“Jesus, we now want to imitate you and entrust ourselves to your mother. Mary, Mother of Mercy, we entrust to you all the faithful in Wisconsin, especially those in the Diocese of Madison.”
Tag: shepherd children
Meditate on Mary during month of May and special Fatima year
Dear Friends,
This month of May is, as always, a month for honoring and devoting ourselves to Mary, the Mother of God.
And in a particular way, as was marked by Pope Francis last week during his Apostolic visit to Portugal, we commemorate 100 years since the Blessed Virgin appeared several times to the three “shepherd children.” The two of those children who died in their youth are now Saint Jacinta and Saint Francisco Marto, having been canonized by Pope Francis on Saturday, and the third, Servant of God Sr. Maria Lucia, who only passed from this life in 2005, has her cause for canonization underway.
Fatima at 100: Story of apparitions continues to attract attention
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| This postcard, set for release by the Vatican May 4, marks the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Mary to the three shepherd children in Fatima May 13, 1917. (CNS photo/courtesy of Vatican Philatelic and Numismatic Office) |
While conversion and prayer are at the heart of Mary’s messages at Fatima, Portugal, the miracles and unexplained phenomenon that accompanied the events 100 years ago continue to intrigue believers and nonbelievers alike.
The apparitions of Mary at Fatima in 1917 were not the first supernatural events reported there.
Two years before Mary appeared to the three shepherd children — Lucia dos Santos and her cousins, Jacinta and Francisco Marto — they saw a strange sight while praying the Rosary in the field, according to the memoirs of Sister Lucia, who had become a Carmelite nun.
“We had hardly begun when, there before our eyes, we saw a figure poised in the air above the trees; it looked like a statue made of snow, rendered almost transparent by the rays of the sun,” she wrote, describing what they saw in 1915.
The next year, Francisco and Jacinta received permission to tend their family’s flocks and Lucia decided to join her cousins in a field owned by their families.
It was 1916 when the mysterious figure appeared again, this time approaching close enough “to distinguish its features.”