Marian Musings, Part XI

 

Only once before have I written about any of Mary's purported visitations. That was last New Year's Eve, when I posted about Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Although I do find Our Lady of Guadalupe to be the most compelling of her visits, there are of course several candidates for that title, and today marks the 109th anniversary of the climactic moment associated with one that tops many people's list: Our Lady of Fatima.

The appearances known as Our Lady of Guadalupe took place over a span of days around Tepeyac Hill in what is now Mexico City. The ones known as Our Lady of Fatima took place over a span of months in central Portugal, near the village of Fatima, which is named after a Moorish woman who converted from Islam to Christianity in the nearby Serra de Aire during the Middle Ages. Interestingly, Fatima was also the name of Muhammad's youngest daughter.

Before I dive in, I want to say that although I used the word "purported" in the opening sentence, I do not think that qualifier applies to either Fatima or Guadalupe. These cases are backed by abundant evidence and I believe they are real.

*     *     *     *     *

In 1917 Europe was deep in the throes of World War I, a conflict the likes of which mankind had never experienced. Portugal's troops were fighting and dying for the allied cause while their nation, consisting of 15 percent of the Iberian Peninsula and already one of Europe's poorest, was cut off from assistance partly by the fact its only neighbor, Spain, had turned inward and insisted on strict neutrality.

1917 was also the year Russia's Bolshevik Revolution forced Tsar Nicholas II from the throne, thus setting the stage for communism to take over Eastern Europe and eventually wield influence in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Strange though it may seem, that revolution on the opposite side of Europe, far from Fatima and not of any obvious international significance at the time, was very much on the radar God allowed Mary to speak of when he sent her to the Portuguese countryside.

On May 13th of that year, three children - 10-year-old Lucia dos Santos, along with her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, 8 and 7 - reported encountering a woman while watching sheep in a field known as the Cova da Iria. Appearing after a flash of lightning on a cloudless day, the woman was dressed "in white, more brilliant than the sun" and said she was sent "from Heaven." Assuring the children "I'm not going to harm you," she asked them to devote themselves to God, to pray, and to "say the Rosary every day" to bring about "an end to the war."

This was not the kids' first experience with something unusual, however, for during the previous year they had seen at least one angel and declined to tell anyone. Lucia initially said they should keep this experience to themselves as well, but Jacinta told her immediate family. Jacinta's mom, assuming the story was a prank, casually mentioned it to neighbors and it quickly became the talk of the town.

From here on, I am going to start referring to Mary by name instead of as a "woman," since she did end up revealing her identity.

*     *     *     *     *

Amidst the ensuing hubbub, Lucia told her mom the apparition was real and that Mary had asked the children to return on June 13th. Less skeptical than the other mom, Lucia's spoke with the local priest, Father Manuel Ferreira, who advised her not to stop the children from returning.

Going forward, Mary came to the field to meet them on the 13th of each month through October. There was one hiccup on the morning of August 13th, when the region's municipal administrator, who harbored a known hostility to religion and distaste for local chatter, had the kids arrested and jailed before they could reach the field. Unable to maintain such abuse in the face of public outcry, he released them and they proceeded to meet up with Mary on the 19th rather than 13th before getting back on track.

Today's post is obviously about the October visit, but the others were major events in and of themselves, and I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Mary:

• Revealed Francisco and Jacinta would "soon" be taken to Heaven, but that Lucia "must remain on Earth" to spread devotion. Francisco and Jacinta wound up perishing during the Spanish flu pandemic at the ages of 10 and 9, whereas Lucia grew to become a Carmelite nun and lived to be 97 years old, residing at this convent from 1948 until her death in 2005.

• Prophesied that "if people do not cease offending God" after the war, "not much time will elapse" before the commencement of "another and more terrible war" (in hindsight, this sure sounds like World War II comin' round the bend a mere 21 years after the Armistice).

• Said that if Russia did not turn to God, "she will spread her errors throughout the entire world, fomenting wars and persecution of the church" (in hindsight, this sure sounds like Soviet communism comin' round the bend with its enforced atheism, military invasions, and puppet regimes).

