Fatima Aparation

Brief Overview

In 1917, as World War I was being fought, Our Lady appeared to the three children as they shepherded their parents’ sheep near what is now the Fatima grotto in Portugal. Mary appeared six times in all, beginning on May 13th and concluding on October 13 1917

Our Lady's Message

During the apparitions, Our Lady invited Jacinta, 7, Francisco, 9, and Lucia, 10, to console Jesus, so insulted by men, and to contribute, by their prayers and penances, to the conversion of those who with their sins offended God and earned eternal punishment.

“Pray the Rosary everyday” Our Lady asked

Prayers

Fatima Prayer 1

Prayer 1 and Prayer 2 was given to the children by an Angel in 1916 which preceeded Our Lady’s apparation.

My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love Thee! I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love Thee.

Fatima Prayer 2

Most Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit- I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifferences whereby He is offended. And through the infinite merits of His Most Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.

Fatima Prayer 3

Prayer 3 and Prayer 4 was given to by Our Lady to the children.

Oh my Jesus, I offer this for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Fatima Prayer 4

Oh My Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of Thy mercy.

Miracle of the sun

After Mary’s first appearance to Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta, word of the visions spread rapidly. The crowd of curiosity seekers and the genuinely devout increased with reports of each apparition until the final one on October 13th, in which some 70,000 people at the Cova da Iria witnessed what became known as the Miracle of the Sun.

This extraordinary event was chronicled in the press in Portugal.

Mary, calling herself Our Lady of the Rosary, told Lucia in the midst of all those present that she wished a chapel to be built there in her honor and reiterated again the importance of the rosary and of people amending their lives and asking pardon for their sins.

Suddenly the sun appeared in the sky and started spinning while giving off dazzling rays of multicolored light. Then it hurled towards the earth and for a terrifying few moments people thought it would come crashing down on them! But then, just as suddenly, the sun resumed its normal place in the sky!

Although most people had been sopping wet from the steady rain that had been falling right before our Blessed Mother’s appearance, they found their clothes to be totally dry after that. One newspaper account afterwards proclaimed that the sun “danced” at Fatima!

First Saturday Devotion

About

The practice of the First Saturday devotion was requested by Our Lady of Fatima, who appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, multiple times starting in 1917.

She said to Lucia, the oldest of the three children: “I shall come to ask . . . that on the First Saturday of every month, Communions of reparation be made in atonement for the sins of the world.”

In an apparition at Pontevedra, Spain in 10TH December 1925 Our Lady repeated her request to Sr. Lucia, the only one still living of the three young Fatima seers, while she was a postulant sister living in a convent in Spain:

“Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude.”

Act Of Reparation

One should:

1. Have the intention of consoling the Immaculate Heart in a spirit of reparation.

2. Go to confession (within eight days before or after the first Saturday).

3. Receive Holy Communion.

4. Say five decades of the Holy Rosary.

5. Meditate for 15 minutes on the mysteries of the Holy Rosarywith the goal of keeping Our Lady company (for example, while in church or before an image or statue of Our Lady).  

Why 5 Saturdays?

Our Lord appeared to Sr. Lucia on May 29, 1930 and gave her the reason behind the five Saturdays devotion. It is because there are five types of offenses and blasphemies committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary:

  1. Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception
    2. Blasphemies against Our Lady’s perpetual virginity
    3.  Blasphemies against her divine maternity, in refusing at the same time to recognize her as the Mother of men
    4.  Blasphemies of those who publicly seek to sow in the hearts of children, indifference or scorn or even hatred of their Immaculate Mother
    5.  Offenses of those who outrage Our Lady directly in her holy images