imprimatur:  Rt Rev Bishop Mark O’Toole

Bishop of Plymouth, 15th July 2016 The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed. They do not necessarily signify that the work is approved as a basic text for catechetical instruction.

All rights reserved. First published 2016 by The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 40-46 Harleyford Road London SE11 5AY Tel: 020 7640 0042 Fax: 020 7640 0046. © 2016 Timothy Tindal-Robertson and Donal Anthony Foley.

ISBN 978 1 78469 139 4

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The Centenary of Our Lady of Fatima, 1917-2017

T

he 13th May 2017 is the centenary of Our Lady’s first apparition at Fatima. One hundred years later, it is clear that as a result of recent developments with regard to Our Lady’s message, it has become more relevant than ever, both for the well-being of the Church today as well as for the development of its mission for the salvation of mankind in the years that lie ahead.

The most important of these developments, in terms of the daily life of members of the Church now and into the future, was the beatification of Francisco and Jacinta by St John Paul II at Fatima, on 13th May 2000, some eighty years after they had died in 1919 and 1920 respectively.

By their beatification, the pope proclaimed that these “two candles whom God lit to illumine humanity”, as he described them - aged only nine and seven in 1917 - had been raised up to attain heroic virtue in the ordinary course of their family life, not due to the extraordinary supernatural manifestations with which they were favoured, but because of their fidelity and commitment in fulfilling the requests of Our Lady. When a second permanent miracle of healing is obtained through their intercession, they will then be

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declared the first child saints in the history of the Church who did not die as martyrs.

Models for Modern Families Today families who strive to live their vocation with fidelity face challenges never experienced before that have been addressed by Pope Francis in Amoris Lætitia. It is at this providential moment that now for the first time ever in her history the Church has raised to the altar the two youngest children of a devout family, as models of sanctification for children and adults alike. Through the inspiring story of how their lives changed after meeting first the angel in 1916 and then Our Lady in 1917, there is traced out an assured path to heaven through life’s trials and challenges that can be followed by all under the comforting maternal guidance of Our Lady of Fatima.

After the first apparition on 13th May in 1917, little Jacinta kept on exclaiming enthusiastically, “Oh, what a beautiful Lady”, and that night broke her word to keep quiet by telling her parents everything they had seen and heard. “There was something within me that wouldn’t let me keep quiet”, she tearfully told Francisco and Lucia. That was how the apparition became known, and immediately brought down upon them the suffering which Our Lady had foretold, as the children experienced the doubt, disbelief and opposition of their own parents.

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The same effect has been produced throughout salvation history, whenever someone has experienced a true, interior and heartfelt personal encounter with the living God. This is what caused the hearts of Jesus’s disciples - and countless others in the ensuing centuries - to “burn within them” (cf. Lk 24:32). The divine experience planted in them such unquenchable joy and conviction that it “wouldn’t let them keep quiet”, and thereafter for the sake of proclaiming the Gospel they were willing to “bear all the sufferings he wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the conversion of sinners” (cf. Col 1:24; 2 Tm 2:12). It was on these terms that Our Lady asked the children, “are you willing to offer yourselves to God?” and when they responded, “Yes”, she told them they would have much to suffer, “but the grace of God will be your comfort”.

Taking up One’s Cross Conversion, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is accomplished in daily life by, among other things, accepting suffering and enduring persecution. “Taking up one’s cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance” (CCC 1435, citing Lk 9:23). The lives of Bl. Francisco and Jacinta show that the message of Fatima is the extension to the Church of this Gospel-witnessing experience, in a manner adapted to the circumstances of our times through the mediation of Our Lady and her Immaculate Heart, in order to participate in Jesus’s mission: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk 2:17).

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This indeed is the reason the Church has accepted Our Lady’s message: because its “basic content is the truth and the call of the Gospel itself: ‘Repent and believe in the Gospel’ (Mk 1:15). These are the first words that the Messiah addressed to humanity”, said the great Pope of the twentieth century, St John Paul II, in his homily at Fatima on 13th May 1982. In his General Audience on 17th May 2000, after beatifying Francisco and Jacinta, the pope described the message of Fatima as “a message of conversion and hope…which is the true Gospel of Christ.

Let us receive the light that comes from Fatima, let us be guided by Mary. May her Immaculate Heart be our refuge and the way that leads us to Christ”.

Angels “belong to him [Christ]…and are messengers of his saving plan”, we are informed by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 331). In 1916 an angel appeared to the children and told them that the Hearts of Jesus and Mary had “designs of mercy” upon them, namely, to offer up sacrifices in reparation for sins and the conversion of sinners.

“Conversion”, wrote St John Paul II, “is the most concrete expression of the working of love and of the presence of mercy in the human world” (Dives in Misericordia, n. 6).

