For those who still do not know them, a brief background: they, together wity Lucia dos Santos, saw the Blessed Virgin Mother several times in Fatima, Portugal from May 13 to October 13, 1917. In the apparitions, the Blessed Mother warned that unless mankind changed its evil ways, another world war would happen and that a portentous light in the sky (which scientists preferred to dismiss as aurora borealis) would precede it. The Blessed Mother also told the children that World War I, which was then in progress, would end soon.
The prophecies on the wars, which came to pass as we now know, were initially referred to as the Second Secret.
The first secret was the vision of hell on July 13, 1917. Lucia later wrote about this vision as follows: “ Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first Apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.”
The third secret refered apparently to the current persecution of the Church. The Fatima children were given a vision of a man in white climbing a hill towards a cross at the apex, amid bodies of martyred Christians all around, until the man himself is martyred near the cross. Some have insisted that not all the third secret have been revealed.
These three secrets are well known among Fatima followers. But the Blessed Mother had told the children more, including those she had revealed to Jacinta who died at the age of 9.
Here are some direct quotes from the Blessed Mother, as conveyed to Jacinta and recorded by Lucia who lived much longer than Jacinta and Francisco, passing on only on Feb. 13, 2005. The Blessed Mother said as follows:
“The sins of the world are very great.”
“If men knew what eternity is, they would do everything to change their lives.”
“Men are lost because they do not think of the death of Our Lord and do not do penance.”
“Many marriages are not good; they do not please Our Lord, and they are not of God.”
“The sins that lead more souls to hell are the sins of the flesh.”
“Fashions that will greatly off end Our Lord will appear. People who serve God should not follow fashions. The Church has no fashions. Our Lord is always the same.”
These were the words of the Blessed Mother way back 1917. Are the sins of the world any less in our days? If the sins of those times and the years that followed in the first half of the 20th century were deserving of World War II, what of our modern day sins?
I shudder.
