"...the only solution..."

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Yesterday I began reading an article entitled, “100 Years 1917 - 2017 Fatima: The Only Solution for Our Times”. by Luiz Solimeo. The first paragraphs led me to post them on this Forum:

In 2017, we are commemorating the centennial of the Fatima apparitions; however, commemorating a historical fact is not merely recalling it as one would a history lesson. It is the festive remembrance and praise of something deemed worthy of admiration and above all, devotion.

The apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima were one of the most extraordinary interventions of God in history, both because the Mother of God brought the message, and because she confirmed it with a great miracle…
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary permeates the whole story and message of Fatima. And one may well say that it is the very essence of the message as well as the solution presented to address the problems of today…

I only began reading this article last night, but I was so struck by the opening that I hope to go back to it. It’s about 4 pages long with footnotes from Scripture and the saints that I want to read as well. I’m posting the excerpt because I believe Fatima contains prophecy not yet fulfilled, as Pope Benedict XVI said, May 13, 2010 in his homily at the Beatification of Bl. Jacinta and Bl. Francesco in Fatima:

…We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete. Here there takes on new life the plan of God which asks humanity from the beginning: “Where is your brother Abel …] Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!” (Gen 4:9). Mankind has succeeded in unleashing a cycle of death and terror, but failed in bringing it to an end… In sacred Scripture we often find that God seeks righteous men and women in order to save the city of man and he does the same here, in Fatima, when Our Lady asks: “Do you want to offer yourselves to God, to endure all the sufferings which he will send you, in an act of reparation for the sins by which he is offended and of supplication for the conversion of sinners?” (Memoirs of Sister Lúcia, I, 162).

At a time when the human family was ready to sacrifice all that was most sacred on the altar of the petty and selfish interests of nations, races, ideologies, groups and individuals, our Blessed Mother came from heaven, offering to implant in the hearts of all those who trust in her the Love of God burning in her own heart. At that time it was only to three children, yet the example of their lives spread and multiplied, especially as a result of the travels of the Pilgrim Virgin, in countless groups throughout the world dedicated to the cause of fraternal solidarity. May the seven years which separate us from the centenary of the apparitions hasten the fulfilment of the prophecy of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to the glory of the Most Holy Trinity.

 

[patricius79]

Pope Benedict 16th, May 13, 2010 (as quoted above):

“At a time when the human family was ready to sacrifice all that was most sacred on the altar of the petty and selfish interests of nations, races, ideologies, groups and individuals, our Blessed Mother came from heaven, offering to implant in the hearts of all those who trust in her the Love of God burning in her own heart.”

What a wonderful gift! And as Fr. Michael Gaitley says in 33 Days to Morning Glory: “She’ll even let us live in her heart!”

I myself could not find peace until I began to love and venerate the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Yesterday, for example, I felt troubled and tired, and I went to appeal to Mary’s Immaculate Heart in my icon of Our Lady of Fatima. It always helps me to look at her heart and rest in it.

Thanks be to God for the Immaculate Heart of Mary!

 

[MariaChristi]

Pope Benedict 16th, May 13, 2010 (as quoted above):

“At a time when the human family was ready to sacrifice all that was most sacred on the altar of the petty and selfish interests of nations, races, ideologies, groups and individuals, our Blessed Mother came from heaven, offering to implant in the hearts of all those who trust in her the Love of God burning in her own heart.”

What a wonderful gift! And as Fr. Michael Gaitley says in 33 Days to Morning Glory: “She’ll even let us live in her heart!”

I myself could not find peace until I began to love and venerate the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Yesterday, for example, I felt troubled and tired, and I went to appeal to Mary’s Immaculate Heart in my icon of Our Lady of Fatima. It always helps me to look at her heart and rest in it.

Thanks be to God for the Immaculate Heart of Mary!

Thanks dear brother Pat!

This morning I was re-reading the “Theological Commentary of Fatima” by (then Cardinal Ratzinger) Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI. Let me quote just a bit:

…I would like finally to mention another key expression of the “secret” which has become justly famous: “my Immaculate Heart will triumph”. What does this mean? The Heart open to God, purified by contemplation of God, is stronger than guns and weapons of every kind. The fiat of Mary, the word of her heart, has changed the history of the world, because it brought the Saviour into the world—because, thanks to her Yes, God could become man in our world and remains so for all time. The Evil One has power in this world, as we see and experience continually; he has power because our freedom continually lets itself be led away from God. But since God himself took a human heart and has thus steered human freedom towards what is good, the freedom to choose evil no longer has the last word. From that time forth, the word that prevails is this: “In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart; I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). The message of Fatima invites us to trust in this promise. JosephCard. Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

The Vatican has published the “Theological Commentary” within the entire document on The Message of Fatima HERE. It is very long but well worth reading with prayerful reflection.

 

[patricius79]

[Pope Benedict:]…I would like finally to mention another key expression of the “secret” which has become justly famous: “my Immaculate Heart will triumph”. What does this mean? The Heart open to God, purified by contemplation of God, is stronger than guns and weapons of every kind. The fiat of Mary, the word of her heart, has changed the history of the world, because it brought the Saviour into the world—because, thanks to her Yes, God could become man in our world and remains so for all time. The Evil One has power in this world, as we see and experience continually; he has power because our freedom continually lets itself be led away from God. But since God himself took a human heart and has thus steered human freedom towards what is good, the freedom to choose evil no longer has the last word. .

