Return to The Reign of Mary No. 173
The Reign of Mary
No. 173: Letter from the Editor
July 13, 2019
Our Lady of Fatima
Dear Friends in Our Lady,
Praised be Jesus and Mary. It was in the heat of the summer that the Angel of Portugal appeared to the three Fatima children for the second time. Lucia could not recall the date, but it must have been in July or August. It had been a couple months since his first apparition, when the angel taught them the prayer “My God, I believe, I adore, I trust and I love You; I beg pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not trust, and do not love You.” After repeating this prayer, he had said, “Pray thus. The hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of your supplications.
This time he found them playing by the well in back of Lucia’s home. It was midday, the time when people were accustomed to take a siesta, before returning to work after the heat of the day had abated a little. “What are you doing?” He demanded. “Pray! Pray a great deal. The hearts of Jesus and of Mary have merciful designs for you. Offer prayers and sacrifices constantly to the Most High.” From that time the children began to perform sacrifices and to offer many prayers for the conversion of sinners.
Again in the middle of summer, in July of the following year, they were favored with an apparition of Our Lady. Many who have read the story of Fatima look upon the final apparition in October as the most important, because of the spectacular miracle of the sun. But I consider the third apparition to be the most significant. For it was during her third apparition on July 13 that Our Blessed Mother showed the children a vision of the fires of hell.
“Here you see hell,” she had told them, “where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them God wishes to establish in the world the devotion of my Immaculate Heart. If they do what I will tell you, many souls will be saved, and there will be peace. The war is going to end. But if they do not stop offending God, another and worse one will begin in the reign of Pius XI.” These somber words remind us of those tremendous truths of our Faith: the reality of hell and the importance of conversion and repentance for sin. So many souls go to hell, she also said. We have not seen hell, as the children of Fatima did, but we have the solemn teachings of the Church and the revealed word of God, that hell is a reality. And there are so many souls that are on the sure path to hell, because they live in habitual mortal sin and will not amend their lives.
As we enjoy the summer, let us also recall the lessons from Fatima and of our Faith. Let us live God-centered lives, for some day — perhaps sooner than we expect — we shall be called by God to render to Him an account of how we have lived. And let us also pray and sacrifice for poor sinners, that they might be converted and not end up in that abyss of suffering for all eternity. May Our Lady grant to each of us the grace of final perseverance in the Faith and in the grace of God.
In Jesus and Mary,
Fr. Benedict Hughes, CMRI (Email)