God’s infinite grace and mercy for sinners out of his desire for their conversion and salvation, mediated through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, is the thread running through the apparitions at Fatima, culminating in the vision of the most Holy Trinity experienced by Sr Lucia on 13th June

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1929, when she saw Christ crucified and the words “grace and mercy” streaming down from the cross, with Mary present on the altar, offering her Immaculate Heart to the most Holy Trinity. That was the moment, Our Lady told Lucia, when God asked the Holy Father, in union with all the bishops of the world, to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart, “promising to save it by this means”.

(Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words - Sr Lucia’s memoirs, [hereafter FILOW] published by the Postulation Centre at Fatima for the Causes of Canonisation of Bl. Francisco and Jacinta, Vol. I, 18th edition, Nov 2011, p. 198).

The Pardon Prayer which the angel taught the seers comprises the virtues of faith, hope and charity which “are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being” (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church 384). The seers repeated this grace-filled prayer for hours on end, and this prepared them for the apparitions of Our Lady in the following year.

The Grace of God In her first apparition, after Our Lady had told them that the grace of God would comfort them in their suffering for the conversion of sinners, she opened her hands for the first time, and communicated: a light so intense that as it streamed from her hands, its rays penetrated our hearts and the innermost depths of

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our souls, making us see ourselves in God who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in the best of mirrors. Then, moved by an interior impulse that was also communicated to us, we fell on our knees, repeating in our hearts: “O most Holy Trinity, I adore you! My God, my God, I love you in the most Blessed Sacrament” (FILOW, pp. 175, 176).

After the apparition, Francisco said, “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.”

This profound mystical experience through Our Lady kindled in their hearts that fire of the love of God which did not burn them, so that they were willing to accept whatever suffering he would send for the conversion and salvation of sinners. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, the Lady “from heaven” was “the teacher who introduced the little seers to a deep knowledge of the love of the Blessed Trinity and led them to savour God himself as the most beautiful reality of human existence” (Shepherds of Fatima, CTS, p. 38).

Francisco was absorbed by God the most Holy Trinity, perceived in the light from Our Lady’s hands. After the July apparition, he said, “we were on fire in that light which is God and yet we were not burnt. What is God? …we could

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never put it into words”. Jacinta said: “I love Our Lord so much. At times I seem to have a fire in my heart, but it does not burn me”.

The Rosary and the Immaculate Heart Never before in the history of the Church has a revelation of such extraordinary spiritual richness been made through very young children.

Just before Our Lady rose out of sight she urged the seers: “Pray the Rosary every day, in order to obtain peace for the world, and the end of the war”. She reiterated this request in each of her six apparitions, and in the last on 13th October she revealed, “I am the Lady of the Rosary”.

In the apparition of 13th June, Lucia asked Our Lady to take the enraptured seers to heaven.

“Yes. I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon. But you are to stay here some time longer. Jesus wishes to make use of you to make me known and loved. He wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. I promise salvation to those who embrace it, and those souls will be loved by God like flowers placed by me to adorn his throne”.

Francisco and Jacinta died aged almost eleven and almost ten on 4th April 1919 and 20th February 1920 respectively, having faithfully borne witness to Our Lady’s message through their lives of heroic virtue. Lucia died aged almost

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ninety eight on 13th February 2005, after fulfilling her mission, in the letters she wrote to the popes and many people, and through her books.

“Am I to stay here alone”, Lucia asked sadly. “No”, replied Our Lady. “Don’t lose heart. I will never forsake you. My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God” (FILOW, p. 177). These last touching words expressing Mary’s maternal consolation form a simple yet deeply meaningful prayer.

The words of Jesus on the cross, “behold your son… behold your mother” (Jn 19:26, 27) show that devotion to Mary is his will for us. Jesus wants us to show our love for his Mother and ours, who is filled with his divine graces, and such devotion “corresponds to the objective truth about the Mother of God”, as St John Paul II explained in his book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (p. 213). In his General Audience of 7th May 1997, St John Paul II taught that filial devotion to Mary increases our intimacy with Jesus “and leads to the highest levels of perfection” (Theotokos, p. 192); for “among creatures no one knows Christ better than Mary, no one can introduce us to a profound knowledge of his mystery better than his Mother” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae, n. 14). Accordingly,

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“the Church’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin is an intrinsic element of Christian worship” (Bl. Pope Paul VI, Marialis Cultus, n. 56).

Your Will be Done With regard to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pope Benedict XVI said that it resembles the Heart of Christ more than any other, “and for this very reason the liturgy holds them up together for our veneration” (Angelus, 5th June 2005). Earlier, as Cardinal Ratzinger he wrote that “to be devoted to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means to embrace this attitude of heart which makes the fiat ‘your will be done’ - the defining centre of one’s whole life” (Theological Commentary on the third part of the secret, in FILOW, p. 228).

