The day of the Lord is drawing nigh

ON Thursday, September 13, 1917, Our Lady said: “In October, I will perform a miracle so that all may believe.” In the morning of Saturday, October 13, 1917, the Cova da Iria, had already been invaded by tens of thousands of pilgrims. They were treading in the clay that the rain, which had been falling since the day before, had turned into a mire. A priest asked Lucy what time Our Lady would come.

“At midday.”

The priest drew his watch: “See, it is already noon! Our Lady is not a liar! We’ll see!”

According to official time it was indeed noon, but not yet according to local solar time. In fact, to be in the same time zone as the belligerents, the Portuguese government had imposed a legal time that was 96 minutes ahead of the solar time.

A few minutes passed. The priest drew his watch again and said:

“It’s past midday. Run along, all of you! You see, it’s all a delusion!”

The priest then began to push the children with both hands, but Lucy said to him crying:

“Let those who want to go away, leave! I’m not going to leave. I am at home here. Our Lady said She would come. She came the other times and She will come this time, too!”

Suddenly, she asked the crowd to close the umbrellas to recite the rosary. A few minutes later, she exclaimed:

“Oh, Jacinta! Get on your knees, Our Lady’s coming! I have already seen the lightning!”

According to the watches, it was already almost one thirty in the afternoon, that is around noon by solar time.

Lucy fell into an ecstasy! “Her face, more and more beautiful, took on a rosy tint,” Maria Rosa Pereira testified “and her lips became thinner.” Another witness said: “The little girl was looking at a fixed point and smiling.”

Jacinta gave Lucy a poke and said:

“Speak, Lucy, Our Lady is already here!”

Then Lucy came back to herself, breathed deeply two times, like someone out of breath, and said:

“ ‘What does Your Grace want of me?’

‘I want to tell you that a chapel is to be built here in My honour. I am Our Lady of the Rosary. Continue to say the Rosary every day. The war is going to end and the soldiers will soon return to their homes.’

‘I have many things to ask of You: to heal some sick people and to convert some sinners.’

‘Some, yes; others no. They must amend their lives and ask pardon for their sins.’ ”

Then, growing sadder, She added:

“ ‘Do not offend the Lord Our God any more for He is already too greatly offended!’

‘Is there anything more You want of me?’

‘No, I want nothing more of you. ’

‘Then neither will I ask anything more of You.’

‘She is leaving!’ Lucy suddenly shouted. ‘She is leaving! Look at the sun!’ ”

“Then, opening Her hands, Our Lady made them reflect on the sun, and as She ascended, the reflection of Her own light continued to be projected on the sun itself. That is the reason why I cried out to look at the sun,” Lucy would relate. “My aim was not to draw the attention of the people in this way, because I was not even aware of their presence.”

“Then we were able to look at the sun perfectly without the least inconvenience” Francisco and Jacinta’s father related. “It seemed to flicker on and off, first one way and then another. It shot rays here and there and painted everything in different colours – the trees, the people, the ground and the air. What was most extraordinary was that the sun did not hurt our eyes at all.” People were exclaiming: ‘Look! Look how beautiful it is!’ ”

Suddenly, the sun jolted and it began to rotate on itself at a dizzying speed. It stopped and twice began to whirl again.

“It produced different colours,” Maria Carreira related, “yellow, blue, white; and it shook, shook in such a way! It seemed a wheel of fire which was going to fall on the crowd. They shouted:

‘O Jesus! We are all going to die!’

‘Jesus! We are all about to die!’

“Others shouted: ‘Our Lady, help us!’ And they recited the Act of Contrition. There was even a lady who made her general confession, and said in a loud voice: ‘I have done this, I have done that… and that still!’ ”

Finally, the sun seemed to detach itself from the firmament. “It appeared to grow in volume, plummeting and falling towards the earth, as if to announce something both happy and frightening. It seemed to descend towards us, manifesting the miracle, and greeting the Queen of Heaven and the universe Who had spoken to the three shepherds.”

“Seeing the sun falling on us,” one of the countless witnesses recounted “I cried out: ‘I’m going to die!’ I got on my knees on the pebbles, folded my hands, and asked the Lord forgiveness for all my faults.”

As soon as the sun rose once again to the zenith, there was an explosion of joy. The promise of Our Lady had been fulfilled to the letter: all, that is, the seventy thousand people gathered at the Cova da Iria, among whom were many sceptics, atheists and anticlericals, had seen the miracle.

“Now,” Lucy’s mother exclaimed, “it is impossible not to believe in it, because no one can touch the sun!”

No one, other than the Good God!

SHE IS THE “SIGN”!

