Fatima: The True Story / Part 3a

For those who believe, no explanation is necessary.
For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.

—Author Unknown

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As I’ve penned in the first post of "Fatima: The True Story,” I find myself wanting to retreat to a quieter place away from the mayhem.


I’ve decided to return to my ‘roots’ and record the true story of what happened in the very small village of Fatima in 1916.

Again, as I post these excerpts, I ask that the Holy Spirit touches the hearts of many and delivers its true message therefore eliminating any pre-judged prejudices regarding Catholicism – this, in my opinion, isn’t about ‘religion’ but, rather, the message.

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The following excerpts from the book, The True Story of Fatima, are true accounts taken directly from Lucia’s memoirs and have been personally checked by her.

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...May, the month of flowers, follows the long April rains that wash the face of mother earth after her long winter sleep. Then God covers the world with jewels more beautiful than any precious stones. What can be more beautiful than the dainty, many-colored flowers of May?

On Sunday, the thirteenth of May, in the year of 1917, during the midst of the First World War, God sent to earth the loveliest flower of the ages. His own beautiful Mother, Mary, whom [Catholics] address as 'Queen of the May'. On that day, the children went to early Mass. “Heaven forbid,” Senhora Marto said, “that we should ever miss hearing Mass on Sundays, whether it rained or thundered or even if I were nursing my babies. Sometimes we had to go to Boleiros, Atouguia or Santa Catarina, almost six miles journey. I had to get up early and leave everything in my husband’s care. He would go to a later Mass. We could not take the babies with us when they were little, for then, neither we nor anyone else in church would have been able to hear Mass. Babies look like angels, but they don’t act like angels.” Returning from Mass, the mother packed the childrens lunches and sent them off with the sheep.

This day Lucia and her little cousins met as usual at the small bog, beyond the village, called the Barreiro, on the way to Gouveia, whence they proceeded to the Cova da Ira. Because the ground was rocky and filled with so much brush, they crossed it very slowly. It was almost noon before they reached their chosen spot. When they heard the church bells summoning the people to the last Mass they knew it was time for lunch. So they opened their bags and ate, as usual saving a little for later on. Their meal finished, they sped through their Rosary and then chased the sheep up the hill. Their game today would be building, making castles out of the rocks. Francisco was the mason and architect, Lucia and Jacinta gathered the stones.

While they were thus busily intent upon their building projects, a sudden bright shaft of light pierced the air. In their efforts to describe it they called it a flash of lightning*. Frightened**, they dropped their stones, looked first at each other, then at the sky which was very clear and bright without the least spot of a cloud. No breeze stirred the air, the sun was shining strong. Such perfect weather belied this flash of lightning, the forerunner of a storm. The children decided that they had better start for home before it rained. Quickly they gathered the sheep and started down the hill. Half way down, just as they were passing a tall oak tree, another shaft of light split the air. Panicky with fear, and as if led by some unknown power, they took a few steps, turned towards the right and there, standing over a foliage of a small holm oak, they saw a most beautiful lady.

“It was a Lady dressed all in white,” Lucia records, “more brilliant than 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.”

“Fear not!” the Lady said, “I will not harm you.”

“Where are you from?” Lucia made bold to ask.

“I am from Heaven,” the beautiful Lady replied, gently raising Her hand towards the distant horizons.

“What do You want of me?” Lucia humbly asked.

“I come 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.”

“And I, am I, too, going to Heaven?” Lucia asked.

“Yes, you shall,” the Lady assured her.

“And Jacinta?”

“Yes.”

“And Francisco?”

“He too shall go, but he must say many Rosaries,” the Lady responded.

Lucia asked some more question of the Lady. Two girls who used to come to her house to learn sewing from her sisters recently died. Lucia wanted to find out about them too.

“And Maria de Rosario, daughter of Jose das Neves, is she in Heaven?”

“Yes,” the Lady replied.

“And Amelia?”

“She is still in Purgatory.”