Those are but a few of the highlights, if there's any way for that to be the right word.

For each apparition after the initial one, increasing numbers of people came to the field every 13th, hoping to see the Lord's mother for themselves. By September they numbered in quadruple digits despite the rural and out of the way location, and though it was only Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta who proved able to see and interact with Mary, people kept coming; obviously, they were convinced the kids were not acting.

Finally, on September 13th Mary told the children that when she returned in October there would be a "miracle so that all may believe." Those words set the stage for what is widely considered the most captivating thing humans have witnessed in the modern era.

*     *     *     *     *

Please remember that although 1917 was in humanity's modern era, it was not at all like today's world. What we think of as modern media did not exist, as there was no such thing as television, computers, or the Internet. Cameras were cumbersome luxury items that few people owned, nobody carried around, and could not be relied upon even when present; they depended on finicky film that could easily be damaged even before making it to the darkroom, where there was still no guarantee of good images in any event.

Telephones existed but were rare. So too with radios. Long distance communication happened by snail mail or telegraph, and although the latter allowed it to arrive at its destination fairly quick, it often died there. Sure, if a telegraph's destination was a newspaper, the info it carried might make it to print, but the vast majority of newspapers were circulated only locally and got thrown away after being read, so stories tended not to spread very far.

In other words, news traveled slow, if at all, and needed word of mouth. Be that as it may, news of the happenings at Fatima was already drawing visitors before September, as mentioned above, and once word got out that a miracle to convince "all" had been promised, it spread farther than any of the previous buzz.

The throng that arrived at the Cova da Iria on October 13, 1917 was enormous: Some estimates placed it as high as 100,000 and some as "low" as 30,000, with most pegging it at 70,000. That size is even more remarkable when you consider that not only was the location remote, and not only was travel difficult given limited infrastructure, scant resources, rampant poverty, and a world war sucking up everyone's attention and energy - but on top of all that, heavy rains swamped the countryside for three days leading up to the 13th.

It was still raining on the morning of the 13th, yet those scores of thousands still made it to the field. And Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta were of course right there, faithful and expectant as always, when the rain stopped and the clouds parted to reveal the sun looking "like a disk of white fire" against a sky of "clear blue." What happened next has become known to history as the Miracle of the Sun.

*     *     *     *     *

Among the crowd were not only farmers, peasants, and devout Christians, but also journalists, skeptics, and devout atheists, many of whom expected to see nothing and wanted to use it as an excuse to mock believers confirmation of their superior supposed intellect. Instead, if I may borrow one of the words most commonly used by those who were present, they saw the sun dance.

Witnesses described the sun spinning "rapidly with dizzy and sickening speed, flinging out all sorts of brilliant colors that reflected on the faces of the crowds." It dropped downward in a zigzag course, then zigzagged back up. This continued for several minutes. Notably, people several miles away reported the same thing. At the Cova da Iria itself, clothes wet from rain became dry.

To be sure, there were some who did not report seeing the sun dance, but the vast majority did, including many who, as stated above, had come as skeptics - and even among those who did not claim to see it dance, most said it was different in that it threw off "brilliant colors" and they could keep their eyes fixed on it without being forced to blink or look away.

The multitude on hand was almost entirely from Portugal, as you would expect given the state of things. World War I meant newspapers from foreign countries, even if they heard a miracle was predicted, certainly weren't going to entertain sending their reporters all the way to isolated Fatima based on the say-so of three peasant kids. Nevertheless, reporters from secular Portuguese newspapers were on hand and recorded the events as factual; these included O Dia and O Seculo, the latter of which was avowedly anti-church in addition to being the nation's largest paper.

The former reported that "the silver sun, enveloped in the same gauzy grey light, was seen to whirl and turn" and "the light turned a beautiful blue, as if it had come through the stained-glass windows of a cathedral." Writing in the latter's pages,  Avelino de Almeida - who came as an on-the-record skeptic expecting to watch the crowd be disappointed - reported the sun "appeared free from clouds and at its zenith. It looked like a plaque of dull silver and it was possible to look at it without the least discomfort...the sun trembled, made sudden incredible movements outside all cosmic laws - the sun 'danced' according to the typical expression of the people."

