Exactly a week ago, we wrote about the famous Secret of Fatima where we featured the first two of the Secrets of Fatima that our Blessed Virgin Mary gave to three young children at the Cova de Iria, Portugal on the months from May to October 1917. These apparitions had the blessings of the Church as on that fateful day in Oct.13, 1917, 70,000 people observed or saw the miracle of the Dancing Sun, where they were drenched by rain and suddenly they were all dried up, but did not feel the heat.
The first part of the Secret was when our Lady of Fatima gave the children a vision of hell, where they were so terrified, they almost died of fright, but our Lady protected them and they survived that ordeal. Indeed, if only we ourselves were given that same vision, I’m sure we would change our evil ways and seek the path to the Lord.
The second secret is the more historic in the sense that this was a prophesy by the Blessed Virgin Mary that came true in our time. This was when she told the children that “The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, famine and persecutions against the church and the Holy Father. That unknown light was often referred to as the “Aurora Borealis” which can only be seen near the North Pole. But even Lucia saw it in her cell inside the convent in Portugal.
The Blessed Mother continued. “To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If My requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions against the Church.”
The poor little uneducated children did not even know what Russia was as they thought she was a woman. But the Vatican who embraced the apparitions as of divine origin, did not obey the commands of the Blessed Virgin Mary and so Russian Communism spread throughout the world and the persecution of Christians continues up to this day in Communist China. Exactly 27 years ago, on March 25, 1984 Pope John Paul finally did this consecration in St. Peter’s Square and soon enough the Soviet Union collapsed together with the Iron Curtain.
One Italian author even dared to blame the previous Popes for not obeying the commands of the Blessed Virgin Mary because if they did as she asked the little children, the world would have avoided the bloodbath of World War II. Indeed, as Italian Catholic writer Antonio Socci wrote, “Many of the Pope’s advisors besieged the Pope with warnings that the act requested by the Virgin would be an open provocation to the Soviet Communist power.” But as we pointed out, Soviet Communism would have fizzled out earlier if that consecration was done prior to World War II.
So now we go to the third and the most enigmatic secret of Fatima, which was contained in a sealed envelop by Sister Lucia and revealed only by the Vatican on June 26, 2000.
“After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand; pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice, ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’.
And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘Something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it’ a Bishop dressed in white ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father’. Other bishops, priests, men and women religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark: Before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting steps, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way.
Having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other bishops, priests, men and women religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angles each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with its sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.” I hope to give an analysis of this in future columns.
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