Fatima: Personal Sacrifice as a way of being a Missionary

– Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and of supplication for the conversion of sinners?
– Yes, we are willing!
– Then you are going to have much to suffer, but the grace of God will be your comfort.

Central theme of the Fatima message
In the first apparition, soon after the presentation and the petition to the little shepherds to be there on the 13th of the following five months, Our Lady asks the children if they want to offer themselves for the salvation of sinners.

Fatima echoes the way the Christian community interprets the death of Jesus who offered himself as the Lamb without blemish to atone for the sins of mankind. Jesus not only gave his life for us by the act of his death, but also his entire earthly life was a life lived for others; he came not to be served but to serve (Mark 10:45). During his life, Jesus fought sin and every kind of evil, and in the end, it was this very sin that killed him. He died not only for our sins, but also for the cause of our sins.

Jesus fought sin analogically the way our body fights sickness. When a virus or harmful bacterium invades and infects our body, a type of white blood cell called neutrophil attaches itself to the germ because proteins called antibodies have marked the germ for destruction. When the neutrophil catches the germ, it engulfs it in a process called phagocytosis, and dies in the process for the sake of saving the entire body. Jesus took on himself the sin of humanity, dying in the process but saving us from eternal damnation.

What Mary asks of the little shepherds is the solidarity and participation in the passion of Christ, in his unique and most perfect act of reparation for the sins of humanity. The participation in the mystery of redemption of Christ with our voluntary sacrifice overcomes passivity and makes us proactive not only in our own salvation but also in the salvation of others.

This central theme of the Fatima message is also the most difficult to comprehend in our days, but just as Mary did in Lourdes when she came to reaffirm the dogma of her Immaculate Conception, in Fatima she comes to reaffirm the theology of expiation and reparation, which for many seems obsolete and retrograde.

Jesus' death is the expiation for the sins of humanity
The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) – It is the order of things that there are no innocuous or neutral acts; whatever does not promote life, leads to death. It is an undeniable truth that what is good promotes life and what is evil leads to death. We see proofs of this in every evil act we commit. As the saying goes, “evil stays with the one who commits it” and chastisement adheres to wicked actions like an attachment of an email.

There are no evil work that we practice that is not followed by a punishment, which does not come from God, but from the very order of things as the logical consequence of the wicked act committed. God forgives always, man sometimes, but nature neither forgives nor forgets. The evil that we do against human nature or Mother Nature will be paid in one way or another, sooner or later, and sometimes quite heavily.

If Jesus of Nazareth was only a prophet and nothing more then his death would have been seen as the death of a just individual. However, if Jesus besides being true man is also true God, then his death can no longer be interpreted or seen as merely a personal event, but rather an event that has repercussion on humanity represented and created by him.  Since Jesus has resurrected, his death served to kill death – that death to which mankind was afflicted.

Jesus died for our sins, in the sense that it was our sins that killed him, but since Jesus did not stay dead but was resurrected, our sins killed themselves instead; his death is, therefore, the end of death resulting from sins.

God cannot deny the order of things that He created; as we have seen above, belonging to this order of things is the fact that with sin comes a penalty and this penalty is death. Without the divine intervention, we would be like a train running without brakes that is headed towards an irreversible mortal destiny.

John 15:5 – Apart from me you can do nothing – If by our own strength we were able to save ourselves, then there was no need for Christ to come into the world. Sin, however, put us in the bottom of a pit with no possibility of getting out; like being stuck in a quicksand, the more desperate we try to get out the deeper we sink, or in the frigid water of a frozen lake, the more we use the ice for support to get out the more it breaks. On our own, we can never get out from sin and evil.

John 1:29 – Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! – John the Baptist who despite being the son of a priest worked outside the temple sacrificial system. He offered forgiveness of sins through a baptismal purification, and pointed to Jesus as the true Lamb of God who came to substitute himself for the sacrificial lambs of the Jerusalem Temple. Only He who has no sin can pay for the sins of others.