Separately, when a friend and fellow skeptic privately wrote to de Almeida and essentially asked what really happened, his letter back said: "The rain, at the pre-announced hour, ceases to fall; the dense mass of clouds breaks up and the king star - a frosted silver disc - at the height of its zenith appears and begins dancing in a violent and convulsive ballet, which a large number of people imagined to be a serpentine dance, so beautiful and brilliant colors successively covered the solar surface. Miracle, as the people shouted? Natural phenomenon, the wise would say? I don't want to know now, but just want to tell you what I saw."

A lawyer named Jose Almeida Garrett wrote that the sun "spun round on itself in a mad whirl" and "seemed to loosen itself from the firmament." He continued that while this "solar phenomenon" was occurring, "there were changes of color in the atmosphere...I saw everything an amethyst color. Objects around me, the sky and the atmosphere, were of the same color...I turned away and shut my eyes...I opened my eyes and saw that the landscape was the same purple color as before...All the phenomena which I have described were observed by me in a calm and serene state of mind and without any emotional disturbance."

*     *     *     *     *

Many aspects of the Fatima story bear a striking parallel to patterns we see in Scripture. For any anti-Catholics out there, I have to begin by stressing that Mary, at Fatima, warned people they must turn to God (i.e., not to her) before I go on to note that:

• God sent her not to rulers, generals, or clergy, but to children (cue Matthew 18:3-4 and Mark 10:14-15).
  
  
• Those children were watching sheep in a field when she appeared (cue Luke 2:8).
  
  
• There were three of them (a la three patriarchs, three people in the furnace, three named angels, three days in the belly of the great fish, three times denied, et al).
  
  
• Before they were visited by her, they received angelic visits (cue Genesis 19:1-3 and 15-17, Matthew 1:20, Matthew 28:5-7, Mark 16:6-7, Luke 1:11 and 26-27, Luke 2:9, Luke 24:4-7, Acts 10:6, and Acts 12:7-8).
  
  
• Her first words to them were an assurance she would do no harm (i.e., "don't be afraid," cue pretty much every time in Scripture that a figure from the other realm appears to humans).
  
  
• She did not shield them from troubling ideas, but instead told Francisco and Jacinta their deaths were imminent; seemed almost apologetic when telling Lucia she "must" remain alive on Earth; and warned that mass misery and calamity would soon come if mankind failed to mend its ways (again, cue seemingly countless spiritual injunctions all the way from Genesis to Revelation).
  
  
• And sure enough, misery and calamity did come when people failed to take heed (again, cue examples aplenty from Genesis to Revelation).
  

As with Our Lady of Guadalupe - and as with some other compelling apparitions I've not written of - reasons to affirm the truth of Our Lady of Fatima continued beyond the dates of her 1917 appearances.

For starters, there is the fact that World War II and expansionist Soviet Communism did come to pass.

There is also the matter of inexplicable healings occurring at the Cova da Iria in subsequent years.

Also, there is the matter of inexplicable healings occurring at other locations where soil and water from the Cova da Iria have been taken and applied for that very reason. While this notion of physical ground/elements becoming holy and getting moved from one place to another with tangible effects might at first sound strange to some of us non-Catholics, it does have a biblical basis that is explained well in this eight-minute clip by Michael Heiser.

If your knee jerks uncomfortably over Mary being at the center of what happened at Fatima, please pardon me for sounding like a broken record by again asking you to remember that: 1] both the Catholic and Orthodox churches teach that she only does what God wills; 2] you certainly agree with them about that; 3] both the Catholic and Orthodox churches teach that she directs people to God, not herself; and 4] her own words at Fatima say the same.

And finally, let me add something else. In Mary's third visit to Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta, the one on July 13, 1917, she asked that the following words be spoken when praying the Rosary: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy.

Those words were later made an official (though not mandatory) part of the Rosary and are now recited, 109 years later, by hundreds of millions of Christians around the world.

