Many pilgrims to Fatima may be unaware of the prelude to the apparitions of Our Lady, writes Lauri Duffy
Lauri Duffy
The centenary of the apparitions of an angel to the three children of Fatima in 1916 will be celebrated in ceremonies in Fatima on Monday, March 21.
When people think of Fatima, it is the reported apparitions of Our Lady in 1918 that they turn their mind to. In fact, it was only decades later that the angelic encounters were revealed.
The reported apparitions of the angel to the shepherd children were initially shrouded in controversy. Sr Lucia, the only seer to live in to adulthood, revealed them only in 1937, after the bishop directed her to reveal everything. This revelation came like a bombshell, so much so that it was not released publicly until five years later.
Apparitions
In 1944 a Belgian theologian, Fr Edouard Dhanis, an acknowledged expert on Marian apparitions, wrote that while he believed in the authenticity of the Fatima apparitions of Our Lady, he felt that Lucia had “fabricated” the story of the angel. This proved to be a second bombshell.
Lucia was only nine in 1916, and she had no idea of dates. Her recollection was that the first apparition of the angel was in the spring. She and her two cousins Francisco and Jacinta were herding sheep on the hillside above their village, and sheltering from the wind. Suddenly they were confronted by a strange transparent figure in the form of a young man who said: “Do not be afraid. I am the Angel of Peace. Pray with me.”
He taught them this prayer: “My God I believe in you, I adore you, I hope in you 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 first half of the prayer is a call to the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity; the other half is a reminder to us of God’s mercy and the role of believers in the salvation of others.
The second apparition of the angel took place sometime in the summer of 1916. The three children were playing at the well at the back of Lucia’s house. Lucia described what happened in her memoirs as follows:
“What are you doing?” the angel asked. “Pray! Pray very much! Offer prayers and sacrifices constantly to the Most High…”
“How are we to make sacrifices?” I asked. “Make of everything you can a sacrifice, and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which he is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners. You will thus draw down peace upon your country. I am its guardian angel. Above all, accept and bear with submission the sufferings which the Lord will send you”.
Response
The immediate response of the children was to repeat over and over again, when no one else was around, the prayer from the first apparition. In addition they would offer as a sacrifice to the Lord everything that mortified them.
The third apparition of the angel took place in the autumn of 1916 on the Hill of Aljustrel near the place of the first visit.
This time he was holding in his hands a chalice and above it a host, from which drops of blood were falling into the chalice.
Leaving the chalice and the host suspended in mid-air, he knelt down, and in a posture of adoration, looking up at the host and chalice, repeated three times this prayer: “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 with which he himself is offended. And through the infinite merits of his most sacred heart, and the immaculate heart of Mary, I beg of you the conversion of poor sinners”.
Then rising, the angel took the chalice and the host in his hands. He gave the host to Lucia and the contents of the chalice to Francisco and Jacinta, saying: “Take and drink the body and blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Repair their crimes and console Your God.”
The angel’s prayer is interpreted as reaffirming both the dogma of the Holy Trinity, and the Church’s belief that Christ is truly present in the consecrated host, as well as encouraging Eucharistic adoration.
Recent papal commentary would seem to indicate that there is little doubt about Sr Lucia’s account. In 2008, on the third anniversary of her death, Pope Benedict announced that he was dispensing with the five-year waiting period established by canon law to open the cause of beatification of Sr Lucia, a rare privilege that was also afforded to St John Paul II and the soon-to-be-saint Mother Teresa.
The positive attitude of the Church to these apparitions is very clear from the words of two recent Popes. In 2010, Benedict XVI, addressing 500,000 pilgrims at the vigil ceremonies in the Sanctuary Square of Fatima, referred to “how three children entrusted themselves to the interior force which enflamed them in the apparitions of the angel”.
Ten years earlier, during the jubilee year 2000, a few days after beatifying Francisco and Jacinta in Fatima, John Paul II, referred to “how God drew these children to himself through the appearance of an angel in 1916”.
The message of the angel, therefore, is an integral part of the message of Fatima.
Lauri Duffy has been a regular visitor to Fatima since the 1950s. Over the years he has brought many thousands of Irish pilgrims on guided tours of the shrine.