The sacrifice of Christ is the perfect sacrifice because he is the priest, the victim, the altar and the Temple where the sacrifice is offered. Even if something else can be found to be perfect, it can never measure up to Christ's sacrifice because only his sacrifice is sufficient to pay for the sins of all humanity, past, present and future.

In the sacrifice of Christ, the justice of God, the natural order of things is satisfied. Someone without the debt of sin pays the price for sin which is death; furthermore, the goodness, grace and love of God is also satisfied because it is not us who pay but His Son.

To join oneself with the sacrifice of Christ
The mystery of solidarity – We tend to work in solidarity or be united in doing evil as well as good. The idea that we all belong to the Mystical Body of Christ is not only pious but also scientific. Human beings come from a common descent; there are ties that unite the entire humanity from its first appearance on Earth. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, said Neil Armstrong upon stepping for the first time on the moon. It was not the work of a single man, a free entrepreneur, neither in its execution nor in its meaning; in reality, through Armstrong, for him and with him, did mankind arrive on the moon.

Collective spiritual unconsciousness – Freud discovered an instance within our personality called unconsciousness that is made up of what was lived, experienced, repressed, hidden, and forgotten during the first few years of our life when we were not yet aware of ourselves. This material influences our thoughts, feelings and actions in an automatic way that is out of our control; sometimes it comes to consciousness in the form of body language, lapsus linguae or slip of the tongue, and especially in dreams.

Beyond this individual unconsciousness, at a deeper level, Jung, a disciple of Freud, argues that there is a collective unconsciousness. The material that it is made of, no longer has anything to do with one’s individual experiences, but rather with what humanity as a whole experiences.

Each one of our deeds becomes part of a collective “database” in such a way that any individual of the human species is, from birth, capable of doing the most heroic as well as the most heinous and horrific act ever done without being taught. In this way, the individual influences the collective and the collective influences the individual.

The butterfly effect – Small and even miniscule causes can have great effects or consequences. The effects of a major hurricane that is felt here could have been caused by the fluttering of a butterfly thousands of kilometers away, which by disturbing the balance caused the first piece of domino to fall. This also explains the big snow avalanches that bury houses and villages. In human life, there are no innocuous, neutral and inconsequential acts that sooner or later will not have repercussions, positive or negative, on the rest of humanity.

Matthew 16:24 – If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me – Every sacrifice is an immolation of our Ego and everything we do for others is a total altruism which is a sacrifice of the ego. It is only by denying my ego that I can affirm the other, the alter ego. After the sacrifice of Christ, the sacrifices that are pleasing to God are not the gift of something that belongs to me, like the sacrifices of the Old Law, the immolation of lambs and goats, but rather the immolation of my own self.

Tertullian (197 AD) – The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Christians – Through martyrdom, a Christian configures his life to Christ's in an almost absolute way and as a direct path to the Kingdom of God. Furthermore, it is not him alone who gains individually, the Church also gains by his testimony in repeating, renewing and realizing in his life the passion of Christ in the here and now of history. It is above all edifying and encouraging for new Christians, for those who are still in the process of conversion to Christ.

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church. (Colossians 1:24)

This is the text that has been quoted to give biblical foundation to the practice requested by Our Lady soon at the first apparition, to offer sacrifices for the conversion of sinners. It must be made clear that our sacrifices do not have the redemptive value of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, nor do they increase its effectiveness. Therefore, and in this sense, nothing is lacking in the sacrifice of Christ which is perfect and perfection is not perfectible or cannot be perfected further.

Our individual affliction, our cross, the suffering that life hands us can be lived either with meaning or without meaning. The Christian who in all aspects of life sees in Christ as the way, the truth and the life builds his life in Him, joins his sufferings to His. The apostles became joyous when they began to suffer for Christ. (Acts 5:41)

By joining our sufferings to that of Christ, we give them meaning, so that they become easier to bear, and are put to good use because we give them a redemptive value. The main point is that our sufferings are not wasted if we can join them to the sacrifice of Christ; they are in fact transformed to great value.

