October 13, 1917: The Miracle of the Sun

I am going to relate to you in a brief and concise manner, without any statements which would conceal the truth, what I saw in Fatima on 13 October 1917...I arrived at midday. The rain which had fallen persistently all morning, combined with a blustery wind, continued fretfully, as if threatening to drown everyone. The dull and heavy sky, its dark-grey clouds water-laden, predicted abundant rain for a long time to come.

I remained on the road in the shelter of the hood of my car, looking rather disdainfully toward the place where they said the apparition would be seen, not daring to step on the sodden and muddy earth of the freshly-ploughed field. I was a little more than a hundred metres from the high wooden posts mounted by a rough cross, seeing distinctly the wide circle of people who, with their umbrellas open, seemed like a vast arena of mushrooms. A little after one o'clock [footnote omitted], the children to whom Our Lady, as they declare, appeared and appointed the place, day and hour of the apparition, arrived at the site. Hymns were intoned and sung by the people who gathered around them. At a certain moment, this immense mass of people, so varied and compact, closed their umbrellas and uncoered their heads in a gesture that could have been one of humility or respect, but which left me surprised and bewildered, because now the rain, with a blind persistency, poured down on their heads and drenched them through.

Later, I was told that this crowd, who finished up by kneeling in the mud, had obeyed the voice of a child. It must have been about half past one when there rose up, on the precise spot where the children were, a pillar of smoke, a delicate, slender, bluish column that went straight up about two metres, perhaps above their heads and hten evaporated. The phenomenon lasted for some seconds and was perfectly visible to the naked eye...It was repeated yet a second and third time. On these three occasions, and especially on the last one, the slender posts sstood out distinctly in the dull grey atmosphere.

While I continued looking at the place of the apparitions in a serene, if cold expectation of something happening, and with diminishing curiosity, because a long time had passed without anything to excite my attention, I heard a shout from thousands of voices, and saw the multitude which straggled out at my feet, here and there concentrated in small groups round the trees, suddenly turn its back on the point toward which, up to now, it had directed its attention, and turn to look at the sky on the opposite side...The sun, a few moments before, had broken through the thick layer of clouds that hid it and shone clearly and intensely. I veered toward the magnet which seemed to be drawing all eyes, and saw it as a disc with clear-cut rim, luminous and shining, but which did not hurt the eyes...

It looked like a glazed circular piece cut from a mother-of-pearl shell...It could not be confused, either, with the sun seen through fog (for there was no fog at the time), because it was not opaque, diffused or veiled...The sky was mottled with light cirrus clouds, the blue coming through here and there, but sometimes the sun stood out in patches of clear sky...It was a remarkable fact that one could fix one's eyes on this brazier of heat and light without any pain in the eyes or blinding of the retina...

The sun's disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamour was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during these moments was terrible.

During the solar phenomenon, which I have just described in detail, there were changes of color in the atmosphere...Looking at the sun, I noticed that everything around was becoming darkened. I looked first at the nearest objects and then extended my glance further afield as far as the horizon. I saw everything in an amethyst color. Objects around me, the sky and the atmosphere, were of the same colour. An oak tree nearby threw a shadow of this colour on the ground. Fearing that I was suffering from an affection of the retina...I turned away and shut my eyes, keeping my hands over them to intercept the light. With my back still turned, I opened my eyes and saw that the landscape was the same purple colour as before...Soon after, I heard a peasant who was near me shout out in tones of astonishment: "Look, that lady is all yellow!" In fact, everything both near and far, had changed, taking on the colour of old yellow damask. People looked as if they were suffering from jaundice, and I recall my amusement at seeing them look so ugly and unattractive. Laughter was heard. My own hand was of the same yellow colour...

All these phenomena which I have described, were observed by me in a calm and serene state of mind and without any emotional disturbance. It is for others to interpret and explain them.

Eyewitness account of Dr. Joseph Garrett, professor of natural sciences at Coimbra University, written in December, 1917; from Francis Johnston, Fatima: The Great Sign, TAN Books, 1980, pp. 60-62.

August 22nd: Feast of the Queenship of Mary

This is the International Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Our Lady of Fatima, created in 1947 and blessed by Pope Pius XII. My good friend Jim Nourse took this picture when the statue visited St. John's Cathedral in Boise in May of 2007.

My little chant group is currently studying Tota Pulchra Est, a beautiful hymn appropriate for today. Here is a chorus of men singing the version we are working on. Unfortunately, the quality of the sound is not good, and the words do not match the text, which is reproduced below in Latin and in English; but it's the only version of this particular melody that I could find.



Latin

Tota Pulchra es, O Maria, tota pulchra es,
Et macula non est in te.
Quam speciosa, quam suavis in deliciis
Conceptio illibata!

Chorus:
Veni, veni de Libano, veni, veni de Libano, veni, veni, coronaberis.

