Dear Friends,
Thank you very much for your response to my first post on our Lady of Fatima.
Today I conclude with the Second part.
That is why I was greatly impressed by what Pope Benedict XVI said when he visited Fatima in 2010
“Yes! The Lord, our great hope, is with us. In his merciful love, he offers a future to his people: a future of communion with himself.”
From these words of Pope Benedict it is quite clear that Our Lady makes herself an instrument to present God to us. Actually that is what the Incarnation is. It is Mary bringing Jesus to us. Through the various apparitions and the messages Mary assures us that God is with us with His merciful love and reassuring hope.
It is also worthwhile noting what the holy siblings shared among themselves.
Jacinta would cry out: “How much I delight in telling Jesus that I love him! When I tell him this often, I feel as if I have a fire in my breast, yet it does not burn me.” Therefore the entire Fatima narrative must be seen in the light of a heart filled with the love of Jesus. The Fatima apparitions are a response to the three children filled with the love of Jesus. The Fatima Phenomenon is Christocentric.
The response of her brother Francisco was also in the same vein: “What I liked most of all was seeing Our Lord in that light which Our Mother put into our hearts. I love God so much!” The Fatima apparitions, thus, were not a narrowly Marian episode but an authentic and liberating Christ-experience.
In a touching prayer Pope Benedict stands before Our Lady of Fatima as a loving and trusting Son and brings to Her, “the joys and hopes as well as the problems and sufferings of all humanity.”
Let us stand before our heavenly Mother on behalf of all and for all and not just for ourselves though that too has to be there.
In his tender devotion to Mary, however, is aware that the source Her universal love is not within Herself. It is from God. He says to Mary, “you love them all with maternal benevolence that wells up from the very heart of Divine Love”
Mary is like the moon which radiates the light of the sun. She is like the mirror which reflects the original figure.
I thank you all, the Clergy, the Religious and the Lay Faithful for your spontaneous cooperation for the year-long observance of the Centenary of the Apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima. Let us preserve the spirit of the apparitions of Fatima.
May Mother Mary Bless you all.
Bishop Thomas Dabre
Read First Part: Poona Concludes Year-Long Observance of Centenary of Apparitions in Fatima
His Grace Bishop Thomas Dabre is Bishop of Poona and Chairman of NBCLC.