“Tell King Louis XIV of France to consecrate the country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”
This was Jesus’ command to the future Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque before she died on October 17, 1690.
Jesus desired to be honored with magnificence into the palaces of kings and princes, honored as much as he has been despised, humiliated and outraged in his passion,” Emile Bougaud says in Life of Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque.
The king of France refused to obey. A hundred years after, on June 17, 1789, the king of France, Louis XVI, was stripped of his power by the third estate and four years later was executed by guillotine.
As promised, all happened
Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of the three children who witnessed the apparition of the Blessed Virgin on October 13, 1917, in Fatima, died on February 13, 2005, short of two months for her 98th birthday.
Both Francisco Marto and his sister Jacinta died at an early age of 11 and 10, respectively. Both were canonized by Pope Francis on May 13, the First Centennial of the First Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima.
The Blessed Mother pronounced six prophecies that all came true—the miracle of the sun on October 13, 1917; end of World War on November 11, 1918; death of Francisco Marto on April 4, 1919; death of Jacinta Marto on February 20, 1920; the Great Light of January 25, 1938; and World War II.
The Catholic Church has given the public the prophetic revelations at Fatima its full approbation.
Miracle of the sun
From all places of Portugal, 70,000 people came to watch the sun danced on October 13, 1917. Although it was raining the entire morning, the rain stopped and the sun appeared at noontime. When the Blessed Mother opened her hands and ascended, the reflection of her own light was projected on the sun.
Dos Santos narrates in her Memoir: “We beheld Saint Joseph with the child Jesus and Our Lady in white with a blue mantle beside the sun. Saint Joseph and the child Jesus were seen to bless the people, and traced the sign of the cross with their hands.
“When the apparition disappeared, Our Lord and Our Lady appeared…the Lord blessed the world and vanished.
“The sun cast different colors—yellow, blue and white. It trembled constantly. It looked like a revolving ball of fire falling upon the Earth. The third time it spun in a zigzag motion, it started to fall on Earth so the people cried, prayed and begged for mercy and made acts of contrition.”
Described as a “dreadful sensation,” all the people, amazed by the miracle, wept and prayed. It is a miracle, too, that the people, drenched with rain who had been kneeling on the muddy grounds, but appeared all dry and in clean clothes later.
Even the people who lived 25 miles from Fatima and were unbelievers witnessed the miracle of the sun—fading and glowing, giving off shafts of myriad hues, which colored people, trees earth and air.
The Lady, likewise, confided to the three children on July 13, 1971, her third apparition, a Great Secret in three parts: “The vision of hell, where the souls of poor sinners go; a public and solemn ceremony of the consecration of Russia at a future date; and the third secret which involves the vision of a post-apocalyptic world with a future pope executed on a hill, before a cross outside a devastated city along with priests, bishops, religious and members of the laity,” according to The Fatima Timeline.
Our Lady’s requests unheeded
On July 16, 1926, dos Santos entered the Dorothean Sisters of Tuy. On June 13, 1929, while she was praying at the Holy Hour at the chapel, she witnessed the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, which she “was not permitted to reveal.”
Our Lady then said to her: “The moment has come in which God asks of the Holy Father to make, and to order that in union with Him, and, at the same time, all the bishops of the world, make the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, promising to convert the country on this day of prayer and worldwide reparations,” according to Mark Fellows in Sister Lucia Apostle of Mary’s Immaculate Heart.
In August 1931 in Rianjo, Spain, Jesus told Sister Lucia how very displeased he is “because the Catholic bishops had not yet obeyed his command that they solemnly and publicly consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Jesus said to her: “Make it known to my ministers, they follow the example of the king of France in delaying the execution of my command, like him they will follow him into misfortune. It is never too late to have recourse to Jesus and Mary,” Fr. Nicholas Gruner says in Jesus Tell Us: Make It Known.
In October 1943 the bishop of Fatima wrote Sister Lucia an order to write the Third Secret. The “contents are so terrifying that she could not bear to commit them to paper.”
On January 2, 1944, Our Lady appeared to Lucia in the convent infirmary and bid her to write the Third Secret, and expressly ordered that the secret be revealed to the world not later than 1960.
Asked later why in 1960, Sister Lucia answered: “Because the Blessed Virgin wishes it so, and it will be clearer by then.”
The entire Third Secret was personally given by Sister Lucy to her confessor, the bishop of Gurza, Dom Manuel Ma. Ferreira da Silva, on June 17, 1944, who delivered it on the same day to the bishop of Fatima, Dom Jose Correira da Silva.
On March 25, 1948, the Feast of Anunciation and Holy Thursday, Sister Lucia entered the Carmelite Order and received the name Sister Mary Lucia of the Immaculate Heart.
As the world anxiously awaits the full revelation of the Third Secret, the pope authorized the then-Portuguese news agency, the Agência Noticiosa de Informação, to report that John XXIII has decided that the Third Secret will not be revealed in 1960 and “would probably remain forever under absolute seal,” the Fatima Timeline said.
Sister Lucia was officially forbidden to talk about the Third Secret. Too, she was not allowed to receive any visitor except close relatives and friends she has known for a long time, until her death on February 13, 2005. Her cell in the Coimbra Convent in Portugal was sealed.
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Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.
Image credits: Wikimedia commons