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The general Message of Fatima is not complicated. Its requests are for
prayer, reparation, repentance, and sacrifice, and the abandonment of sin.
Before Our Lady appeared to the three shepherd children, Lucy, Francisco and
Jacinta, the Angel of Peace visited them. The Angel prepared the children to
receive the Blessed Virgin Mary, and his instructions are an important aspect
of the Message that is often overlooked.
The Angel demonstrated to the
children the fervent, attentive, and composed manner in which we should all pray,
and the reverence we should show toward God in prayer. He also explained to
them the great importance of praying and making sacrifices in reparation for
the offenses committed against God. He told them: "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."
In his third and final apparition to the children, the Angel gave them Holy
Communion, and demonstrated the proper way to receive Our Lord in the
Eucharist: all three children knelt to receive Communion; and Lucy was given
the Sacred Host on the tongue and the Angel shared the Blood of the Chalice
between Francisco and Jacinta.
Our Lady stressed the importance
of praying the Rosary in each of Her apparitions, asking the children to
pray
the Rosary every day for peace. Another principal part of the Message of
Fatima
is devotion to Our Lady's Immaculate Heart, which is terribly outraged
and
offended by the sins of humanity, and we are lovingly urged to console
Her by
making reparation. She showed Her Heart, surrounded by piercing thorns
(which
represented the sins against Her Immaculate Heart), to the children, who
understood that their sacrifices could help to console Her.
The children also saw that God is
terribly offended by the sins of humanity, and that He desires each of
us and
all mankind to abandon sin and make reparation for their crimes through
prayer
and sacrifice. Our Lady sadly pleaded: "Do not offend the Lord our God
any
more, for He is already too much offended!"
The children were also told to
pray and sacrifice themselves for sinners, in order to save them from
hell. The
children were briefly shown a vision of hell, after which Our Lady told
them:
"You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them,
God
wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If
what I say
to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace."
She said that if people did not
stop offending God, He would punish the world severely by means of war,
famine,
persecution of the Church, and persecution of the Holy Father. To
prevent these
chastisements, Our Lady offered a remedy: She would return to ask for
the
Consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart and the Communion of
Reparation
on the Five First Saturdays. If Her requests were heeded, there would be
peace.
If not, Russia's errors would spread throughout the world, causing wars
and
persecutions against the Church, the Holy Father to suffer much,
martyrdom of
the good and the annihilation of various nations.
Our Lady indicated to us the
specific root of all the troubles in the world, the one that causes
world wars
and such terrible suffering: sin. She then gave a solution, first to
individual
people, then to the Church's leaders. God asks each one of us to stop
offending
Him. We must pray, especially the Rosary. By this frequent prayer of the
Rosary, we will get the graces we need to overcome sin. God wants us to
have
devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to work to spread this
devotion
throughout the world. Our Lady said, "My Immaculate Heart will be your
refuge and the way that will lead you to God." If we wish to go to God,
we
have a sure way to Him through true devotion to the Immaculate Heart of
His
Mother.
When Sister Lucy questioned Our
Lord as to why He would not convert Russia without the solemn public
consecration of that nation specifically, Jesus answered:
Because
I want My whole Church to acknowledge that consecration as a triumph of
the
Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that it may extend its homage later on, and
put
the devotion to This Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to My Sacred
Heart.
Thus, we see that the conversion
of Russia cannot take place unless and until the Pope and bishops
consecrate
specifically Russia, because God has reserved this grace - this special
grace -
to this special act of honor and reparation to the Immaculate Heart of
Mary.
Jesus does this because He wants to establish throughout the world, in
the
hearts and minds of the faithful, the importance of devotion to His
Mother's
Immaculate Heart.
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart
is central to the Fatima Message. God determined that the Consecration
of
Russia and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays be the
means of
implementing this devotion throughout the world, and gave this task to
His Pope
and bishops and to individual souls to practice and promote this
devotion.
In order to move ever closer to
Her, and therefore to Her Son, Our Lady stressed the importance of
praying at
least five decades of the Rosary daily. She asked us to wear the Brown
Scapular. And we must make sacrifices, especially the sacrifice of doing
our
daily duty, in reparation for the sins committed against Our Lord and
Our Lady.
She also stressed the necessity of prayers and sacrifices to save poor
sinners
from hell. The Message of Fatima, to individual souls, is summarized in
these
things.
Besides these general points,
given in the Fatima Message over 6 months, Our Lady confided a Secret to
the
three shepherd children on July 13, 1917. This Secret was meant for all
Catholics, but was to be given to them later (at the latest, in 1960)
since no
one was prepared to understand it all in 1917.
In her Third and Fourth Memoirs,
which were both written in 1941, Sister Lucy revealed to a wider
audience the
first two parts of the Secret. The third part of the Secret - or, as it
is
called, the Third Secret - was written down for the first time between
January
2 and January 9, 1944.
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