October 13, 2017! 100 years of Fatima
(c)Mary TV 2010 J.M.J October 13, 2017 Dear Family of Mary! August 25, 1991 “Dear Children! Today also I invite you to prayer, now as never before when my plan has begun to be realized. Satan is strong and wants to sweep away my plans of peace and joy and make you think that my Son is not strong in His decisions. Therefore, I call all of you, dear children, to pray and fast still more firmly. I invite you to self-renunciation for nine days so that, with your help, everything that I desire to realize through the secrets I began in Fatima, may be fulfilled. I call you, dear children, to now grasp the importance of my coming and the seriousness of the situation. I want to save all souls and present them to God. Therefore, let us pray that everything I have begun be fully realized. Thank you for having responded to my call.” I am happy to write to you today from Medjugorje! We are here celebrating Our Lady’s presence and remembering the miracle that occurred in Fatima 100 years ago today. We all know about the miracle of the sun that happened at Fatima. Thousands of people gathered around the children, awaiting Our Lady’s coming on that day. And she came. But with her came the miracle of the sun, dancing in the sky and plunging to earth. It was spectacular. Our Lady came to Fatima to answer the prayer of the Church for peace. She came with a program of penance and prayer so that the world could be saved from terrible trials. She came to remind us that God is real, and hell exists. She called us to pray and fast, do penance for peace in the world. She also left secrets. The 3rd secret was kept secret for many years. But in 1981 something happened. Our dear Saint John Paul II was shot on May 13, 1981. He called upon Our Lady, “Mother come, Mary come”. And she did, guiding the bullet away from his vital organs and saving his life. The pope decided he needed to read the 3rd Secret of Fatima. And after he did, from his hospital bed he directed the Church to pray this prayer of entrustment (on June 7, 1981): “Mother of all individuals and peoples, you know all their sufferings and hopes. In your motherly heart you feel all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, that convulse the world: accept the plea which we make in the Holy Spirit directly to your heart, and embrace with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord those who most await this embrace, and also those whose act of entrustment you too await in a particular way. Take under your motherly protection the whole human family, which with affectionate love we entrust to you, O Mother. May there dawn for everyone the time of peace and freedom, the time of truth, of justice and of hope.” You can read the whole document on the secrets of Fatima here: Document on Fatima It was a plea for help to Our Lady. And I believe she answered that plea by coming to Medjugorje to the 6 visionaries on June 24, 1981, just 17 days after this entrustment was enacted. I believe we see here in Medjugorje exactly what the Holy Father was asking Our Lady for. In Medjugorje she has taken under her motherly protection the whole human family! Here we are, from all corners of the earth, experiencing her motherly care. Here she is bringing us the possibility of peace and love. Here she is showing us the way to the Father. On a personal note, on October 13, 1987 (the 70th anniversary of the miracle of the sun) Denis and I were here in Medjugorje. It was my first pilgrimage, his second. On that day we looked over the valley towards St. James Church, at evening. And there we saw a huge, beautiful rainbow arching over the steeples of the church. We had wondered then if some kind of sign would happen, a sign for the 70th anniversary. And a sign did happen, the sign of peace and hope that God gave to Noah after the flood. It was a sign that God would not punish the world again, as He had with the flood. We felt that the Lord was telling us then that He intended to bring peace to the world through Medjugorje! So today, as we spend the day in prayer with Our Lady, thanking her for her presence and her motherly guidance, we will expect only good from our heavenly Father. At the end of the document, there are some words from then Joseph Card. Ratzinger. They speak the truth even today. We will believe in Our Lady’s presence as a gift from God to save us and present us to God: And so we come to the final question: What is the meaning of the “secret” of Fatima as a whole (in its three parts)? What does it say to us? First of all we must affirm with Cardinal Sodano: “… the events to which the third part of the ‘secret’ of Fatima refers now seem part of the past”. Insofar as individual events are described, they belong to the past. Those who expected exciting apocalyptic revelations about the end of the world or the future course of history are bound to be disappointed. Fatima does not satisfy our curiosity in this way, just as Christian faith in general cannot be reduced to an object of mere curiosity. What remains was already evident when we began our reflections on the text of the “secret”: the exhortation to prayer as the path of “salvation for souls” and, likewise, the summons to penance and conversion. I would like finally to mention another key expression of the “secret” which has become justly famous: “my Immaculate Heart will triumph”. What does this mean? The Heart open to God, purified by contemplation of God, is stronger than guns and weapons of every kind. The fiat of Mary, the word of her heart, has changed the history of the world, because it brought the Saviour into the world-because, thanks to her Yes, God could become man in our world and remains so for all time. The Evil One has power in this world, as we see and experience continually; he has power because our freedom continually lets itself be led away from God. But since God himself took a human heart and has thus steered human freedom towards what is good, the freedom to choose evil no longer has the last word. From that time forth, the word that prevails is this: “In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart; I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). The message of Fatima invites us to trust in this promise. We are praying for all of you today and everyday in Medjugorje! In Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Cathy Nolan (c)Mary TV 2017