After having sent us His Mother to make us extraordinarily precise prophecies, extremely anguishing too, but full of ineradicable hope, awaiting the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to bring peace to the world, Our Lord has no other purpose, through the miracle of the sun, than to announce His return.

This sun that becomes unattached is the announcement of the end times, or the great catastrophe that will be the last way for God to convert us. At Fatima, the fall of the sun dried the clothes, but next time, men will wither with fear, the fear of Hell, and will cry out:

“Our Lady, help us! O Jesus! We shall all die! Jesus! We are all going to die!” to die an eternal death!

In the course of universal history, there is nothing correspondent to the spectacle of the fall of the sun, on October 13, 1917, at Fatima, other than the Resurrection of the Lord. It is the apocalyptic sign of God’s indignation against an apostate world yet, in this wrath of God, mercy is manifested in favour of those who ask forgiveness and convert, at the sight of the three scenes that appeared to Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta while the crowd contemplated the threatening fall of the sun.

It is salvation through the return to the Gospel, contemplated in mid-air, in a divine light, in the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries of the Holy Rosary, objects of the daily recitation of the Rosary that Our Lady demanded at each of Her apparitions since May 13:

“After Our Lady had disappeared in the immensity of the firmament, we saw, next to the sun, Saint Joseph with the Child Jesus and Our Lady robed in white with a blue mantle. Saint Joseph and the Child Jesus appeared to bless the world, tracing the sign of the cross with their hands.

“Shortly afterwards, this apparition having disappeared, I saw Our Lord, and Our Lady Who gave me the impression of being Our Lady of Sorrows,” because She was wearing “a purple mantle.” As for Our Lord, clothed in purple as in the scene of the derision, “He seemed to bless the world in the same manner that Saint Joseph had.

“This Apparition disappeared, and it seemed to me that I saw Our Lady once again under the appearance of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, because She had something which was hanging from her hand.”

This “something” was the Scapular. Our Lady of Mount Carmel appeared alone. As in Lourdes, on July 16, 1858, on the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, during the last apparition. It was also during the last apparition that Our Lady drew our attention to the scapular, on October 13, 1917. She probably wore the habit of Carmel Herself and held in Her hands the scapular, as in Her appearance to Saint Simon Stock, in the 13^th century.

As soon as the extraordinary cosmic phenomena ended, many enthusiastic pilgrims rushed to the seers. Nevertheless, Lucy maintained her composure. Mr. Carlos Mendes, a lawyer, freed her from this crowd that could have smothered her. “I wanted to carry her to the road,” he said, “Quite extraordinarily, she tried to climb further up onto my shoulders, which thus became the first platform from which she preached the message that Our Lady of the Rosary had just confided to her.

“With great faith, she shouted in a loud and confident voice: ‘Do penance! Do penance! Our Lady wants you to do penance! If you do penance, the war will end.’

“Her energetic, warm, enthusiastic attitude, as though she were carrying out a mission, impressed me deeply. She appeared inspired. Her voice had intonations like the voice of a great prophet.” Like the prophet Elijah!

“For me,” Father de Nantes,§ our founder, told us, “the fall of the sun at Fatima was what God proposed to effect our conversion, the omen of what the true fall of the sun will be. Had it fallen a little further, the sun would have consumed the earth and all that it contains, as Saint Peter had foreseen:

“The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 P 3:9)

This is the divine mercy that has been announced to us by the Second Epistle of Saint Peter for two thousand years. God’s patience arouses in the ungodly new reasons to doubt Him, to multiply their mockery, blasphemies and acts of impurity. How much longer are our children in our schools going to be raped, defiled, even in the Church? “Patience!” as Sister Lucy used to say. God is patient. For Him, a thousand years are like a day, and His judgement will come when He wills, and salvation too: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up.” (2 P 3:10)

“According to His promise we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2 P 3:13)

Our Lady is Queen of this Holy Hope that She offers to those who “try to console Her for the ingratitude and blasphemies with which ungrateful men never cease to pierce Her Immaculate Heart”.

Love, or ‘compassion,’ is the heart of the reparatory devotion that the Child Jesus and His Divine Mother demanded in Pontevedra to obtain pardon for the souls who have had the audacity to offend Her so cruelly.

IF THE POPE WAS WILLING

Sixty years ago to the day, on October 11, 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council, the Council of the ‘Reformation’ of the Church, by condemning the ‘prophets of doom’ whose words, he declared, ‘offended’ his ears.

