Day 2 - 6 May / 6 October
In Fatima… We saw yesterday how on a spring day in 1916 the Angel first appeared to Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, sent to prepare them for the apparitions of Our Lady the following year. Several months later, the children were sheltering from the hot midday sun in the shade of some trees near the well of the Santos’ farm, playing some of their favourite games, when the Angel appeared before them for the second time. He began with a gentle rebuke:
“What are you doing? Pray! Pray very much! The Hearts of Jesus and Mary have designs of mercy on you. Offer prayers and sacrifices constantly to the Most High.”
Lucia spoke up, and asked how they were to make sacrifices. The Angel replied:
“Make of everything you can a sacrifice, and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners. You will thus draw down peace upon our country. I am its Angel Guardian, the Angel of Portugal. Above all, accept and bear with submission, the suffering which the Lord will send you.”
It is clear that the urgency of the Angel’s words really struck the three children and inspired in them a much deeper and more disciplined prayer life as well as an understanding of the importance of making sacrifices for others. As Lucia wrote:
“[The Angel’s] words were indelibly pressed upon our minds. They were like a light which made us understand who God is, how he loves and desires to be loved, the value of sacrifice, how pleasing it is to Him and how, on account of it, He grants the grace of conversion to sinners. It was for this reason that we began, from then on, to offer to the Lord all that mortified us, without, however, seeking out other forms of mortification and penance, except that we remained for hours on end with our foreheads touching the
ground, repeating the prayer the Angel had taught us.”
Reflection… Try to imagine the heavy, perhaps oppressive heat of that summer’s day in Fatima. The three children had taken their sheep out to graze early in the morning, and had now brought them back to the cool of the Santos family farm where they could shelter in the shade of the barn. It is siesta time, and the children are perhaps lazily filling the time with simple games as they too escape the blaze of the sun under the trees around the well...
What a contrast to all of this is the intensity and urgency of the Angel. The children are being entrusted with a mission which is to bring hope and healing to the broken world outside their village retreat, and it is time for them to wake up out of their torpor and commit themselves to this mission. Everything begins with prayer (Pray! Pray very much!).
As with the Pardon prayer at the first apparition (My God, I believe, I adore…), their prayer is firstly to lead them into a deeper relationship with God, but they are also to pray for the conversion of those who do not believe and hope in God. In this second apparition the Angel expands this to reveal to them that they are also to express this concern for those who reject or who are indifferent to God through deliberate acts of personal sacrifice (Make of everything you can a sacrifice… in supplication for the conversion of sinners). This is to be a golden thread running through their daily lives in their actions and attitudes.
Just like the Angel to the children, God is calling us out of our torpor and challenging us to a new urgency and focus. Firstly for a deeper living of our own faith, but also, as with the three children, we are to focus on the conversion of others, offering daily acts of sacrifice in reparation for the sins of our world. What kind of sacrifice? A surrendering of something we hold dear or desire, a surrendering of our will or personal comfort, and giving it to God as an act of love for the good of others. At the epicentre of our faith stands the cross - Jesus’ act of total self-giving and obedience to overcome human selfishness and disobedience. “Love one another as I have loved you” as Jesus teaches us.
The problem is that we have put profit before people, weapons before health care, and short-term pleasure and gain before the long-term health of our planet. We need to wake up! We need a new urgency in our prayer that real, healing change will come upon our world. And, yes, we need to make sacrifices in our own daily lives - not something which is spiritually very fashionable these days but which our whole Christian tradition teaches us is absolutely central to God’s plan of salvation. We are to pray for those who do not pray, love for those who struggle to love.