Tu progrederis ut aurora valde rutilans,
Affers gaudia salutis.
Per te ortus est Christus Deus, sol justitiae,
O fulgida porta lucis. Chorus

Sicut lilium inter spinas: inter filias
sic tu Virgo benedicta.
Tuum refulget vestimentum ut nix candidum,
Sicut sol facies tua. Chorus

In te spes vitae et virtutis, omnis gratia
Et viae et veritatis.
Post te curremus in odorem suavissimum
Trahentium unguentorum. Chorus

Hortus conclusus, fons signatus, Dei Genitrix,
Et gratiae paradisus;
Imber abiit et recessit, hiems transiit,
Jam flores apparuerunt. Chorus

In terra nostra, vox audita, vox dulcissima:
Vox turturis, vox columbae.
Assume pennas, O Columba formosissima!
Surge, propera et veni. Chorus

English

All fair art thou, O Mary, all fair art thou,
And stain does not exist in thee.
How lovely, how sweet in its delights,
Thy conception unstained.

Chorus:
Come, come from Lebannon,
Come, come from Lebannon,
Come, come, thou shalt be crowned!

Thou goest forth like the dawn exceedingly rose-colored,
Thou bringest the joys of salvation,
Through thee risen is Christ our God, the sun of Justice,
O gleaming portal of light. (Chorus)

Like a lily amidst brambles; among the daughters
So are thou, O Virgin blest.
Thy shining raiment like snow is white,
Even as the sun is the face of thee. (Chorus)

In thee is hope of life and virtue, all the grace
Both of our way and of the truth.
After thee we shall run unto the fragrance most sweet
Of thy attractive ointments. (Chorus)

A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed, God's Mother:
And of grace a paradise;
The rain is over and gone, winter is past,
Now flowers have appeared. (Chorus)

In this land of ours, a voice is heard, a voice most sweet,
The voice of the turtledove, the voice of the dove,
Take flight, O fairest Dove!
Arise in haste and come! (Chorus)

Herewith another, and very beautiful version of Tota Pulchra Est, composed by Ola Gjeilo.

August 9th: Three Martyrs of the 20th Century

In the Third Secret of Fatima, the Blessed Mother gave the children of Fatima a preview of the horrors that lay in store for the world, and especially the Church, if people continued to refuse to reform their lives and do penance for sin. We know that Our Lady's message went unheeded, and the result was the bloodiest century in human history. But God raised up saints amid the wrack and ruin, and on August 9th, the Church remembers three of them.

St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) (1891-1942)

Edith Stein was born in Breslau in 1891 during the festival of Yom Kippur. She was raised up in the Jewish faith, which she abandoned at the age of 13. Possessed of a brilliant intellect, she earned her doctorate in philosophy from the University of Göttingen at the age of 25. The witness of her Catholic friends awakened in her an interest in the Catholic faith; after several years of reading and study, she accepted Baptism in 1922.

From afar, Edith Stein discerned the fate that awaited her people at the hands of the Nazis. In 1933, she wrote: "I had heard of severe measures against Jews before. But now it dawned on me that God had laid his hand heavily on His people, and that the destiny of these people would also be mine." Six years later, in her last will and testament, the child who had been born on the Day of Atonement would offer herself up for the sake of atonement: "Even now I accept the death that God has prepared for me in complete submission and with joy as being his most holy will for me. I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death...so that the Lord will be accepted by His people and that His Kingdom may come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world."

In 1934, Edith Stein entered the Carmel and took the name Theresa Benedicta of the Cross. Anti-Semitic legislation forced her to give up her teaching career; in 1938, her order smuggled her out to the Netherlands. However, there the Nazis eventually caught up to her and her sister Rose (also a convert). In his homily on the occasion of her canonization, Pope John Paul II recounts how, just before her deportation, the saint dismissed the idea of being rescued: "Do not do it! Why should I be spared? Is it not right that I should gain no advantage from my Baptism? If I cannot share the lot of my brothers and sisters, my life, in a certain sense, is destroyed."

On August 9, 1942, God accepted the oblation that St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross had offered up four years earlier. On that day, she and her sister Rose were murdered in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. She was beatified on May 1, 1987 and canonized on October 11, 1998.

Bl. Franz Jägerstätter (1907-1943)

Bl. Franz has appeared in this space before -- once on the occasion of his beatification in 2007 and once in response to shrill demands that the Pope apologize on behalf of the Catholic Church for the Holocaust. But to truly appreciate the heroism of this humble, uneducated Austrian farmer -- inspired in part by the example of St. Thomas More, who struggled under similar circumstances -- it is necessary to understand how utterly alone he was in his decision to die rather than fight for the Nazi regime. Chris Gillibrand has his story in two parts at Catholic Church Conservation. It is a must-read.

