A hundred years ago, during the Fatima apparition on July 13, 1917, there was mention of the Rosary, a vision of hell, direction to help sinners, talk of consecration to the Immaculate Heart and consecration of Russia.

Our Lady began by reminding the children: “I want you to come back here on the thirteenth of next month. Continue to say the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary, to obtain the peace of the world and the end of the war, because only she can obtain it.”

That is a directive, an instruction, a motherly order that we should heed and practice now more than ever. In the last 100 years, how many did so?

Next, she told them when she would reveal her identity and what way she would provide for people to accept the apparitions as true. “You must come here every month, and in October I will tell you who I am and what I want. I will then perform a miracle so that all may believe.”

Then, Our Lady set the scene and gave the children — and us — a way to help others so they would not end up as part of the vision she was going to show them next. She said:

Make sacrifices for sinners, and say often, especially while making a sacrifice: O Jesus, this is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for offences committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Frightening Vision 

When Our Lady told this to the children, she opened her hands as she had during the two previous apparitions. Lucia described what happened. “The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire.”

In The True Story of Fatima, Father John de Marchi recounted how Jacinta’s father Ti Marto witnessed the children’s actions in the Cova da Iria that day. He remembered “that Lucia gasped in sudden horror, that her face was white as death, and that all who were there heard her cry in terror to the Virgin Mother, whom she called by name,” wrote Father de Marchi. “The children were looking at their Lady in terror, speechless, and unable to plead for relief from the scene they had witnessed.”

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