The Call to Peace: the heart of the message of Our Lady of Fatima

28 Jun 2017

By The Record

As many readers of The Record Magazine and The eRecord will know, this year marks the Centenary of the apparitions of Mary, the Mother of the Lord, to the children at Fatima in Portugal.

While the Church leaves us free to form our own opinions as to the veracity of these apparitions, the Church has nevertheless officially proclaimed Fatima to be “worthy of belief”.

In the last one hundred years, many popes have spoken about Fatima and recent popes have all visited this shrine in Portugal. Saint John Paul II was well known for his devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, attributing his survival of the attempt on his life on 13 May 1981 to her motherly intervention. In recent days, Pope Francis too has visited the shrine at Fatima. He did so to mark the centenary of the apparitions and to canonise the two youngest children of Fatima, brother and sister Francisco and Jacinta. These two young children have now become the youngest non-martyrs ever to be canonised in the history of the Church.

The canonisation of Francisco and Jacinta reminds us all that holiness is not restricted to those who live long lives or perform great deeds. Francisco and Jacinta were not canonised because they saw Our Lady. They were canonised because of the extraordinary courage and fidelity they showed, often in the face of severe opposition, to what they believed the Lord was asking of them through the presence of Mary in their young lives. We should never underestimate the ability of young people to understand the mysteries of God and to respond to his grace at work within them.

After all it was Jesus himself who encouraged us to be like little children for, as he said, “it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs” (Luke 18:16).
The story of Fatima is well known to many Catholics. Mary appeared to Jacinta and Francisco and their older cousin Lucia on six occasions, encouraging them to pray the rosary, to undertake penance or self-denial for the conversion of sinners and to pray for the conversion of Russia and of the world. In 1917, the Russian Revolution was on the horizon and the First World War, the “war to end all wars”, would soon come to an end. In little more than 20 years, the Second World War, even more terrible in destruction, would begin, once again drenching the world in blood.

At the heart of the message of Our Lady at Fatima was the call to pray for peace. This call remains an urgent priority for us in our own time. As we look around the world, we see communities and nations lacerated by war, by violence and by hatred. It seems that the horrors of war know no bounds. While we must do everything we can as individuals, as communities, and as nations to work for peace, it is even more important that we pray for peace. We have just celebrated the mystery of the Lord’s resurrection and his ascension into heaven, followed by the sending of his Holy Spirit.

Central to the message of the Risen Lord, was his promise to give us his gift of peace.
The Lord is always faithful to his promises and he never takes back his love for us, however it remains for us to either open our minds and hearts to receive his gift of peace or to close our hearts and thus contribute to the ongoing cycle of neglect, indifference, hatred and violence in our world. The apparitions of Mary to the children of Fatima one hundred years ago, remind us of the urgency of both working for and praying for peace.

Such prayer, sincerely offered, will enlarge our own hearts and spirits and enable us to become, in the depths of our own being, people of peace. We will then, as Saint Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis’s namesake once prayed, become instruments of peace. As this happens in our lives and, through us, in our families and in our communities, we will be numbered among those who according to Jesus truly are the children of God (Matthew 5:9).

In Saint John’s Gospel, Mary is remembered as the woman who said to the stewards at Cana, “You do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). This has always been the role of Mary in the Church: to point us to Jesus, to lead us to him, and to help us to listen to his word and put it into practice (cf Luke 11:28). Jesus has asked us to be peacemakers. He has promised us that in this way we will be living as children of God.

Let us take to our hearts the encouragement of Mary, the woman who spoke to the three children at Fatima one hundred years ago – You do whatever he, Jesus, tells you.

+ Archbishop Tim Costelloe
Archbishop of Perth

 

From pages 4 to 5  from Issue 8: ‘Aboriginal’ of The Record Magazine