Fátima ao detalhe | 13 maio 1917 | Aliança de Santa Maria

MAY 13, 1917
FÁTIMA IN DETAIL

Photo: Sophie Alves, asm

Sr. Maria Benedita Costa, asm
Sister of the Covenant of St. Mary

Looking at the Apparitions of Fatima in 1917 from a historical point of view is, in fact, an exercise as important as it is complex, given the need to take into account not only the abundance of sources to be consulted, but also the specific context experienced at the time of the Apparitions, both nationally and worldwide.

These were troubled times, politically, economically, socially and religiously. The First Republic was still a "fragile child" taking its first steps, with the instability typical of the beginning of any political regime, and one of its main characteristics - particularly relevant to the relationship it would have with the Apparitions of Fatima - along with a strong authoritarianism, an intense anti-religiosity and anti-clericalism which, contrary to the feelings of the majority of the Catholic population, was reflected in various restrictions on the daily living of the faith.

To add to this atmosphere of national instability, there was also a particularly dramatic moment in the context of the First World War, in which Portuguese soldiers were also fighting, some of whom had just left for France.

For this reason, praying "for the soldiers who go to war" was something not only experienced personally within each family, but also lived and recommended by the Church, both by the Pope - Benedict XV, just a week earlier, had asked children all over the world to pray for peace and determined that the invocation "Queen of Peace, pray for us" be included in the Lauretan litany - and by parish priests in their parish churches - as happened with Fr. Manuel Marques Ferreira who, on the very morning of May 13, 1917, at the Sunday Mass attended by Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta, recommended that "the rosary be prayed for the soldiers"[2].

It is therefore not surprising that, right at the beginning of Lucia's conversation with Our Lady, when she learns that she "is from Heaven", the question about the end of the war spontaneously arises.

Disregarding the narrative of the Apparition and its dialogue, which were widely publicized in the Memories of Sister Lucia I[3]The sources of the time in which the Apparition of May 1917 was first recorded express them in the form of "whiteness" and "gold" [4] what would later be characterized by Sr. Lucia herself as "light", "a light so intense [...] that, penetrating us in the chest and in the depths of our soul, making us see ourselves in God, who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in the best of mirrors"[5].

Still in the sources of the time, we find a record of a curious fact about this Apparition, the only one that the seers were able to experience "alone", without the presence of pilgrims and/or onlookers, which "remained in popular memory"[6]During the Apparition, the sheep, deprived of the vigilance of their guardians, entered a field of chícharos (a type of legume commonly grown in the region) and, inexplicably - according to human and natural criteria - not only did they not eat them, but they didn't cause any damage to the field, and after the Apparition ended, if it hadn't been for the prompt intervention of the Seers, they would have quickly decimated it.

[1] For the sake of accessibility of sources for those who wish to delve deeper into the subject, we cite them from the work of Luciano Coelho Cristino (CRISTINO, L. C., The Apparitions of Fatima: a reconstruction based on documents(Fátima, Santuário de Fátima, 2017, 1st ed.), in which each Apparition was treated individually from the point of view of the documentary sources.

[2] Cf. CRISTINO, L. C., The Apparitions..., p. 25-26.

[3] JESUS, Lúcia de, Memories of Sister Lucia IFátima, Secretariat of the Little Shepherds, 2007, 13th ed.

[4] Cf. CRISTINO, L. C., The Apparitions..., p. 28.

[5] JESUS, Lúcia de, Memories..., 174.

[6] Cf. CRISTINO, L. C., The Apparitions..., p. 32.

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