Our Lady of Fatima- Fatima History

Fatima is a village in the center of Portugal about 70 miles north of Lisbon. It was there in 1915 that three humble peasant children began having a series of apparitions of angels and, later, the Virgin Mary. The children were: eight-year old Lucia Santos and her two cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto. At the time, the Portuguese government was secular and antagonistic towards religion, which led them to treat the children very harshly -- even placing them in prison with the threat of boiling them in oil unless they confessed to having made up their story. In spite of this, the children never wavered.

The first apparition occurred on an unnamed day in 1915 when Lucia, together with her friends, sat down in the fields close to their hamlet of Aljustrel at midday to eat their lunch. After lunch, as was their custom, they began to say the rosary. This time, however, they were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a cloud in the form of a man above some foliage. Lucia later described it as like a cloud, whiter than snow, slightly transparent, with a human outline.

The little girls were surprised and full of wonder. Although the same apparition occurred two more times, they might have been eventually forgotten by the children except for the events that later happened. A year later Lucia was out again with her two cousins tending the sheep. It rained, and they hid in a small cave to escape the rain. After the rain stopped and the sun came out, they stayed in the cave to eat their lunch, say the rosary and play a game of jacks. They had played but for a short while on the serene day, when a strong wind started that swayed the trees and made the children look to see what was happening. Above the trees outside the cave they began to see a light "whiter than snow." According to Lucia, it was the form of a young man, transparent, and more brilliant than a crystal pierced by the rays of the sun. The apparition approached them and said, "Fear not! I am the Angel of Peace. Pray with me!" The angel knelt on the ground and bowed very low. The children imitated the angel and repeated his 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." The angel repeated the prayer three times, and then rose and said, "Pray this way. The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of your supplications."

Notice that, in keeping with Christian orthodoxy, the angelic vision did not attempt to focus any adoration or even any attention to himself, but rather to God. The angel asked the children to pray with him, in recognition of his position as one of God's creations and his role as a messenger of God. In his prayer, he gave God four things: belief, adoration, hope, and love. And he repeated it three times, as a teacher is apt to do when attempting to get young children to memorize something.

After the angel disappeared, the children remained in the cave with a deep awareness of the supernatural. As Lucia described it, "We felt the presence of God so intensely, so intimately, that we dared not speak even to each other. The next day we felt ourselves still enveloped by that atmosphere. Only very gradually did its intensity diminish within us. None of us thought of speaking of this apparition or of recommending that it be kept a secret. It imposed secrecy of itself. It was so intimate that it was not easy to utter even a single word about it. Perhaps it made a deeper impression on us because it was the angel's first clear manifestation."

The same angel appeared to them several more times, each time giving them a message of the need for sacrifice and preparing them for the prophecies that were to follow. In later years, Lucia revealed: "The words of the angel were like a light that made us realize who God was, how He loved us and wanted to be loved; the value of sacrifice, to what degree it pleased Him, and how it was rewarded with the conversion of sinners. From that moment, we began to offer to the Lord everything that mortified us, without trying to find any other ways of mortification or penance than passing hour after hour, bowed to the ground, repeating the prayer that the angel had taught us."

On Sunday, May 13, 1917, in a world immersed in the First World War, the children of Fatima were to receive their first apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As usual, Lucia and her two cousins went to the cave, and it was almost noon when they reached it. They opened their bags to eat lunch, said the rosary and started tending to the sheep. Suddenly a bright shaft of light pierced the air. They described it as a flash of lightning. Lucia later said, however, that "it was not really lightning, but rather the reflection of a light that approached little by little. In this light, we could see Our Lady only when she was above the holmoak. We could not explain the fact to ourselves, and to avoid questioning was the reason that we sometimes said that we saw Our Lady coming, sometimes not. When we said that we saw her coming, we were speaking of this light that we saw approaching which was afterwards the Lady herself. When we said that we had not seen it come, we mean that we saw the Blessed Virgin only when she was over the holmoak."

Frightened by the flash, the children looked at the sky that was clear and bright without the least spot of a cloud. No breeze stirred, the sun was strong, and there was no hint anywhere of a storm that might be responsible for a flash of lightning. The children, however, thought that they had better head home in case it might start raining. As they descended the hill, another flash of lightning took them by surprise. Panicky with fear, they took a few steps and looked towards the right. There, standing over the foliage of a small holmoak, was a most beautiful lady. It was a lady dressed all in white, Lucia recalls, more brilliant that the sun, shedding rays of light, clear and stronger than a crystal glass filled with the most sparkling water, pierced by the burning rays of the sun.

The lady spoke to them and said, "Fear not! I will not harm you."

"Where are you from?" the children asked. "I am from heaven," the beautiful lady replied, gently raising her hand towards the distant horizon.

"What do you want of me?," Lucia asked. "I came to ask you to come here for six consecutive months, on the thirteenth day, at this same hour. I will tell you later who I am and what I want. And I shall return here again a seventh time."

Mary allegedly appeared on the thirteenth of each month, and the children were there each time except for one apparition when they were locked away by government officials. Each time the children reported similar phenomena, and many messages and secrets were revealed to them.

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