At the end of this apparition, the children saw the Immaculate Heart of Mary pierced by thorns which encircled it, “outraged by the sins of humanity, and seeking reparation” (FILOW, p. 177).

In the apparition of 13th July, in response to Lucia’s request, Our Lady promised that in October she would perform a miracle “for all to see and believe”. This was the stupendous miracle of the sun, seen by some seventy thousand people from all over Portugal, and which even unbelievers who had come to mock were obliged to affirm.

Then she told them to sacrifice themselves for sinners, and to say many times, especially when they did so: “O Jesus,

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it is for love of you, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”

Using this prayer we can offer up as a sacrifice anything that happens in daily life that irritates us or upsets our plans.

We are not asked to imitate the extraordinary sacrifices made by the seers, because we have not been favoured with the special role for which they were chosen, but we are asked to follow the example of their heroic acts of penance and self-denial in accordance with our circumstances.

A Vision of Hell Then follows a very realistic description of hell, which they saw in the light from Our Lady’s hands. “The Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity”, but only those go there who at the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted (CCC 1033-1037). Pope Francis wants us to take seriously the existence of the devil and his strategies to tempt us into sin, and has said the devil’s greatest achievement has been to make us believe he doesn’t exist (cf. Who is the Devil? What Pope Francis Says, CTS, 2014).

As the vision ended, Our Lady explained, so kindly and sadly, the particular reason that the seers were shown hell “where the souls of poor sinners go” - because “to save them God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart” (my emphasis). Here Our Lady is talking about God’s plan for saving individuals from the

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snares of the devil. But then she utters a grave and prophetic pronouncement which directly concerns the history of the Church and the world in our times, in which she speaks of the formidable activities of the “father of lies” (Jn 8:44), the prince and deceiver of the whole world (Jn 14:30, Rv 12:9).

If people did not heed her requests to cease offending God, Our Lady warned that Russia would spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church, the suffering of the Holy Father and the annihilation of various nations. Is this not happening in our time, in the Middle East? Russia’s errors, inaugurated by Lenin’s Communist Revolution in October 1917, the same month of Our Lady’s final apparition at Fatima, involved the attempt to install throughout the world political regimes dedicated to the elimination of God and the Church, which resulted in campaigns of immense destruction and the persecution, slaughter and imprisonment of countless millions.

In our time the unprecedented worldwide campaign of the denial and rejection of God has become more influential than ever, concealed behind various guises such as the culture of death, the dictatorship of relativism denounced by Benedict XVI, materialism, and the “silent apostasy” in European culture of those who live as if God does not exist (Ecclesia in Europa, n. 9).

Our Lady then revealed heaven’s response to these grave threats to mankind’s salvation. It comprised, at the level

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of the Church, the pope’s consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, together with the faithful’s first Saturdays communion in reparation to her Immaculate Heart for the blasphemies and ingratitude with which it is pierced by ungrateful men (cf. Lk 2:35; FILOW, pp. 178, 179, 193-198).

The Five First Saturdays Devotion St John Paul II fulfilled the first part of this request by his act of consecration of 25th March 1984, which brought about the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the cessation of the persecution of the Church, peacefully, on 25th December 1991, through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I documented this process in my book, Fatima, Russia and Pope John Paul II. It was read by the pope in the Polish translation, and he spoke words approving it to the editor, Fr Jan Rokosz, MIC. The miraculous outcome of St John Paul II’s act of consecration demonstrated that the unfolding of future events depends on our response to Our Lady’s requests, as Our Lady said.

This was endorsed by the verdict of Benedict XVI on his pilgrimage to Fatima in May 2010: “we would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete” (Shepherds of Fatima, p. 41).

The five first Saturdays devotion in reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary - the counterpart of the same request that pertains to the faithful - still awaits official approval and implementation by the Church.

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At the level of the individual, the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means fulfilling her requests for prayer, especially daily recitation of the Rosary, penance and sacrifices for the conversion of sinners and in reparation for sins against her Immaculate Heart. It also means imitating her unconditional acceptance of the will of God in our lives.

One would have to read Lucia’s memoirs in order to grasp fully the marvellous love of little Jacinta for Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and her consequent thirst for suffering which she embraced wholeheartedly, in order to save souls from the torments of hell, the sight of which had affected her deeply. Sr Lucia wrote that this grace flowed from the light they received through the hands of Our Lady in the June apparition, which infused them with a special knowledge and love for the Immaculate Heart of Mary (FILOW, p. 127). Here is just one example out of many of the remarkable graces Jacinta received, and which she recounted to Lucia not long before her death.

“You will remain here to make known that God wishes to establish in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary… Tell everybody that God grants us graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, that people are to ask her for them, and that the Heart of Jesus wants the Immaculate Heart of Mary to be venerated at his side. Tell them also to pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for peace since God has entrusted it to her. [St John

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