Before the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, according to the Memoirs of the Carmelite nun Sister Maria Lúcia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart, an angel appeared three times to her and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto. The angel taught the children two prayers which became known as the Prayers of the Angel.
The first angelic encounter took place during the spring of 1916. Amid unexpectedly windy conditions, while seeing a dazzling white light that assumed the form of a young man, the heavenly image came toward the shepherd children and said, “Do not be afraid. I am the angel of peace. Pray with me.” Then, the angel told them to say, “My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love You. I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love You.” In the summer of that same year, the angel appeared to them a second time. This time, the angel identified himself as The Angel of Portugal. He chastised them for not doing what he had asked them to do in the previous apparition. The children’s reaction was like having their souls seared with a burning torch. The angel showed them who God is, the immense love that God has, and how to show their love for God to Him. The divine messenger declared the salvific role of sacrifice and reparation, especially when undergone for sinners.
The timing for the third angelic apparition remains unclear, likely either late September or early October 1916. The children, tending their flocks, knelt and recited the prayer the angel entrusted to them during the initial apparition. Surrounded by that strange light, the angelic being manifested himself before them. He held a chalice in one hand and a host above it with drops of blood dripping into it. With the chalice remaining in mid-air, the angel knelt with the children and told them to repeat the following three times: “Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly, and I offer You the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He is offended. And by the infinite merits of His most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg the conversion of poor sinners.” The angel gave the host to Lucia and the contents of the chalice to Jacinta and Francisco saying this as he did so: “Eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ terribly outraged by the ingratitude of men. Offer reparation for their sakes and console God.”
Instructed in regard to prayer by the angel, given an understanding of reparative suffering, while receiving Holy Communion from the angel’s hands, the children were being spiritually prepared for the subsequent apparitions of the Immaculate Virgin Mary.
The Marian Apparitions & the Virgin’s Message
Beginning on 13 May 1917, those three illiterate children, Lucia Santos, Francisco Marto, and his sister Jacinta, who were between the ages of 10 and 13, saw a vision of a Lady who reappeared on five subsequent occasions (June 13, July 13, August 19, September 13, and October 13). They often took their families’ few sheep to graze. Two favorite grazing areas were the hillside facing Aljustrel, near an outcropping called Loca do Cabeco (Place of the Head) and the Cova da Iria (Cove of Irene) both at some distance beyond Fátima. At first one, then the other of those apparitions eventually occurred that would change the course of those children’s lives and the religious history of the 20th century.
The message of Fatima can be summarized into two essential elements and, in some way or other, all the other elements of Fatima can be related in a certain way. First and foremost is the singular role of the Immaculata in the economy of salvation, coupled with devotion to the Immaculate Heart for the individual life of faith and for humanity’s future. To those two elements, all the other aspects of the apparitions are linked by the spiritual practices encouraged by the Angel and by the Lady, as well as the prophetic content of the message of Fatima, upon which the fate of the world depends.
The Three Secrets of Fatima
The first secret was a vision of hell revealed on 13 July 1917. The second was that the world war, raging at that time, would soon end, though another world war was in the offing unless the world stopped offending God or if Russia did not convert to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. These two secrets were disclosed, but the third secret Lucia did not reveal due to her belief that the Virgin had told her not to do so. The third part of the secret was written down “by order of His Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and the Most Holy Mother” on January 3, 1944. Then, in June 1944, the sealed envelope containing the third secret was delivered to Bishop Silva of Leiria, where it stayed until 1957, when it was finally delivered to Rome. On May 13, 2000, 83 years after the first apparition of the Lady to the children in the Cova da Iria, the Third Secret would finally be released, concerning the 20th century persecution of Christians culminating in the failed assassination of Pope Saint John Paul II on May 13, 1981. That fateful day happened to be the 64th anniversary of the first apparition of the Lady at Fátima.
In the first apparition, the Lady of Fatima declared, “Pray the Rosary every day, in order to obtain peace for the world, and the end of the war” and at her final appearance, she revealed herself as Our Lady of the Rosary. Sweet Heart of Mary, be my salvation!
Picture by L. Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (Lmbuga), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Nature and dignity 