Sixty years later, the ‘doom’ announced by Our Lady of Fatima (John XXIII had just read Her secret and declared: “This does not concern my pontificate”) is upon us because we have ignored Her warnings. Thus, to Her great sorrow She can no longer extinguish the flames that shoot out of the flaming sword of the Angel standing beside Her, who shouts in vain: “Penance, Penance, Penance!” Her Son, Jesus Christ Our Lord can no longer bear the outrages, blasphemies and indifference inflicted on His Mother, the Immaculate Conception, His ever Virgin Mother and Mother of every one of us, forever!

Jesus and Mary are waiting for the Pope to say the only word in favour of the reparatory devotion that is capable of establishing peace in the world, so that the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, pronounced on March 25 in Saint Peter’s, may bear fruits of grace and mercy, especially through the conversion of Russia. Yet we believed that the Pope was sincerely beating his breast when he wrote: “We chose to ignore God.” Six months have passed, and today we must confess, Holy Father, that You have “chosen to ignore” the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Whose reign our heavenly Father wants to establish in this world to restore Peace, and in the other to snatch souls from the Fire of Hell, which is eternal!

The result is that the evils you denounced before the statue of Our Lady of Fatima – but it was only Her statue, and not Her Immaculate Heart, alas! We understand this now – have only worsened. Because a statue has no ears, no heart, no soul to listen to you: “We have ravaged the garden of the earth with war, and by our sins we have broken the Heart of our heavenly Father, Who desires us to be brothers and sisters,” yet, you remain foreign to the Heart of the “Heart of our Father,” Who is the Immaculate Heart of Mary! Only She is capable of making us “brothers and sisters.” You added: “We grew indifferent to everyone and everything”... especially to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and this is what is unbearable to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

THE SINIFICATION OF THE “ERRORS” OF RUSSIA

From August 18 to 20, nearly 345 bishops, priests and religious from across China took part in the Tenth National Congress of Catholic Representatives of China, held every five years and held in Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hebei province. At the end of the meeting, Archbishop Joseph Li Shan of Beijing was elected head of the Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics, and Bishop Joseph Shen Bin of Haimen was elected President of the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China.

“The newly elected officials issued a statement with a personal commitment to call on priests, religious and laity across the country to work ‘for pastoral evangelisation and for the promotion of Sinification,’ to move further toward ‘a better future.’ Sinification is a deeply political ideology designed to impose strict rules on companies and institutions according to the core values of socialism, autonomy, and support for the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) primacy.

“In their statement, they also stressed the need for the Catholic Church in China to implement the spirit of the National Conference on Religious Affairs held in December 2021, and abide by the guidelines of the CCP Central Committee for the Catholic Church in China. During the conference, which took place on December 3-4, 2021, Xi Jinping supported the strict implementation of Marxist policies as well as increased online surveillance and control of clerics to ensure national security.

“ ‘It is necessary to unite and guide priests, elders and the faithful to follow Xi Jinping’s thought on Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a ‘new era,’ so that they continue to hold high the banner of patriotism and love of religion, and for them to adhere to the principles of independent self-management of the Churches,’ the bishops stressed. They added that it is important to adhere to the Sinification of Catholicism in China in order to ‘vigorously support the building of patriotic forces’ and realise ‘the dream of a great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.’ ”

It is no wonder that the Pope is ready to go to North Korea. He said in an interview with South Korea’s public broadcaster that he would not decline an opportunity to visit North Korea. “When they invite me” – in other words, please invite me – “I will not say no,” Pope Francis declared Friday, August 26. “(My) goal is simply brotherhood,” he added.

Without the devotion of reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary? Such is impossible, Holy Father!

The only feasible ‘brotherhood’ is that of the children of Mary of the Sorrows: “Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels, each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.” The martyrdom of Pope John Paul I, the martyrs of the ‘Sinification’ of Catholicism in China, are the wellspring of the ‘Grace and Mercy’ that flow from the two arms of Jesus Crucified and the pierced Immaculate Heart of Mary.

RUSSIA WILL CONVERT

The act of consecration, however, was accomplished very late. “Make it known to My ministers,” Our Lord said to Sister Lucy in 1931, thus only two years after She had asked for the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart, that “since they are following the example of the King of France in delaying the execution of My request, they will follow him into misfortune. It will never be too late to have recourse to Jesus and Mary.” Russia will convert, but since Pope Francis has failed to encourage the devotion of reparation to the Immaculate Heart, he will – perhaps – follow the King of France into misfortune. This will compel him to preach the devotion in tears and blood, dragging “the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people, men and women of different ranks and positions” into his martyrdom. It will be for the salvation of the Church, for the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary which, in all events, is promised to us, but on condition that we embrace without delay Her reparatory devotion, praying much and sacrificing ourselves for our poor Holy Father, our sweet Christ on earth.

Brother Bruno of Jesus-Mary