By Michael H. Brown
We’ve been reporting on a new book about Fatima visionary Lucia dos Santos — the best book pertaining to the apparitions in recent memory — but there’s too much to summarize in an article or even a series of them. The book has to be read in its length.
Nonetheless, as far as the most galvanizing aspect of those appearances — the legendary three secrets — we can summarize that several mysteries and controversies apparently have been solved, according to the nuns who lived with Lucia and authored this book (A Pathway Under the Gaze of Mary, published by the World Apostolate of Fatima).
For decades, those who followed the apparitions have been puzzled by a cryptic remark that Sister Lucia later said was at the end of the second secret or the beginning of the third and stated, “In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved etc.” That was followed by the famous and mysterious third secret that was not revealed until June of 2000. When it was finally made public, the image reported bore no relation to Portugal, leaving the mystery and confusion intact.
In the book, however, the nuns say that on one occasion, as she was meditating, Sister Lucia, who virtually never spoke about the messages, had “let slip” that “if Portugal does not approve abortion, then it is safe, but if approved it will have much to suffer.
“For the sin of the person, the person is responsible and pays for it, but for the sin of the nation all the people pay for it because rulers who enact unjust laws do so on behalf of the people who elected them.”
Add the nuns, in the book, “Today Portugal is under the weight of the three social sins that require reparation and conversion: divorce, abortion, and the civil marriage between persons of the same sex. It is a great moral crisis that explains all other crises. A body sick with gangrene does better with treatments, but while the disease improves, treatment does not eradicate the source of evil, and death will be the end.”
Thus: abortion appears to be integrated into the Fatima appearances, at least in Sister Lucia’s later interpretations.
As reported earlier this week (5/5/15), the book also reveals that Sister Lucia had an “enlightenment” which adds details to the third secret. It had to do with the angel’s flaming sword touching the earth — not just to start what appeared to be a potential fire or war, most probably a nuclear holocaust (until Mary quenched it) but to affect the axis of the earth [see previous account]. Not just a fiery nuclear war but some form of global disaster seems to have been implied by what the three children (Lucia and two cousins) saw.
The book also makes clear Sister Lucia believed, apparently based on further communication with the Blessed Mother, that while consecrations of Russia to the Immaculate Heart — as requested at Fatima — were not fully accomplished by Pope Pius XII in 1942 nor the first such ceremony conducted by John Paul II in 1981, John Paul’s second consecration, on March 25, 1984 (after he was shot on the Fatima feast day and became intently involved with the Fatima messages), was indeed accepted by the Blessed Mother, who continued to appear to Lucia after the famous 1917 apparitions.
Russia was mentioned prominently in the first two Fatima secrets and it was immediately after the 1984 consecration that Communism fell in the Eastern Bloc nations and then — incredibly — Russia itself.
The nuns say that Sister Lucia was alternately amused and upset by those who argued that the formal part of the third secret, given to her in 1917, was not revealed by the Vatican in 2000. She told them repeatedly that it was. The seer also confided that Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state — often accused by critics of covering up the true third secret — was as earnest in seeking what it said as others.
“The secret was fully revealed in 2000, just as Sister Lucia wrote it and sent it enclosed in a sealed envelope to Bishop José Correia da Silva,” says the book. “She herself attested to its authenticity several times before its revelation to the public May 13, 2000, in Fatima. She confirmed her writing several times in front of witnesses after receiving news that its authenticity was questioned. Then, in December of 2003, His Eminence Cardinal Bertone visited her and she again gave him the answer: the secret has been fully revealed. She then added, Some people are never happy! It is no matter.” Add the nuns: “It was painful for Sister Lucia to hear the insistence by some that the third part of the Secret was not fully revealed. She lamented: ‘If only they live what is the most important thing, which has already been said… They only concern themselves with what is left to be said, instead of complying with the request that was prayer and penance.'”
In fact, Our Lady’s request for First Saturday devotion — conveyed in the secrets — is rarely spoken about or followed.
While not part of the formal secret, there remains the intriguing “enlightenment” that she revealed to her confreres in 1944 (on the earth’s axis): “The tip of the spear as a flame unlatches and touches the axis of the earth. It shudders. Mountains, cities, towns, and villages with their inhabitants are buried. The sea, the rivers, and the clouds emerge from their limits, overflowing and bringing with them in a whirlwind houses and people in numbers that are not possible to count. It is the purification of the world as it plunges into sin. Hatred and ambition cause the destructive war!”
Thus does Fatima continue to play out.
Axis of the earth. Abortion. In the opinion of her colleagues, same-sex marriage.
Have the three secrets something further in store for the world?
[resources: A Pathway Under the Gaze of Mary and The Final Hour]
[see also: Michael Brown retreat in Vancouver, Canada and Spirit Daily pilgrimage to Lourdes, Avila, Fatima]
