THE MESSAGE OF FATIMA

The Message of Fatima shows the fundamental attitude of the Church that has to face the difficulties and the sufferings in every time and particularly today

Conversion, penace, prayer

According to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, “the permanent conversion, the penance, the prayer and the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity” constitute the fundamental answer that all and each one must give before a scenery of a suffering Church, until the end of the world, as Jesus announced.

The suffering of the Church that comes from the outside, but comes also from the sin that exist inside the Church, which led Benedict XVI to talk about a «profound need» of the Church «to learn the penance, to accept purification, ask forgiveness on the one hand, but also the need for justice. Forgiveness does not replace justice».

During the interview with the journalists in his flight to Portugal, on May 11th, 2010, the Pope Emeritus underlined also the comfort – also transmitted by Our Lady in Fatima with the promise of the triumph of her Immaculate Heart -, that, despite evil, the forces of good resist and that the kindness of God will prevail.

The «Lady more brilliant than the Sun» asks the three children if they are willing to offer themselves to bear all sufferings God would send «as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and of supplication for the conversion of sinners».

Concerning the rosary, Our Lady asks to pray it every day in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war (I World War). This request is repeated in the other five Apparitions in Fatima. 

Devotion to the Immaculate Maria's heart

One hundred years later, this Message continues relevant, underlined cardinal Rino Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization by recalling that «objectively, the Message of Fatima speaks of evangelization».

As Pope Francis tells us the first thing about evangelization is that it «is done on one’s knees». The representation that we always have on Fatima is this: the little shepherds on their knees, praying, cardinal Rino Fisichella said in an interview to the magazine Fatima XXI of the Shrine of Fatima. 

Timelessness of the message

The conversion of the world is as needed today as it was hundred years ago when the Lady of the Rosary asked it, he underlined, referring that in other times it was a conversion of the atheism, and today is the conversion of the indifference.

«It is a Europe that wants to build itself only upon an economic and financial dimension. The Church, with the message given in Fatima, reminds that there is a much deeper dimension that touches every man and woman, and that there is a religious horizon that allows us to look at our own existence by reexamining the parameters with which and upon which Europe can be built» he added.

Mgr. Antonio Marto, bishop of Leiria-Fatima, corroborates by saying that the Message didn’t lose its timeliness nor its importance, for it didn’t stop in time and didn’t refer only to a given period or a personal experience of the little seers. 

«Maybe only today, a century later, we are able to understand more profoundly the truth and all the reach of the message», Mgr. Antonio Marto said in a Lectio Magistralis in the Portuguese Catholic University, in Lisbon, February 2016.

«After the Scriptures, [the Message] is maybe the strongest and more impressive complaint of sin in the world which call the whole Church and the whole world to a serious examination of conscience», he added by reminding the words of John Paul II who says that the Message of Fatima is addressed in a particular way to the men of today. 

Consoling Promise

Therefore, the Message of Fatima «is a very serious warning and, at the same time, a consolation of theological hope: evil is defeated by the Trinitarian love revealed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus, by the love of Mary for us and our conversion».

In other words, it remains up-to-date and necessary, he refers by quoting Benedict XVI: «We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete». 

Mgr. Antonio Marto reminds that it is a Message that ends with a «comforting promise»: «In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph … and a period of peace will be granted to the world», that Pope interpreted as: «In the end, the Lord is more powerful than evil and Our Lady is for us the visible, motherly guarantee of God’s goodness, which is always the last word in history», i.e., a story with dramas in which the merciful love of God will always triumph.