OUR LADY OF FATIMA

World Apostolate of Fatima England and Wales

Often, we hear questions like: Why do I /we have to pray? Is it necessary to pray when it seems like God does not answer my/our prayer? Does God hear my/our prayers? And the list goes on. To grasp the meaning of prayer, we first need to understand what it is. There are many ways to describe it, and one is that, first and foremost, prayer is a gift from God. It is God who initiates a relationship with His creation. The CCC 2567 states that, “ God calls man first. Man may forget his Creator or hide far from his face; he may run after idols or accuse the deity of having abandoned him; yet the living and true God tirelessly calls each person to that mysterious encounter known as prayer.” It is God who searches for us, before we search for Him. It is He who comes to meet us and draws us to enter into an intimate relationship with Him. God longs to have communion with us and invites us to enter into the life of the Holy Trinity so that we may share His Divine life. He thirsts for us so that we may thirst for Him (St. Augustine). Throughout the Sacred Scriptures, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, we see many wonderful relationships between God and His creation, the covenant of love between God and His people. In the Garden of Eden, God enters into communion with our first parents, Adam and Eve, and converses with them. Similarly, in the story of Noah, Abraham, Moses, the prophets, the kings, especially David and all the way down to the Church, God accompanies His people in their journey and tirelessly draws them to Himself and makes Himself known to them. In their difficulties, sorrows, battles, trials, doubt, crises, joy, contentment, cheerfulness, God is always present in their midst. God’s encounters with His people occur in different situations but maintain the same relationship of love and mercy. The prayer becomes the means by which God’s people can communicate constantly with Him. Time after time He reveals to them through the Holy Spirit that He is not a distant God, but He is very close to them whenever they call on Him. In Jesus Christ, God the Father enters fully into communion with humanity and manifests His love for them perfectly. Jesus comes to teach and show us the perfect prayer that is pleasing to God. He is the great model of prayer for us to imitate. Often, in the Gospels, we learn that Jesus withdraws Himself to a lonely place to pray and spend long nights in solitude with His Father. He also teaches and reminds His followers of the importance of perseverance in prayer and never losing hope, and that they should pray constantly to the heavenly Father with complete trust that the heavenly Father always hears their prayer (cf. Mk. 11:24) because prayer which is acceptable and pleasing to the Father comes from simplicity of heart. Slowly and gradually, the disciples enter into the spirit of prayer and prayer itself becomes the centre of their lives. While waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Church gathers together with the Blessed Virgin Mary in the upper room, praying fervently to God. From the early days of the Church up to now and until the end of time, the Church constantly offers prayer and sacrifice to God unceasingly, especially through the Eucharist. By the Holy Spirit, the Counsellor, Christ’s Church is perfected, and she can enter into communion with the Father; in union with Jesus, her prayer is made acceptable to God because it is built with simplicity of heart and complete surrender and trust in God. Besides Jesus, we also have Our Blessed Virgin Mary. Her prayer, which is found in her Magnificat, teaches us how to thank God for the glorious things we receive from God. Her powerful intercession at the wedding feast at Cana shows us how important it is to intercede for others. And her silent prayer at the foot of the Cross shows us the importance of our silent prayer in the time of sorrow and brokenness and learning how to unite our sufferings with faith and trust in Christ’s sufferings. Her choice of total surrender to the will and plan of God makes her the perfect model of prayer after her Son Jesus. When a soul is sincerely united to the will of God, his or her prayer becomes very fruitful. We, as priestly people of God through the water of Baptism, are called to offer our prayers of worship, adoration, thanksgiving, praise, intercession and petition to God not once or twice but constantly, i.e. to be always in communion with God. Therefore, it is our duty to stand in the presence of God to pray to Him with simplicity and humility of heart. If our hearts are built with pride and far from God, then our prayer is fruitless; pride ruins our life of prayer. The CCC 2559 states, “Humility is the foundation of prayer.” A true prayer derives from our hearts, which seek God with integrity of heart, that cry out to God with humbleness and acknowledgement that we are sinners who are in need of God’s mercy and knowing that God hears our prayers and forgives our trespasses. In prayer we turn to God alone with boldness like a child who longs to receive good things from his/her loving Father. St. John Mary Vianney says, “P rayer is nothing else than union with God. When the heart is pure and united with God, it is consoled and filled with sweetness; it is dazzled by a marvellous light.” When a soul is completely absorbed in prayer and allows God to take over everything, then that very prayer changes the life of a soul because prayer does not change God, but it changes us. We ought to be persistent in prayer and never lose hope, believing that our prayer, even if it is seen as small as a mustard seed which is planted in our hearts and yet, with time, grows slowly and becomes very effective (cf. Mt.13:31-32). If we are unsure how to pray, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groaning too deep for words, helping us in our weakness (cf. Rom. 8:26). The more we pray, the more we come to know God, and the more we come to know God, the more we become one with Him; therefore, like Him. It is our duty to enter into the temple of our hearts and converse with God from the depth of our being. The prayer that we offer to God is never in vain, knowing that He accepts them all for our salvation and also for the salvation of others. Sometimes, when we go deeper into our prayer life, we may feel dryness in our prayer or not have the desire to pray at all but we shouldn’t let this feeling withdraw us from God or make us stop praying. Maybe God allows this feeling to come so that He can purify our prayer and enable us to surrender ourselves totally to Him. We are living in a world surrounded by many distractions and busyness. How can we find God and listen to Him among this hustle and bustle world? These things can distract us from communion with God. Perhaps we can stop and listen to the voice of God calling within the depth of our being to pray, so that we can experience God’s presence within us and enable us to enter fully into union with Him, allowing Him to pour upon us His graces so that we can be His true instrument to bring peace and love to the world of today. At Fatima, Our Blessed Mother encouraged the three children never to stop praying for all humanity. She invited them to intercede for all sinners, and she taught them how to pray to God with humility and simplicity of heart. The purpose of her invitation to the children every month, for 6 consecutive months, was to teach them the consistency and faithfulness to a prayer life, to remind them how important and powerful a prayer can be when it is uttered with love for God and charity towards others. The children obeyed our Lady’s message and willingly cooperated with her intention and mission for the salvation of souls. Our Blessed Mother’s message did not stop there and then, but it still applies to us today. She continues to call us to pray to God with childlike simplicity, for the common good of all people, for the salvation of all souls, for the conversion of all sinners and for our broken world. We, for our part, need to listen to her invitation and to unite our prayer with the prayer of Our Blessed Mother and never fail to obey her call to pray every day. By Sr. Mary Goncalves F.D.C. Daughters of Divine Charity (Filae Divinae Caritatis F.D.C) (An international Congregation, active in the Diocese of East Anglia since missionaries from their Congregation arrived in England from Vienna, Austria, in 1914) Sr. Mary joined the Order in 2014 and made her final vows in August 2023. The Charism of the Congregation is to make God’s Love visible through education, social work, and pastoral care, focusing on fulfilling the needs of the present day.