Hell is avoided with purgatory
The Angel pointing to the earth with his right hand, cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’ (Third part of the Secret)


These are the words of the Angel with the flaming sword. Our Lady shows the vision of hell to the little shepherds as a possibility in the afterlife and the hell the world had plunged into in the 20th century . The alternative, in order to avoid one or the other, is penance. Hell is avoided with purgatory both in this life as in the next; in fact, in the Catholic tradition, purgatory is between heaven and hell.

Christ atoned for our sins, so we no longer need to atone for them. But if God forgives and forgets, why then do we need purgatory? It is us who do not forgive nor forget, not what others or what we ourselves have done; purgatory is a requirement of our human nature. We see this in the Gospel in the episode of the conversion of Zacchaeus:

Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ (Luke 19:8) Jesus who had already forgiven Zacchaeus did not demand anything from him as a payment for this pardon; what Zacchaeus offered as an atonement came out of his own free will, and as a consequence of his conversion and of having obtained the pardon, and not as a requirement of it.

Mark 1:15 -- “Pænitemini et credite evangelio” Repent and believe in the Gospel – Penance and sacrifice are part of the conversion process, like the desert that mediates between the Egypt of Sin and the Promised Land of Grace. The more pure we walk through this life, the less purgatory we need in the next. Purgatory can be spent here and now. Whether it is done here or in the next life, the blessedness remains valid: Only the pure of heart will see God.

Regarding the nature of the purifying fire, Sister Lucia said years later that it is not any physical fire sustained by any fuel, but rather from the fire of divine love communicated by God to the souls. Hence that perfect act of love, like the example of a martyrdom, takes the person directly to heaven because he is immediately purified of all sins committed up to that point.

Jacinta the good shepherdess
One day on her way back, she walked along in the middle of the flock.
-    “Jacinta, what are you doing there,” I asked her, “in the middle of the sheep?”
-    “I want to do the same as Our Lord in that holy picture they gave me. He’s just like this, right in the middle of them all, and He’s holding one of them in His arms.”

Jacinta embodies the sacrificial aspect of the message of Fatima. She in her own fashion imitates Jesus the Good Shepherd who cares and seeks for the lost sheep and afterward carries it on his shoulders back to the sheepfold. Jacinta offered many sacrifices for sinners during the three years following the apparitions. And when, already bedridden and living her passion, Our Lady asked her if she still wanted to suffer more for the conversion of more sinners, she readily answered ‘yes’. Like Christ the Good Shepherd, she, the little shepherdess, also gave her life for the sheep of the Lord.

The vision of hell affected Jacinta so much that even when she was at play she would not stop questioning Lucia, And if people pray very much for sinners, won’t Our Lord get them out of there? And if they make sacrifices as well? Poor sinners! We have to pray and make many sacrifices for them!”

The expression, poor sinners, was coined in Fatima; whenever one speaks of sinners in the message of Fatima, the sinners are referred to as poor which has the same affectionate meaning as “poor things” that Jacinta often used to say.

Jacinta, the most sentimental of the three, is the one who best mirrors God’s mercy and loving solicitude for sinners that run throughout the two Testaments of the Bible: Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that they should turn from their ways and live? (Ezekiel 18:23).

In Jesus of Nazareth, the mercy of God becomes flesh in concrete actions. Unlike the Pharisees who criticized and fled from sinners fearing their contamination, Jesus sought their company, touched them, healed them, ate with them, and finally gave his life for them as an immolated victim being eaten in the Eucharist and on the cross with his body handed over and blood spilled.

The little shepherds, especially Jacinta in her short life and Lucia in her long life, understood and joined their sacrifices to the passion of Christ by echoing it, by giving them a meaning and a usefulness, to update or underline in the here and now the passion of Christ, the redemption of humanity.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Fatima: The Prayers of Our Lady

The three little shepherds of Fatima learned three prayers from the Blessed Virgin Mary that are simple, easy to remember and in a way, contain in themselves the entire message of Fatima. By praying them in our hearts or liturgically in community, they act as a sacrament of the Fatima message. In other words, by reciting them, we are reminded and exhorted to live by the message of Fatima that is internally contained in these prayers.

