Today is the 99th anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima’s first apparition to the three children of Fatima.
This is the eyewitness account of Lucia Dos Santos, one of the three little shepherd children, who first saw Our Lady of Fatima on May 13, 1917.
On Sunday, May 13, 1917, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco had gone to the chapel of Boleiros, Portugal, to assist at the first Mass, “the Mass of the Souls,” as they used to say, as it was a Mass for the souls in Purgatory, which was a treasured devotion of the Portuguese. After returning home early in the morning, they left at once to feed their flocks. As a place of pasture, Lucia writes, “We had chosen that day, by chance, or rather according to a plan of Divine Providence, the property belonging to my parents, called Cova da Iria… For that, we had to pass through an uncultivated terrain, which doubled the length of our long road.”
After eating their meal and praying the Rosary, the children were at the point of building a wall around a bush. Suddenly, Sister Lucia relates in her fourth Memoir, they saw a kind of lightning. “It is better to return home,” Lucia said to her cousins, “for there is lightning, and there could come a storm.”
Arriving about half-way down the slope, at the level of the top of a large holm-oak which was there, after walking a few more steps they saw another flash of light. “On a small holm-oak there stood a Lady, all dressed in white, more brilliant than the sun, radiating a light clearer and more intense than a crystal glass filled with clear water pierced by the most burning rays of the sun. We stopped, surprised by this Apparition. We were so close that we found ourselves in the light which surrounded Her, or rather which emanated from Her, perhaps a meter and a half away, more or less.”
Then Our Lady said to us:
“Do not be afraid. I will do you no harm”.
“Where is Your Grace from?” Lucia asked Her.
“I am of Heaven.”
“What does Your Grace want of me?”
“I have come to ask you to come here for six months in succession, on the 13th day, at this same hour. Later on, I will tell you who I am and what I want. Afterwards, I will return here yet a seventh time.”
“Shall I go to Heaven too?”
“Yes, you will.”
“And Jacinta?”
“Also.”
“And Francisco?”
“Also, but he will have to say many Rosaries.”
Lucia remembered then to ask about two girls who had died recently. They were friends of hers and they used to come to her home to learn weaving with her eldest sister.
“Is Maria das Neves already in Heaven?”
“Yes, she is.” She was about sixteen years old.
“And Amelia?”
“She will be in Purgatory until the end of the world.” She must have been between eighteen and twenty years old.
“Are you willing to offer yourselves to God to bear all the sufferings He wants to send you, as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and for the conversion of sinners?”
“Yes, we are willing.”
“You are then going to have much to suffer, but the grace of God will be your comfort.”
It was in pronouncing those last words (the grace of God, etc.) that Our Lady opened Her hands for the first time, and communicated to them, as by a reflection which emanated from them, a light so intense that, penetrating the hearts of the children and even to the depths of their souls, it made them see themselves in God, Who was this light, more clearly than you can see yourself “in the best mirrors,” according to Lucia.
Then, moved by an interior impulse which was communicated to them, the children fell on their knees and repeated, “Oh Most Holy Trinity, I adore Thee. My God, my God, I love Thee in the Most Holy Sacrament.”
The first moments passed, and Our Lady added: “Recite the Rosary every day in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war.”
Lucia asked Her, “Can You tell me whether the war will still last a long time, or if it will soon end?”
“I cannot tell you yet, as I have not yet told you what I want.”
Then She began to rise serenely, going up towards the east until She disappeared in the immensity of the sky. The light which surrounded Her seemed to open a path for Her among the stars, and for this reason Lucia and the children said sometimes that they had seen Heaven opening.
The Lady of the Apparition, Lucia affirmed, seemed not to be more than eighteen years of age. Her dress was of a very pure snow-whiteness.
Her veil which covered Her head and most of Her body was embroidered with gold. Her face, with an incomparable nobility, had something of the supernatural and Divine; She seemed serene and grave, and was shaded in sorrow. From Her hands, joined at the height of the chest, was hanging a beautiful Rosary with beads like white ermine resembling pearls and terminating with a crucifix. Her whole person, surrounded by a splendor more brilliant than the sun, radiated clusters of light, and especially Her face is of a beauty impossible to describe and incomparably superior to any human beauty.
Reference: www.FatimaCenter.org
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