Lucia’s eyes filled with tears. How sad, that her friend Amelia was suffering in the fires of Purgatory. Then the Lady said to the children:

“Do you want to offer yourselves to God to endure all the sufferings that He may choose to send you, as and act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended and as a supplication for the conversion of sinners?”

Promptly Lucia responded for all three, “Yes, we want to.”

“Then you are going to suffer a great deal,” the Lady promised, “but the grace of God will be your comfort.”

As She pronounced these words, the Lady opened Her hands and shed upon the children a highly intense light, that was as if it were a reflection shining from them. “This light penetrated us to the heart,” Lucia reported, “and its very recesses, and allowed us to see ourselves in God, Who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in a mirror. Then we were moved by an inward impulse, also communicated to us, to fall on our knees, while we repeated to ourselves:

“O Most Holy Trinity, I adore Thee; my God, my God, I love Thee in the Most Blessed Sacrament.”

Again the Lady spoke to them, “Say the Rosary every day to bring peace to the world and the end of the war.”

“She began then to elevate Herself serenely,” Lucia said, “going in the direction of the East until She disappeared in the immensity of space, still surrounded by a most brilliant light that seemed to open a path for Her through the myriad galaxies of stars.”

The children stood riveted to the spot for some time, their eyes fastened on the skies where they last saw the Lady. Gradually they returned to themselves, and looking around for the sheep, they found them grazing upon the sparse grass under the shade of the holm oaks. They noticed that the vegetables in the garden were not even touched. They were ever so happy, and grateful to the Lady for Her caring for the sheep, and thereby sparing them punishment at home; but their joy was supreme and beyond all description for having seen the exquisitely beautiful Mother of God. She was so wonderful, so lovely! They felt the same joy now as when the Angel visited them, only when the Angel came, they felt a sort of annihilation before his presence; whereas, with Our Lady, they received strength and courage. “Instead of bodily exhaustion, we felt a certain physical strength,” Lucia described her reaction. “In place of annihilation before the Divine Presence, we felt exultation and joy; in place of difficulty in speaking we felt a certain communicative enthusiasm.”

The children spent the rest of the afternoon in the fields, living over and over again the short visit of Our Lady. They were so supremely happy, though mixed with deep concern. Our Lady seemed unhappy over something and they tried to fathom the meaning of Her every word. Meanwhile, Francisco pressed the girls with questions to learn everything She had said. They told him everything. When they told him that Our lady promised that he would go to Heaven, bursting with joy, he folded his hands in front of his breast and exclaimed aloud, “O, My Lady, I will say all the Rosaries You want!”

Lucia thought it best for them to keep the vision secret. She was old enough to realize how incredulous people are about such things, and more, she had had previous and bitter experience when the girls who first saw the Angel spread the news through the neighborhood. Francisco and Jacinta both agreed to Lucia’s suggestion. Lucia, however doubted Jacinta’s ability to keep it secret , for the little girl’s face shone with joy and she would say so often, “Ai que Senhora tao bonita! Oh, such a beautiful Lady!”

“I just know you are going to tell it to everyone,” Lucia warned Jacinta.

“Honest, I will not tell anyone,: Jacinta assured her.

“You won’t breathe a word, even to your mother?”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“We’ll keep it a secret,” they all agreed.

But how could little Jacinta keep it a secret, when she had seen such a beautiful Lady?...

Part 3b to follow.
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* “it was not really lightning but the reflection of a light which approached little by little. In this light, we could see Our Lady only when She was above the holm oak. 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 afterward the Lady Herself. When we said we had not seen it come, we meant that we saw the Blessed Virgin only when She was nearer the hom oak.” (Memoirs of Lucia).

**”The fear which we experienced did not properly have to do with the Blessed Virgin but rather with the storm which we believed imminent and which we wished to escape. The apparition of Our Lady inspired neither fear nor dread but only surprise.” (Memoirs of Lucia).

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The following video, “The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima - Part 02 of 10 /Complete movie in English/”, courtesy of You Tube.

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