The first prayer given by Our Lady, after the apparitions of the angel, refers once again to the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. In fact, the apparitions at Fatima start with the Trinity and end with the Trinity. Mary reveals to the little shepherds God's identity, one divine nature in three distinct persons. Unlike the two other prayers, this one is not taught directly by Our Lady but is inspired by the Holy Spirit and recited automatically by the children before her.

The second prayer is a sacrificial prayer, that is, a practical application of the second part of the message of Fatima about penance, and in the context of this message, it means the offering of ourselves for others, for the conversion of sinners.

The third prayer is the most universally known because it is recited by Catholics when they pray the Rosary as it is said after each mystery. It asks for the universal salvation, especially for those who are in most need of it.

1st Prayer: Communicated to the seers by an interior impulse
…Our Lady opened her hands for the first time, communicating to us a light so intense that, as it streamed from her hands, its rays penetrated our hearts and the innermost depths of our souls, making us see ourselves in God, who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in the best of mirrors. Then, moved by an interior impulse that was communicated to us, we fell on our knees, repeating in our hearts:

“O Most Holy Trinity, I adore You! My God, my God, I love You in the most Blessed Sacrament!”

And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ (Galatians 4:6) – The children saw themselves in God, and in Him they saw at the same time His identity as being One and Three and their own identity as little shepherds, God’s beloved children. Flooded by the light of God, they were guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit who, as Paul says to the Galatians, the hearts of the three children cried, “Abba, Father – O Most Holy Trinity…” And again like Apostle Paul says, “It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” (Romans 8:16)

At that moment, at the beginning of the first apparition, the little shepherds had a beatific vision of God as One and Three and they themselves were inside this light as adoptive children of God the Father. At the top of the mountain in the Serra de Aire, at that moment of transfiguration, we cannot forget that the three were mere children and that on analyzing the character and personality of each, we realize that they each belong to a different center; Lucia is cerebral, Jacinta is emotional and Francisco is visceral or instinctive. By this, we can deduce that in this encounter the human trinity encounters the Divine Trinity; that is, the human nature in the three basic personalities in which it exists connects with the One divine nature existing in the Three Persons.

This prayer is at the same time trinitarian and eucharistic, and it is as impressive as the beatific vision that the little shepherds felt immersed in the light that is God. It moves them immediately into adoration, to the love of the most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, that is, from the celestial revelation they arrive at the historic incarnation of God two thousand years ago in Jesus of Nazareth, and in his sacramental presence in the consecrated host in the here and now of our lives.

Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? (John 14:8-9)

This first prayer implies that in the adoration of the most Blessed Sacrament we also adore the most Holy Trinity. Whoever sees Jesus sees the Father, and whoever loves the Son loves the Father. The Christian prayer is therefore always a trinitarian prayer. The most Blessed Sacrament is not only the representation of the sacrifice of the Son, but also of the Father who sent the Son and offered him up, as is popularly depicted in the image of God the Father and the Holy Spirit represented by the dove, behind the cross on which Christ is crucified.

2nd Prayer: O Jesus, it is for love of You
--Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say many times to Jesus, especially whenever you make some sacrifice:
“O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”  As she spoke these words, she opened her hands once more, as she had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire.

Penance and prayer are the summary of the Fatima message. We have already touched on the theme of prayer concentrated in the trinitarian and eucharistic prayer above, we now speak of penance, the second part of the Fatima message, which with prayer is mentioned in all the apparitions. Like Jesus gave his life for his friends, and like Jesus offered himself for the salvation of the world, Our Lady asks the little shepherds if they want to join themselves to the sacrifice of her Son, and make themselves in this year of 1917 echo the sacrifice that took place almost two thousand years ago. The children readily answer yes.