Like Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta would have said in their native tongue: Que a paz de Cristo esteja convosco.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
    Part I: Introduction
    Part II: The New Eve
    Part III: Genesis to Revelation
    Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant
    Part IV: Historical Perspective
    Part V: Perpetual Virginity
    Part VI: Prayer
    Part VI-b: Worship
    Part VII: Involvement and Femininity
    Part VIII: Our Lady of Guadalupe
    Part IX: On Good Friday
    Part X: Queenship

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken in the Our Lady of Fatima Garden at Christ the King Catholic Church in Tampa, Florida. 

Note #3: There is much I did not include in this post, so I recommend googling away if you have the time. If you are interested in visiting any of the sources I consulted when researching, some of them are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

 

 

Que a paz de Cristo esteja convosco.

warnings at Fatima were that people must turn to and obey God, not her.

came to poor/kids; did not downplay suffering but said you two will die and you basically must live; watching sheep; 

printed tended tohat print ; and when it arrived .had been inventedof humanityI feel the need to reiterate lost 57 years while Lucia at the ages of 10perished at the ages othe following yearin the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, while Lucia 

the got bbefore 

https://web.archive.org/web/20181225102209/https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint/our-lady-of-fatima-485

https://fatimalakewood.com/timeline

https://www.catholic365.com/article/59786/what-happened-at-the-2nd-apparition-at-ftima-june-13-1917.html

https://fatima.org/news-views/the-fifth-apparition-of-our-lady-of-fatima/

https://fatimachurchabq.org/our-lady-of-fatima-miracle

https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/true-story-of-fatima-5915

https://www.facebook.com/theFatimaStatue/posts/1917-portuguese-newspaper-documenting-the-miracle-of-the-sun-at-fatima-/1457205696435025/

https://theotokos.org.uk/fatima-2-october-1917/

https://catholictranslator.substack.com/p/an-unbiased-account-of-the-miracle

http://theotokos.org.uk/article-fatima-october-1917-1/

https://fatimaretreathouse-indy.org/story-of-fatima

https://www.learnreligions.com/the-fatima-prayer-542631

post-Fatima miracles:

https://www.ncregister.com/blog/fatima-s-little-known-miracles-with-earth-and-water

https://fatima.org/news-views/miracles-at-fatima-part-ii/#_ftn1

and eventually and set the stage for communism to the thronewould massacre the family of Tsar Nicholas   which remains widely considered even today is widelythinkI believe these caes are real and I know they are backed by an abundance of real backed by abundant evidence. overwhelmingthe events in either paragraph of this sentenceabove, was highly regadedto this day is the youngestwas likely fter arriving converted utside the and may peopleMany people feel it belong to Out Lady of Fatima, and since today marks the 108th anniversary of its climactic moment, here I am 

 of FatimaArtwork of her is holy and points to God. And praying to her didn't strike me as bad, since it's not like those saying the prayers ever ask her to do God's job or go against his will.

Her being sinless didn't seem like a stretch, though admittedly, the thought of her remaining perpetually virgin did. But then again, perpetual virginity only seemed like a stretch, for how could the thought of such a singularly remarkable woman having lived in a remarkable way be out of the question?

If my younger self had to pick a specific thing that felt like it had a strong chance of being false, it would have been the title Queen of Heaven, because attaching a royal title to someone known for the very non-royal qualities of humility and servanthood just felt off.

Well, I started this series almost a year ago and have spent much of it encouraging "fellow Protestants" to set aside preconceived notions and look at Mary through the lenses of capital-C Catholicism and capital-O Orthodoxy - and not being a hypocrite where faith is concerned, I have walked that walk myself where this matter of queenship is concerned. 

*     *     *     *     *

My main hang-up with referring to Mary as a queen sprang largely from my Western conception of what it means to be a queen. When those of us from the West and particularly the United States hear that word, we think of monarchy and all the pretentious and authoritarian baggage it entails. To us, a queen is usually a stern individual who rules from on high, not a helper who subjugates herself to the good of others.

The Bible, however, is neither modern nor Western. To properly understand it you must look at it from the non-modern, non-Western context that created it - or at least make an honest effort to look at it from that context - and once you do, things shift.