Bl. Ceferino Jimenez Malla, OPL (1861-1936)

Bl. Ceferino was born in 1861 in Catalonia, Spain, the son of Gypsies. Although he had very little education, he possessed a sharp intellect and was a very successful businessman, and even served as a city councilman. He married late in life, and adopted a niece as his own daughter. He accepted Baptism as an adult, and was active in his parish as a catechist, choir director and Rosary leader. In 1926, he became a Third Order Dominican. Bl. Ceferino's sanctity was such that people always made sure to be on their best behavior in his presence.

Bl. Ceferino was arrested for hiding priests during the Spanish Civil War, and was offered clemency if he would throw away his rosary and renounce the Catholic faith. He refused to do so. On August 8, 1936, he was murdered by firing squad. He was beatified on May 4, 1997 by Pope John Paul II -- the first Gypsy to be so honored by the Church.

July 13, 1917: The Secrets of Fatima

It was 92 years ago today, amid the raging turmoil of the First World War and the Bolshevik revolution, that the Blessed Mother revealed a three-part secret to Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco in the Cova da Iria at Fatima. The secret was a message of hope, but also a warning that -- if it had been heeded -- might have averted the unprecedented horrors of the 20th century.

This was Mary's third appearance to the children. The first time, May 13, 1917, when she promised the children that they would go to heaven, they were alone. The second time, when she foretold that Francisco and Jacinta would go to heaven soon, but Lucia would have to remain on earth for some time (i.e., 88 years!), they were accompanied by a few dozen curious onlookers. This time, five thousand people came to see what there was to see.

When the Lady came, there was something for the crowd to see, and to feel: though they could not see what the children saw, they did see a small cloud came to rest over the holm oak where the Lady had previously appeared, and feel the scorching July heat suddenly cool. Ti Marto, the father of Francisco and Jacinta, could hear what he described as a buzzing like a horse-fly in a bottle.

But the children saw the Lady herself. She asked them to sacrifice themselves for sinners, and taught them a prayer to say whenever they made a sacrifice. Then the first part of the secret:

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.

Then the second part of the secret:

We then looked up at Our Lady, who said to us so kindly and so sadly:

“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate 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 of the Church and of the Holy Father. 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 of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”

In 1929, Lucia, now Sr. Lucia, experienced another apparition during a nocturnal Holy Hour, in which the Blessed Mother asked for the Holy Father, in union with all the world's bishops, to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate Heart.

As for the third part of the secret, Sr. Lucia committed it to writing under obedience in 1944, and put it in an envelope on which she wrote that the secret should not be revealed before 1960. She later said that the Blessed Mother had not told her to do this; she had done it on her own on account of an intuition that the secret would not make sense until after 1960. The Third Secret, as it came to be known, was finally revealed in 2000, at the beatification of Francisco and Jacinta Marto.

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 splendour 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 step, 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 Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.

Today, two controversies still swirl around the secrets of Fatima: one, based on the idea that the Third Secret has still not been revealed (and that Rome's interpretation of the Secret is therefore bogus); and two, based on the idea that the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart has still not been done as asked. As to the first controversy, Sr. Lucia herself stated categorically that the secrets have all been revealed, and confirmed the interpretation.

As to the second controversy, it is certain that the collegial consecration took decades to accomplish; but Sr. Lucia stated categorically that the collegial consecration has been accomplished. On October 31, 1942, Pope Pius XII consecrated the whole world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Sr. Lucia, stated that although this act of consecration would result in the war being shortened, it was not what the Blessed Mother had asked for. Ten years later, Pius explicitly consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart, but not in union with all the world's bishops. It was not until March 25, 1984* that Pope John Paul II consecrated the whole world to the Immaculate Heart, in union with all the world's bishops. Although the act of consecration did not specifically mention Russia by name -- one of the reasons some take issue with it -- it does entrust those nations and persons most in need of consecration. It also incorporates by reference the consecrations of Pius XII, one of which does mention Russia by name.

It is further alleged that the consecration was not effective because evil still has so much sway in Russia. This of course ignores the fact that the Soviet Union was dead within five years of the consecration. It also ignores the fact that the Blessed Mother never promised that evil would be totally eradicated before the Last Judgment. Most of all, it ignores the fact that the Blessed Mother asked for people to amend their lives and say the Rosary every day in order to avert disaster. Her requests were not heeded in 1917, and disaster was not averted. They must not have been heeded afterward either, since it the collegial consecration took so long to accomplish. Perhaps the long delay is also the reason the results of the consecration, though quite dramatic, were not dramatic enough to impress the skeptics. By 1984, Russia had had many years to spread her errors throughout the world, and there is still much damage to be undone.

But on July 13, 1917, the Blessed Mother reminded us of the remedies for this damage that are within easy reach: prayer and penance. This message is as timely now as it was 92 years ago.

*It occurs to me, as I write this, that this was the very day I received the Sacrament of Confirmation.