This month we reflect on how the three shepherd children can help guide us to lives of more faithful and fruitful prayer, as well as deeper simplicity. The September Apparition saw huge crowds pressing all around the children, begging for intercession for themselves and their loved ones. A journalist in the crowd even cut off Lucia’s long plaits of hair which she wore down to her waist as she passed by. Lucia later said of the incident: “Nothing is my own, so what of it! Everything belongs to God. May he dispose of it all as best pleases him.” We see in these events how the children’s world had been turned upside down since the first apparition just four months earlier. Their quiet, hidden life – so reminiscent of Mary’s own experience growing up in seemingly insignificant Nazareth – is now caught up in a mighty storm as the news of the apparitions spreads like wild-fire across Portugal and beyond. While the terrifying weapons of the First World War continue to wreak carnage on the battlefields of France, Belgium and Germany, the children find themselves in a different kind of battle – between faith and doubt/disbelief, between the Church and those who seek to ridicule and oppose her. The children were certainly affected deeply by this tempest raging around them. But, we see how, as the world around them becomes ever more complex, they root their daily lives in ever-greater union with God through prayer and abandonment to his will – so powerfully symbolised by Lucia’s seeming indifference to the loss of her beautiful, long plaits of hair! How can we, in the tempests of our own lives and world, learn from the example of the three shepherd children?