Mary, Lady of Fatima; The Transfiguration; St. Clare, St. Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

Venerable Francisco Marto

The nine year-old boy, Venerable Francisco Marto of Fatima, who witnessed the apparitions of Our Lady in 1917, is somewhat like the great St. Joseph in his humble, simple, hidden life in God. Eulogized by his older cousin Lucia, he is described as the “consoler of Jesu Escondido” – the “hidden Jesus” in the Most Blessed Sacrament, so lonely and so forsaken, Whom he loved to console. His role was one of great humility and patience.
This little boy, so full of life, learned well the lesson Our Lady taught the three of them, and he often reminded Lucia and Jacinta of the great necessity of sacrifice. Our Lady had said in August when She appeared to them at Valinhos, after their terrible ordeal at the hands of the civil Administrator of Villa Nova de Ourem: “Pray, pray much, and make sacrifices for poor sinners, for many souls go to Hell because there is no one to make sacrifices and pray for them!” He used to remind Lucia and Jacinta of the great sorrow in Our Lady’s face when She spoke Her last words in October: “People must not offend the Lord God anymore, for He is already too much offended.” He used to hide himself in the parish church of Fatima to console Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Many a time, unknown to Lucia and Jacinta, he gave away his frugal lunch to the poorer children, and sometimes even to their sheep. At times, all three of them did this. He hid himself to make further sacrifices. Like the Fathers of the Desert he wore a rough cord around his waist, as did little Jacinta also.
Venerable Francisco never forgot that Our Lady had said that he must pray many Rosaries. Not only did he pray with Lucia and Jacinta, but he also prayed very many Rosaries all alone. At times, Lucia and Jacinta, not finding Francisco, would call out for him and search for him, and when found, he would be on his knees, absorbed in praying the Rosary, thus adding sacrifice to prayer. He would, at times, be found by Lucia and Jacinta prostrate, praying the prayers taught by the Angel, and not having heard them call him, they would surprise him. He loved to sacrifice and pray alone, visible only to the eyes of God. So great was his love of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, that during his last illness he asked Lucia to plead with the Pastor to give him his First Holy Communion. His request was granted, and he received Our Divine Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament with great love and fervor: the same hidden Jesus he had so often consoled in the Tabernacle, the same loving Jesus he had received from the hands of the Angel of Peace at the Cabeço. He asked Lucia and Jacinta to pray the Rosary for him at his bedside when, during his severe illness, he was unable to do so himself. Jacinta and Lucia, with tears of love and sorrow, bid him good-bye thus: “Entao Adeus Francisco ate a Ceu.” (”So now, good-bye, Francisco until we meet in Heaven.”) Jacinta was already ill herself, and would see him in Heaven the next year. Francisco, who had seen Our Lady, was visited by Her during his illness. He died with an angelic smile on his lips, without a struggle, most sweetly.

Let us Pray.

O God of mercy and love, Who exalteth the humble and simple, let us imitate Venerable Francisco Marto of Fatima, so that the illustrious example of his life of sacrifice and prayer, may be in simplicity and humility a shining model to all, especially our children. Please grant this through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima, who deigned to appear to him and Jacinta and Lucia. Amen.

Venerable Jacinta Marto

Jacinta, in the months of her illness, had been reduced from exuberant, bounding health to a state of pathetic frailty. Life clung as thinly as breath, and the local doctor, examining both her condition, and the limited facilities of her home, advised that she be sent, without delay, to the hospital at Villa Nova de Ourem, a few miles away. The little girl did not protest, for the reason that she knew she was going, anyhow. “You will go to two hospitals,” she had been told by Our Lady, “not to be cured, but to suffer more for the love of God, and for the conversion of sinners, and to make reparations for the offenses against my Immaculate Heart.” In joyous imitation of her Savior she accepted Our Lady’s directive, knowing beyond the wisdom of prudent and self-protecting men that the heart can best ascend to the Father of Christ when it is weighted with a cross.
Early in July her thin little body was raised by her father, and placed as tenderly as possible on the back of the family’s donkey. Her mother made the journey to Villa Nova de Ourem with her. She was at the hospital for a period of two months, and though the treatments were radical and severe, they brought no visible benefit. It was a time of actual martyrdom, relieved by nothing but the two brief visits that Lucia was able to make. By the end of August it all seemed depressingly hopeless. The hospital treatment was useless, and the expense to Jacinta’s family was much beyond their very limited means. It was decided the child should come home. By now, in her side, she carried an open wound that required its being attended and dressed each day, not so much with the object of any cure, but to prolong such life as remained. After a while, in the rather primitive surroundings of home, the wound became infected, and Jacinta weakened and wasted day by day.
Great as the child’s trials must have been in this period, her eagerness for further sacrifice failed to falter. Her courage and resolution appeared to have been almost fantastic. “When I am alone,” she explained to Lucia, her only confidante, “I get out of bed to say the Prayer of the Angel. Trouble is, I can’t get my head on the floor any more; I tumble over when I try to do it, and for this reason I have to say the prayer on my knees.” Jacinta, after her return from the hospital at Villa Nova de Ourem, managed to attain a certain amount of mobility. On occasional Winter mornings, with a reserve of strength gained through the night, she was permitted to attend the weekday Mass in the parish church at Fatima, which was closer to her home than the Cova da Iria, an area now forbidden her. “Don’t come with me to Mass today, Jacinta,” Lucia would sometimes advise. “You just aren’t strong enough, and it isn’t a Sunday.” But the child, drawn on by that Hidden Jesus of Whom she spoke so often, would persist, and go along on those spindly legs. Returning, she would be utterly exhausted, and obliged to fall into bed. Apart from these limited ventures to church, she was not allowed out-of-doors in Winter. Lucia, however, remained with her almost constantly, in intimate sharing of that very private world these two possessed. They held no secrets from one another, but talked of the sacrifices they had made and their hard-won reparations to God as other children might discuss the playing of games or the dressing of dolls.
“I was thirsty, Lucia, and I didn’t drink, and so I offered it to Jesus for sinners. In the night I had pains, and I offered Our Lord the sacrifice of not turning over in bed, and for that reason I didn’t sleep at all. What sacrifices have you been able to make?”
Always in her thoughts and always at the surface of her speech was that Immaculate Heart of Mary of which the Lady had spoken. “I shall go to Heaven very soon, Lucia, and you must stay to explain to people how God wants to establish devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary all over the world. And when you speak of this to people, Lucia, don’t be afraid to tell exactly what is true. Tell everyone that God gives us His grace through His Mother’s Immaculate Heart, which He wants to hold close to His own Sacred Heart. The people must ask for peace through Mary’s Immaculate Heart, because that is the way God wants it, and that is what Our Lady herself has told us.” Love, perhaps more than fever, was consuming the fragile remains of Jacinta Marto.
One day an automobile stopped before the pale stucco home of the Marto’s, and out of it stepped their priestly friend, Dr. Formigão. With the clergyman were the famed Lisbon physician, Dr. Enrico Lisboa and Señhora Lisboa. It was arranged that Jacinta should be sent to Lisbon and treated by the best doctors in one of the hospitals of the capital.
First she was sent to an orphanage on the Rua da Estrela, Lisbon. Mother Godiñho, the Superior, was a woman of vast understanding and charity. This Religious house, in which the desperately ailing child and her mother, rejected by all other institutions, took final sanctuary, adjoins the Chapel of Milagres; there is a raised choir from which one can see the Tabernacle and assist at Mass, celebrated in those distant days by an old and very deaf priest. The privilege was to Jacinta a boundless joy. The gift of being under the same roof sheltering Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament was as wildly beyond her hopes as, in her humility, she believed it to be in excess of her merits. Every moment permitted her was spent by Jacinta in the choir of the chapel. Sitting quietly on her little chair, for she was not allowed to kneel, she would remain with her eyes fixed on the Tabernacle in prayer and meditation. If, below her in the chapel, she heard frivolous conversation or observed in anyone an attitude of imperfect respect, she would mention this to Mother Godiñho, because she was so horrified by any lack of reverence to her God. Gravely, she explained that Our Lady was always made unhappy when people did not respect the Blessed Sacrament.
During the time that she was in the Religious house she must have received a visit from Our Lady more than once. Her conversations with Mother Godiñho were filled with instructions on the spiritual life, as well as with prophecies which are still being fulfilled: “Penance is necessary. If people amend their lives, Our Lord will even yet save the world, but if not, punishment will come.”
Less than two weeks had passed when Dr. Lisboa, in desperate hope of saving her life, succeeded in having her interned in Lisbon’s Estafania Hospital. Dr. Castro Freire, the child specialist, operated on Jacinta on February 10, 1920. Her suffering was intense for the reason that, in her condition, nothing more radical than local anesthesia was possible. But the result was clinically rather good, with two ribs being extracted from her left side, leaving a wound into which a grown-up’s hand could be comfortably inserted. Jacinta was an accommodating and stoic patient, and though the required daily dressings of the great wound in her side were a frightful agony, her only cries were repetitions of her beloved Lady’s name.
On the evening of that 20th of February, at about 6 o’clock, Jacinta said that she felt worse and wished to receive the Sacraments. The parish priest was called and he heard her confession about 8 o’clock that night. Jacinta was convinced that she would die and asked for Viaticum, but the priest thought she looked fairly well, and so he promised to bring her Holy Communion in the morning. She died that night, alone, as Our Lady had told her, and without having received Holy Communion. But she died in peace, in perfect conformity to the Divine Will.
She had been a living example of the Message she had been entrusted with. In return for this fidelity and courage, God granted to her body after death the wonderful signs of sanctity He has often bestowed upon great Saints. For several days after her death, Jacinta’s corpse gave off a sweet fragrance like flowers — the “odor of sanctity”. And after having been in a tomb for fifteen years, her face was found to be perfectly preserved.

Prayer

My God, I love Thee in Thanksgiving for the graces which Thou hast granted to me. Oh my Jesus, I love Thee! Sweet Heart of Mary, be my salvation! Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I adore Thee profoundly with all the powers of my soul, and thank Thee for the Apparitions of the most Holy Virgin Mary in Fatima which have made manifest to the world the treasures of her Immaculate Heart.
By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I implore Thee, if it should be for Thy greater glory and the good of our souls, to glorify in the sight of Thy Holy Church, Jacinta, the shepherdess of Fatima, granting us through her intercession, the grace which we implore. Amen

1. Punishment of the World: Our Blessed Mother can no longer restrain the hand of her Divine Son from striking the world with a just punishment for its many crimes.
2. Amendment of Life: “I have come to warn the faithful to amend their lives and ask pardon for their sins. They must not continue to offend Our Lord, Who is already too much offended.”
3. Five Warnings: “If my requests are not granted, Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, provoking wars and persecutions against the Church. Many good people will be martyred, there will come another great war, and various nations will be destroyed.”
4. War: “Wars are a punishment for the sins of mankind.”
5. Sins of the Flesh: “More souls go to Hell because of the sins of the flesh than for any other reason.”
6. Immodest Fashions: “Certain fashions are being introduced that offend Our Lord very much.”
7. Sinful Marriages: “Many marriages are not good; they do not please Our Lord and are not of God.”
8. Daily Rosary: “Say the Rosary every day to obtain peace for the world. And after each decade say the following prayer: ‘O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell, and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of Thy mercy.’”
9. Prayer and Sacrifice: “Pray, pray a great deal, and make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls go to Hell because they have no-one to make sacrifices and pray for them.”
10. Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary: “God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If people do what I tell you, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.”
11. First Saturday Devotion: “I promise to help at the hour of death with the graces needed for salvation those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, go to confession, receive Holy Communion, say five decades of the Rosary and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the mysteries, with the intention of making reparation to my Immaculate Heart.”
12. World Peace: “Tell everybody that God gives His graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Tell them to ask graces from her, and that the Heart of Jesus wishes to be venerated together with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for the Lord has confided the peace of the world to her… In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph, Russia will be converted and there will be peace.”
Please respond to Our Lady’s urgent requests,
and make your Pledge to the Immaculate Heart of Mary today!
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My Pledge
to Our Lady of Fatima

Dear Mary, my Queen and my Mother, I promise to faithfully fulfill thy requests at Fatima, in order that thou mayest bring peace to the world, for the conversion of poor sinners, and the salvation of immortal souls.

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Once you have made your pledge to Our Lady to faithfully fulfill her requests for world peace and for the salvation of souls, you may send an e-mail to smr@salvemariaregina.info, and we will be happy to enroll you as a member of the Fatima Crusade. Members’ names are sent to Our Lady’s Shrine, and they are remembered in special daily prayers and Masses.
You may also request a Brown Scapular to wear as a sign of your Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Please let us know if you wish to help spread the message of Our Lady of Fatima, and we will gladly send you further information.

Indeed, there is much for which to make reparation to the Holy Eucharist in our time — the spreading influence of Secularism, Modernism, and Satanism, the increasing cult of the Black Mass in which the Sacred Host is profaned; empty churches in which adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is no longer offered; the irreverent “communions” of apathetic “Catholics”, devoid of fervor and piety; and, most tragic of all, the increasing influence of humanistic liturgists, who scoff at adoration of the Divine Presence.

The influence of these modern-day “reformers” has done much to destroy the realization of the faithful that it is their Lord and their God who is truly and physically present in the Most Holy Eucharist, and that He is deserving of profound adoration. The destructive influence of these unbelieving Modernists is readily evidenced in the removal of altar rails (which are meant to separate the Holy of Holies — the throne of the Most High God — from the mundane); in the shunting aside of the Tabernacle to a makeshift stand in the lower part of the sanctuary; in the insistence upon standing at sacred moments, such as the reception of Holy Communion, instead of kneeling in humble and profound adoration.

(Note that the Angel and the children prostrated themselves before the Divine Presence. Who are we to stand, as proud Pharisees? Some give the excuse, “the Jews stood in prayer.” Well, we are not Jews who have not the Divine Presence in the Blessed Sacrament. We are Catholics who firmly believe that our God is present in the Sacred Host and that we owe Him profound adoration!)
The innumerable present insults daily offered to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament should compel us to increase our Communions of reparation with deeper fervor and love, to offer more holy hours and all-night vigils of reparation.

THE CHILDREN OF FATIMA
From: http://www.salvemariaregina.info/SalveMariaRegina/SMR-104.html

Prayer: Dear Children, I bind my soul in the innocence of my childhood with yours; as you lay prostrate with your faces in the field at Fatima; and unite your suffering, sacrifice, rosaries and tears for the salvation of lost souls to the Divine Will of Jesus. “Sweet Jesus, please renew and illumine the acts of we children so that they may be multiplied and made thrice holy.” Amen. AdelaMaria

The Transfiguration by Raphael

Raphael, 1516-1520
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vatican City
Mt 171-9 Mk 92-10Lk 928-36

After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun and his cloths became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, ” Lord it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters-one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.

” While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them and a voice from the cloud said, ” This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him! ” When the disciples heard this, they fell face down to the ground, terrified. But Jesus came and touched them. ” Get up ” he said. ” Don’t be afraid. ” When they looked up, they saw no-one except Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, ” Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.

Carmel among the Nazis

Stein’s family saw her entry into the convent as a betrayal, and as coming at the worst possible time, just when Jewish persecution was intensifying. Christianity was the religion of their oppressors; they couldn’t understand what it meant to her. When Stein’s mother heard of her decision to enter the convent she was crushed.
“Why did you have to get to know him (Jesus Christ)? He was a good man — I’m not saying anything against him. But why did he have to go and make himself God?” It was only after her mother’s death in 1936 that Stein’s sister Rosa felt free to be baptized as a Catholic as well.

Stein remained in Cologne for five years, participating in the life of the community with great joy while continuing her scholarly work. After the terror of kristallnacht (November 9 1938), the nuns in Cologne feared for Stein’s safety and decided to send her secretly to the Carmel in Echt, the Netherlands. Her sister Rosa later joined her there as a Third Order Carmelite, serving as the convent portress. When Holland fell to the Nazis, Edith and Rosa Stein were in danger again, and plans were made to move them to Switzerland. Before these could be finalized, the Dutch bishops issued an encyclical attacking the anti-Semitic atrocities of the Nazi regime. The Gestapo retaliated immediately by rounding up all Roman Catholic Jews to be sent to the death camps. Edith and Rosa Stein were arrested on August 2, 1942. When Rosa seemed disoriented as they were led away from the convent, Edith gently encouraged her, “Come, Rosa. We go for our people.” The sisters were deported to Auschwitz and executed just a week later. Edith Stein was fifty years old.
Reports from those who were close to Sister Teresa Benedicta in those final days show her to have been a woman of remarkable interior strength, giving courage to her fellow travelers and helping to feed and bathe the little ones when even their mothers had given up hope and were neglecting them.

One woman who survived the war has written a description of Stein during the time their group was awaiting transportation to “the East.” “Maybe the best way I can explain it is that she carried so much pain that it hurt to see her smile…In my opinion, she was thinking about the suffering that lay ahead. Not her own suffering — she was far too resigned for that — but the suffering that was in store for the others. Every time I think of her sitting in the barracks, the same picture comes to mind: a Pieta without the Christ.” Although she did not seek death, Stein had often expressed her willingness to offer herself along with the sacrifice of Christ for the sake of her people, the Jews, and also for the sake of their persecutors. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on May 1,1987.
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0001.html

St. Clare of Assisi

1193-1253
Feast Day: August 11

Patron saint of eye disorders, telegraphs, telephones, and television

St. Clare was a wealthy young woman with a reputation for holiness who was greatly moved by the words and deeds of the self-made beggar Francis Bernadone. She abandoned all she had to follow God’s calling, and became the founder of a religious community of women known as the Poor Clares, whose rule of life is based on the ideals of St. Francis. Many miracles were attributed to her during her life, and today she is revered as the second greatest Franciscan saint.
St. Clare always possessed a maternal concern for the nuns in her care, even as she insisted that no one force them to abandon their vow of total poverty.

Here is a blessing from St. Clare’s second letter to Bl. Agnes of Prague:

What you hold may you always hold.
What you do, may you always do and never abandon.
But with swift pace, light step and unswerving feet,
so that even your steps stir up no dust,
Go forward, the spirit of our God has called you.

Saint Clare of Assisi, mistress of poverty, pray for us.

http://www.smart.net/~tak/Patrons/clare.html