Its books were produced by ancient Hebrews, for whom the queen was not the king's wife but rather his mother. You see this reflected in the Davidic line - to which Jesus belonged - when you consider that in all four Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles, when new kings get coronated, their mothers are named while their wives go unmentioned.

Think also of the fact that when Bathsheba's husband David was king, she "bowed with her face to the ground and paid homage to the king" (1 Kings 1:31) yet when her son Solomon was king, it was he who "rose to meet her and bowed down to her" (1 Kings 2:19).

And don't downplay the significance of 1 Kings 2:19 going on to say that Bathesheba "sat on his right," for in biblical terns, to be situated to the right of a powerful person meant you too had a level of authority. This is why Jesus is repeatedly said to be "at the right hand" of the Father.

Scripture's original readers and hearers wouldn't need to be told that Bathsheba's motherhood is what made her queen because it went without saying. When they heard Jesus described in kingly ways - you know, King of Kings, King of the Jews, King of Israel - they likewise would have thought of his mother in queenly ways, especially in light of Revelation 12:1 depicting her with "a crown of twelve stars."

When you consider that Jesus described himself as a kind of king, what would have been strange is for early Christians to not think of Mary as a kind of queen.

*     *     *     *     *

In light of the above, I feel like I could go ahead and end this post right now, but first I want to add that it wasn't helpful that the first time I heard the word "queen" associated with Mary, it came in the packaging of the phrase "Queen of Heaven." The concept is more properly called "Mary's queenship," and it certainly would have landed on my ears better if that was how I first heard it rendered.

Regardless, if I had applied more thought back whenever that was, I should have grasped that Heaven is a kind and serving realm and thus I should have concluded that being called its queen is not on par with being called monarchical and authoritarian. Unfortunately, my reactive brain did take it to mean monarchical and authoritarian, then erroneously assumed that calling someone a queen of Heaven, which is "higher" than Earth, implies that person is even more monarchical and authoritarian than a monarch on Earth.

When I type it out like that, the error of my gut reaction is clear. When I remember what Heaven actually is and take into account what queen meant to ancient Hebrews, there is no reason to recoil from the thought of Mary as queen. But my brain recoiled simply because of the preconceived notions I held as an American, and I'm convinced I am far from alone in that, and, getting back to where I want to go with this section: Queen of Heaven is just one of many phrases that are used to evoke Mary's queenship, and if I had heard any of the others first, I would have reacted differently.

Only one of the 22 chapter titles in this Fulton Sheen classic refers to Mary in queenly ways, and does so by calling her Queen of Mercy. That fits beautifully, and bears no contrast to those qualities of humility and servanthood I mentioned earlier. Queen of Mercy feels right even with modern Western/American pre-programming, does it not?

Mary is also called Queen of Martyrs, Queen of Peace, Queen of Christians, Queen of Saints, and Queen of Angels. When you recall again what queen meant in the culture whence Christ deliberately came to Earth through her, none of those appellations should seem off-putting to a person who believes in Christ's divinity.

I will close by quoting from the aforementioned chapter from Sheen's book: "There are many sheaves in the field that the priests and sisters and the faithful are unable to gather in. It is Mary's role to follow these reapers to gather the sinners in... It is easy for the brothers of Christ to call on the Father, but it is not easy for the strangers and the enemies. This role Mary plays. She is not only the Mother of those who are in the state of grace but also the Queen of those who are not."

On that note, as they say in France: Profitez de vos bénédictions.

Note #1: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
    Part I: Introduction
    Part II: The New Eve
    Part III: Genesis to Revelation
    Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant
    Part IV: Historical Perspective
    Part V: Perpetual Virginity
    Part VI: Prayer
    Part VI-b: Worship
    Part VII: Involvement and Femininity
    Part VIII: Our Lady of Guadalupe
    Part IX: On Good Friday

Note #2: The photo at the beginning of this post was taken in the Our Lady of Fatima Garden at Christ the King Catholic Church in Tampa, Florida. 

Note #3: If you're interested in listening to a deeper dive into the topic of how "the queen was the mom," this eighteen-minute presentation by Brant Pitre does a great job delving into it.