This second prayer is an unusual prayer because it is subtly insightful. It is not a contemplative prayer like the one we have already mentioned, but is a prayer that comes from practical application, it implies by way of practice a prayer to be recited exclusively after this praxis. In this sense, it is not a prayer prescribed for everyone and in every situation, but only for some and only after a concrete practice.

The Lady said that this prayer is to be recited before, during and after each sacrifice offered. This being so, the prayer  is in itself a sort of magic wand that transforms an everyday misfortune of life into a sacrifice offered to God. This prayer gives an added value, an increased worth, a benefit in the vicissitudes of everyday life by giving them a meaning, a motivation. It transforms every single one of our sufferings into an act of embracing the cross of Christ for the good of humanity.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

For this reason, this prayer is not a worship or a liturgy; it is not to be recited in Church or in the context of an intimate union with the Lord. It is, however, a prayer recited during life and for life. It is an exhortation to embrace each setback in life, transforming it with and through this prayer into a “sacrifice pleasing to God”; it is also a practical application of the Scripture verse quoted above.

To suffer for a reason and a cause cost a lot less than to suffer for no purpose. Therefore by offering ourselves to God the sacrifices that life hands to us, we end up suffering less. We find comfort in the same sacrifice when we know that it will bring good to someone else.

After committing themselves to Mary, to offer themselves to God in bearing all the sufferings and misfortunes inherent in life, and especially those resulting from bearing witness to the echo of the Gospel at Fatima, the little shepherds lost no opportunity to sacrifice themselves for the conversion of sinners.

In fact, if one would forget to do so, the other would remember, as it happened in the prison of Ourém when soon after reciting the Rosary, Jacinta went over to the window, and started crying again.
“Jacinta,” I (Lucia) asked, “don’t you want to offer this sacrifice to Our Lord?”
“Yes, I do, but I keep thinking about my mother, and I can’t help crying.”

…We are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:16-17)

Like Saint Paul says, if we are sons then we are brothers of the Lord and co-heirs of the eternal inheritance. If we share in the glory of the Lord, we also must share the path that led Christ to his glory, the suffering. Like in all friendships, it is necessary to be there through thick and thin, in sickness and in health, in sadness and in joy. “He who obliges himself to love, obliges himself to suffer”, says the proverb.

3rd Prayer: O my Jesus, forgive us…
When we pray the Rosary, we say after each mystery: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy.

Lastly, the prayer that Virgin Mary told us to include after each mystery while praying the Rosary. This third prayer was preceded by the vision of hell that the little shepherds saw at the July 13th apparition which must remain in our consciousness as a possibility of condemnation.

… forgive us our sins – The Bible tells us that a just man sins seven times a day, which is another way of saying that no one is just before God. We are all sinners, and the one who claims to have no sin is a liar, as the good book says. So whenever we come before God without a sin that needs to be forgiven, it does not mean we have not sinned, it simply means that our moral consciousness is not doing its duty of accusing us and pinpointing our shortcomings.

… save us from the fires of hell – Only God has the power to save us from eternal damnation and He has done it freely through the death of His son. In the picture of hell as a sea of fire, the Blessed Virgin Mary considers the view and image the children have of it, following the Thomist principle: Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur - Whatever is received, is received according to the capacity of the receiver.

The way we understand hell, however, is not as an eternal torture like the sea of fire seems to suggest but as an eternal death and a return to nothingness for those whose lives amounted to nothing, and who believe that there is nothing after death.

… lead all souls to Heaven – As always in the message of Fatima, we cannot be concerned only with our own salvation, but also of others. The spirituality of Fatima is not about personal perfection but about caring for those who live a life that is wrong and is leading to nowhere. This being so, the spirituality of Fatima is a missionary spirituality and that's why we pray that all are saved.

The same Thomist principle also applies here as we believe in the resurrection of the body, not just of the soul. Despite the biblical anthropology not being dualistic, most, if not all, prayers of the Church’s liturgies portray human nature as body and soul thus following the Greek anthropology.

… especially those most in need of Thy mercy - especially those who are the furthest away from salvation; what has been always a major concern of Jesus, 'I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.' (Luke 5:32)

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC