CathNews New Zealand

It’s always interesting to look at a date or a period of time and ask, “What happened on this day ten years ago? Or fifty or a hundred years ago?” Sometimes we can be surprised how quickly time has passed from a momentous event.

And so, let’s play the game to the extremes, and ask: What happened in the coming week a hundred years ago?

Among a few things, three poor shepherd children in Portugal received a visitation from a woman clothed in light.

They were confused by her presence but over the course of several monthly encounters, came to understand that the heavenly woman was the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ.

The location was the small city of Fatima, which was named after the favored daughter of the Prophet Mohammed during the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula.

The timing was during the Great War, an event of massive destruction to human life and well-being.

The religious sentiment was atheistic, the political environment communistic, and nihilism was quickly growing as the air breathed by many.

In summary, therefore, it would seem that Fatima in 1917 would have been an uncommon place in an unlikely time for the Blessed Mother of Jesus Christ to make a house call.

Before diving into those state of affairs, we should probably ask the obvious question: Are visits like this common?

I mean, we did just say that the Blessed Virgin Mary, who historically lived in the first century of the common era, came and appeared to three children in the early twentieth century. Do things like this happen?

For those who have no faith or spiritual openness, very few things can be said to convince them that such occurrences are possible.

For persons of faith, there is at least the acceptance that such apparitions could happen. Usually, the believer’s own temperament and history, combined with the actual story and message of the spiritual event, usually determine whether she will accept this specific supernatural event or not.

And so, did Mary make a visit to Fatima one hundred years ago? Continue reading

Sources

• Crux article by Fr Jeffrey F Kirby, a Catholic priest of the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina.
• Image: Republika

 

Additional reading

News category: Features.