reply to post by Anonymous ATS
Fatima the heart of the Message
On May 13, 1982, Pope John Paul II offered the Sacrifice of the Mass in Fatima, during his pilgrimage of gratitude to Portugal. During the Mass, the
Pope preached a lengthy homily on ''Mary's Maternal Love.'' I consider this homily the most authoritative explanation of the meaning of Fatima
that we have received from seven Roman Pontiffs since the first revelations made at Fatima in 1917.
Early in the homily, the Vicar of Christ made the following statement:
'' The message of Fatima is, in its basic nucleus, a call to conversion and repentance, as in the Gospel.''
'' This call was uttered at the beginning of the 20th century, and it was thus addressed particularly to this present century.
''The Lady of the message should be said to have read with special insight 'the signs of the times,' the signs of our own time.''
The Heart of the Message
What is the Pope telling us? He is saying that ''the basic nucleus,'' the heart of the Fatima message, is a call to conversion and repentance.
It is a call to repentance from sin and conversion to God. In the course of his homily, Pope John Paul II combined the two word '' conversion ''
and '' sin '' into one word, '' repentance,''so that we may simply state that the core of the message of Fatima is the imperative of the verb
''Repent'' or as a noun, ''repentance.''
The Pope declares that this call to repentance was made by Christ through Our Lady at the beginning of the twentieth century. He further declares
that one of the three children who received this Marian message is still living.
What does all of this imply? It implies that if there is one thing that God foresaw the 20th century would desperately need, it was to repent.
And even the unusually long life of one of the seers of Fatima--born in 1907 and still alive in her eighties-- only emphasizes the pressing urgency to
call the 20th century to repentance.
If we look more closely at what sins the 20th century most needs to repent, there seems to be no doubt. They are the sins of
(1) ignoring the existence of God
(2) denying that sin is an offense against God, and
(3) indulging in the pleasures of this world contrary to the will of God.
Each of these three classes of sins needs to be repented. Each calls to high heavens for conversion and a return to God.
Ignoring the Existence of God
We have become used to pointing to Communism as a diabolical ignoring and even excluding of God from human life. Certainly Communism is godless in
its principles and godless in its demonic fury against believers in God. It was surely no coincidence that the Communist Revolution in Russia took
place in October 1917, the very month of the last formal revelations of Our Lady at Fatima.
However, the Communist are not the only ones to ignore God. Their organized propaganda against religion has been matched by the organized
exclusion of God from public life in one supposedly developed country after another. Take the practical impossibility of teaching any semblance of
religion in American public schools. Take the thunderous silence about God and religion and divine worship in the media of social communication in
secularized countries like the United States.
You can read a thousand pages in the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Chicago Tribune, and you would never suspect that there are
millions of intelligent, educated people who still believe in God and the Ten Commandments.
Secularism, or what the Second Vatican Council calls ''practical atheism,'' is widespread in one nation after another in Europe and North
America.
If ignoring God's existence, then, is the first capital sin of the 20thcentury, how do we repent? We repent by prayer. Let me repeat: ''WE
REPENT THE SIN OF IGNORING GOD BY PAYING ATTENTION TO GOD IN PRAYER.''
Some years ago, I spoke with one of my Jesuit students returning to India after theological studies and ordination in America. I asked him what
he found most appealing and what was most depressing during his four years in our country. Without hesitation, he told me the most appealing thing was
the phenomenal liberty we enjoy, and the most depressing was how little we Americans pray.
The Penance of Prayer
Prayer is the repentance we believers must make for the sins of prayerlessness that are so prevalent in our day. Prayer is the expiation we must
make, by praying more than we normally would, because so many millions are ignoring God and failing to pray as they should. Prayer is the single most
important way that unbelievers can be brought back to God. We must pray for them and, no matter what it takes, we must persuade them, convince them,
cajole them to pray themselves. Our Lady of Fatima urges us to pray the daily Rosary for the conversion of sinners and for peace in the world. This
will lead us to a deep spirit of prayer.
One single sentence summarizes the whole of God's revelation to the human race. Those who pray will be saved. Those who do not pray will be lost.
Without prayer, we cannot obtain from God the grace we need to reach heaven. Heaven is reserved for those who pray. No one else who has reached the
age of reason will attain his eternal destiny.
Denial that Sin is an Offense Against God
It is only logical that where the existence of God is ignored, the fact of sin as an offense against God is denied.
No other explanation is possible for the massive denial of the rights of God in commanding his creatures to do his will..
Abortion is the murder of unborn infants and therefore the denial of the most basic right of a human being -- to remain alive. But abortion is
mainly the denial of the rights of the Creator to create human souls and keep them united with the body until He calls a person into eternity.
Adultery is the denial of the rights of a husband of wife to the exclusive intimacy of their spouse in marriage. But adultery is mainly the denial
of the rights of God who want marriage to be the human reflection of His own infinite loving community in the Holy Trinity.
Contraception is the denial of the rights of society to reproduce itself and thus sustain the existence of families in the world of human beings.
But contraception is mainly the denial of the rights of God who wants to create human souls, provided married people provide the human bodies into
which the souls, created by God, can be infused.
Homosexuality is the denial of men and women to the sacred experience of married love. But homosexuality is mainly the denial of the rights of God
who made two sexes , so that they might, in marriage, enjoy the loving intimacy of each other and by cooperating with the Creator bring other human
beings through this world into heaven.
Not only is sin denied as an offense against God, but in our century sin has become legalized, organized and institutionalized. The legislatures
of one country after another have made laws that are directly contrary to the laws of God. And the civil magistrates in one country after another,
including the Supreme Court, are making decisions that canonized criminals and stigmatize those who defend the rights of God as fanatics who, like the
early Christians, must be imprisoned as threats to society.
A Message of Repentance
Our Lady's message at Fatima is that we must repent. Repentance for the sin of denying sin is obedience to the will of God. Whenever we sin, we
indulge our own will in opposition to the divine will. To repent, we must bend our wills to God's will. This is the hardest task we have to do on
earth.
The kind of repentance by obedience must begin with ourselves. We who have the true faith must merit the graces that others need to be converted
in obedience to the Divine Majesty. We must give the example to others of what it means to be humble by obeying the will of God in our lives, so that
others may see our obedience and be converted from their evil ways. We must pay the heavy price of bending the knees of our self-will to the
demanding will of God's providence. Why? So that God may be merciful to a sinful world and bring it back to moral sanity.
The Ugly Reality of Sin
We must teach others, by word and example, individually and collectively that sin is not a figment of the imagination; that sin is the root of all
evils in the world; that wars and suicides, drug addiction and broken families, broken hearts and broken minds--are really the consequence of sin.
We must tell everyone who is willing to listen,and even those who are not willing to hear it-- that unless they repent, they will all likewise
perish. We must restore faith in the justice of God, even as we glorify the love of God, in a world that is steeped in self-idolatry.