Fatima’s Messages of Love

As discussed in Our Lady of Fatima and the Miracle of the Sun there can be no doubt but that the Miracle of the Sun and the Fatima events took place as reported by numerous people of diverse backgrounds and faith (or non-faith) traditions. God was pleading for our attention. And he was placing his stamp of approval on the claims of the three innocent children, saying, “Listen to them!”

And what did Our Lady tell them? During her six appearances, the Heavenly Lady delivered a series of messages that continue to resonate today and will forever. While a lot of publicity has been generated as to the various secrets the Lady gave the children and the vision of hell, the central message delivered at all six visitations was direct, profound and simple: “Pray the Rosary!”

Pray the Rosary

Since praying the Rosary was the nexus of each visit, we need to make certain the reader understands what this devotion is. The Rosary proclaims that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. It condenses Salvation History as presaged in the Old Testament and as finally revealed in the New. When we pray the Rosary, we recall and pray the gospel, and we call upon the Lord’s Blessed Mother to help us find and keep Jesus in our heart. Of necessity, praying the Rosary involves opening our hearts to Mary, and we can petition the Mother of Jesus, referred to as the Mother of God or the Theotokos, to help us with our individual needs and the needs of those we pray for by asking her to advocate before her Son on our behalf. It is both the simplest and yet the most profound of prayers. As Pope John Paul II tells us in his Apostolic Letter, dated October 16, 2002: “With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Redeemer.”

Be sure to visit Understanding the Rosary and associated links.

This message of praying the Rosary probably explains why a great preponderance of non-Catholic Christians ignore Our Lady of Fatima. She tells us to engage in a prayer which they simply do not understand. If more Christians understood how the Rosary could deepen their faith, the news about Our Lady of Fatima would be more widely distributed and with a far greater intensity and accuracy than now is the case.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary

Sometimes other Christians avoid thinking about Our Lady of Fatima or view her as a fraud because some of her messages or requests seem to fly in the face of their particular faith tradition. Mary’s request for devotion to her Immaculate Heart comes to mind. Devotion to a heart!? And why to Mary’s? For many, this is indeed a puzzling request and seems unchristian, wrong and misdirected.

Here’s the brief answer:

Perhaps nothing reveals the loving God more than Mary’s request for devotion to her Immaculate Heart. That’s because the Immaculate Heart of Mary is pure love. It is love directed toward God the Father, who created all things and sent us His Son. It is love directed toward the Holy Spirit, which in turn is pure love. It is the same Holy Spirit which overshadowed Mary and led to the conception of Jesus. It is love directed to Jesus, her son, who loved so much he was willing to die for us and reposed within her for nine months. It was her blood and nourishment that flowed through her heart and through him. It was his blood that flowed through his heart back to hers. It was not possible for there to be a more intimate and loving communion. Who among us from the beginning of time could possibly have a greater and more intimate relationship with Jesus than his mother? Her love for him is pure and unabated.

This is the Immaculate Heart of Mary — a limitless physical and spiritual love for God with no expectation of receiving anything in return. Unlike the love exchanged between us and Jesus which is the love generated by Jesus toward us, and then our response in love, the love from the Immaculate Heart of Mary to God is a love (insomuch as it is possible) initiated by Mary not as a response but as an uncompelled and unrestrained act. When we devote ourselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary we join her pure love directed toward God, recognizing that our love flows through and joins Mary in praise and honor. Our devotion does not stop at Mary’s heart. There is no fence or barricade terminating its journey. Instead, her soul “proclaims the greatness of the Lord,” and we join in that proclamation so that all our love and her love is directed toward God. I suppose one way of expressing the difference is that each of us is a capillary of love and devotion which reaches a central limitless magnifying transmitter we call the Blessed Mother. She magnifies and joins our devotion to hers and they become a mighty river coursing towards God.

What a beautiful way to enter into and remain in the presence of Jesus! And if she didn’t instruct the children for a devotion to her Immaculate Heart, then Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta were some pretty imaginative and astute child theologians, ages 7, 8 and 10.

Fatima: Messages of Love

As we close this page we need to look at the totality of messages delivered by our Heavenly Visitor. The complete narratives are available at The True Story of Fatima. I urge you to slowly read through these accounts. As you do you will see that what ties all the visitations and messages together is love. Undisguised and profound is its presence.

Finally, you should note that Mary almost always is shown with her hands folded in prayer and holding the rosary. She is directing attention to heaven; she doesn’t want the focus to stop with her, but to continue heavenward – and to Jesus.

The story of Fatima is not complete without referring to some more messages, both explicit and implicit, delivered by the Blessed Virgin. They confirm and strengthen our faith.

  • God loves us with an eternal love. his love was so intense that he sent his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. The mere presence of Mary at Fatima and her messages confirm this central doctrine of Christianity.
  • God continuously makes himself available to us.
  • We cannot understand God and what, why, or how he exists and created us. We can only accept and respond to his love. This is what he expects from us. Mary didn’t just appear to the children and say, “Here I am, the mother of our Lord. You should be happy.” No, she gave specific instructions as to what they were to do – and they did it. She even told Francisco that he needed to pray many Rosaries. His response was positive and obedient. That’s how our relationship with Jesus should be. We know what he did and taught, and now we need to respond.
  • Mary showed Lucia a vision of hell. It was a gruesome and horrifying sight, thereby confirming what Jesus had taught – more than anyone – that hell is very real.

The overarching message conveyed by Our Lady of Fatima was gentleness, love, beauty and truth. The next time you see the initials GLBT in the news think not of their contemporary meaning but think instead of Our Lady and that all of her and what she represents and proclaims is available to those who are humble and rely upon God. That’s not a new message, but it’s one we tend to forget. The ancient Jews who relied upon their own resources when they battled the Philistines, the Arabs and others invariably lost. When their king humbled himself before the Lord and did not turn away from him, the Jews would prevail. Why would anything be different now with his new Chosen People?

Most importantly, these visitations give us proof positive that Jesus loves us with an undying commitment for our salvation. If with full knowledge of the facts, you reject or ignore the appearances by the mother of Our Lord who was sent to us help us find and keep Jesus – well, then you’re not so smart.

Some websites and references

Footnotes and Attributions

The artist of this painting of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was  Leopold Kupelwieser  (1796-1862) and was accessed from Wikipedia.

 Last modified September 8, 2019