Yes, MariaChristi, how powerful is the “yes” of the Immaculate Heart of Mary! How readily she embraced the calling to be our Mother!

As St. Alphonsus says, her name is the breath of our soul, and a Tower of Refuge in which we are safe from all evil.

And as St. Louis says, a faithful servant of Mary is far safer than a man with a well-ordered army of a hundred thousand soldiers guarding him.

Blessed be the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of Jesus!

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear brother Pat and anyone reading this thread,

Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is more important than most of us realize. I’d like to share something from a blog written in 2005

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9sScfAI8Y6E/ShEKACaYFDI/AAAAAAAAANw/pfs1pVKowdI/s400/Fatimskaia.jpg
THE ICON OF THE MOTHER OF GOD OF FÁTIMA: MYSTERY OF THE LIGHT THAT IS GOD
The great union that Fátima’s message has with Russia has already led many people to contributing in different ways to the expansion of this Marian devotion in this country. The icon of the Mother of God of Fátima that now I show you is a symbol that reinforces the predilection that Our Lady has for Russia. Certainly this love was shown very specially in the appearances of July 13th, 1917 in Fátima (Portugal), and of June, 1929 in Tuy (Spain), in which the Virgin spoke about the future of Russia as drill of mistakes and pursuit to the Church in the XXth century and about its conversion when the Pope consecrated this country to her Immaculate Heart. It serves to remember that because from these appearances million of persons have prayed for Russia during decades, and there has born in the whole world a current of love and prayer towards this country. In this respect the icon can help also to that Russia pays the great debt of gratitude that has with the Virgin of Fátima.

The idea of realizing this icon began in a trip to Moscow in the year 2000, but only at the end of 2002, when I started working as priest in Russia, the project began to be seriously prepared. First I asked about the project to priests, religious and lay people of Saint Petersburg, who encouraged me to put it into practice… for several months I devoted myself to study Marian iconography and also the diverse representations that until now have been done of the Virgin of Fátima…

… Father Igor Chabanov introduced me to the orthodox Russian iconographer Ivan who was ready to realize it and both of us started working on it, with the idea that if the icon liked the catholic priest and the Russian iconographer, we would have obtained our aim.

…after the death of Sister Lucia I wrote to Sister Maria Celina, the prioress of Coimbra, asking: can I say that Sister Lucia liked the icon? The response to this question was yes. Sister Lucia saw and estimated and liked what she saw realized of Fátima’s icon. Pity that she was expiring before being able to see it finished…

… the principal characteristic is that it is an image full of light. The Virgin in Fátima was full of light, of a light, which, as Francisco said, " is God ". The full of grace is the full of God, and in Fátima it is the full of light: a Lady more brilliant than the Sun. It brings Fátima closer to the theology of the icon. The first icon that every iconographer must paint is that of the Transfiguration, in order that he learns that the Icon must bring the divine world over to men, the God’s light to the earth, the God’s radiance in the white garments of the orthodox transfigured Christ. It is the same thing that happens with the Virgin of Fátima.

The icon takes incorporated its central part a medallion with the word sertse (heart) in characters paleoeslaves. This is the way Ivan proposed to save the difficulty that the orthodox sensibility has to place a heart in an icon, since they consider it to be too sensual. The letters, nevertheless, communicate the same reality of Maria’s Heart, but by means of a symbolic expression according to the iconographic tradition. The Heart surrounded with thorns indicates the love that Maria has to the men and the pain that produces the small correspondence that these offer to the God’s love. The remedy to this pain Maria is offered to us by her with a rosary in her hands, to which the iconographer wanted to give a violet colour in order that this way the icon reflected the idea of the cross that every Christian must accept to follow the Lord. This way this rosary dyeing violet is like a summary of Fátima’s message: " Prayer and penance "…

… for all those who live in Russia it turns out undeniable that the love for Mary joins us very specially, as well as it is also a fact, that in her Mother’s Heart we all fit and there we are already united. Besides the call that the icon makes to the unity is related to the ecumenism of the martyrdom to which the third Fátima’s mystery on the martyrdom refers, having reported ourselves on the martyrdom of the Church in the XXth century. If the history of Russia is known and how we have suffered together the martyrdom in the Soviet orthodox and catholic Gulags and for the first time coexisted in friendship, nobody will be able to doubt that the martyrs of the vision of the little shepherds in Fátima include faithful of one and another confession. The Icon of the Mother of God of Fátima wants to be, in this sense, a service to the unity of the Church, in the person of Maria under Fátima’s devotion.
– O. Aleksandr Burgos

 

[patricius79]

Yes, I think that devotion to Jesus through Mary is the key to all ecumenism, and maybe especially with Russia. “In her Mother’s Heart we all fit, and there we are already united”. Yes!

 

[MariaChristi]

Yes, I think that devotion to Jesus through Mary is the key to all ecumenism, and maybe especially with Russia. “In her Mother’s Heart we all fit, and there we are already united”. Yes!

Thanks dear Brother Pat,

I can’t begin to tell you how blessed I have been so far in this 100th Anniversary Year of Mary’s Apparitions at Fatima. This bog article about the icon of Our Lady of Fatima has helped me to discover more beauty in Our Lady’s messge, as has also my continuing to read the book by Sister Lucia, “Calls” – From the Message of Fatima. The words you quoted from the article impressed me too:

…In her Mother’s Heart, we all fit, and there we are already united

Yes, indeed there is room for all God’s children in Mary’s Heart!