Sts. Francisco and Jacinta, pray for us!

"I also express my gratitude to Blessed Jacinta for the sacrifices and prayers offered for the Holy Father, whom she saw suffering greatly." - Pope St. John Paul II, beatification homily, May 13, 2000

On this day in 1920, the nine-year-old girl destined to become the youngest non-martyr canonized a Saint flew from her sickbed in Portugal to Heaven to join her ten-year-old brother Francisco (the second youngest non-martyr Saint, who had flown before her to Heaven just ten months before). There at last they could again gaze upon their dear Jesus and His beloved Mother, she who had appeared to them in Fatima six times between May 13 and October 13 in 1917.
 
On May 13, 2017, the centenary of the first apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, Pope Francis canonized these two little shepherds and said:
 
“We can take as our examples Saint Francisco and Saint Jacinta, whom the Virgin Mary introduced into the immense ocean of God’s light and taught to adore Him. That was the source of their strength in overcoming opposition and suffering.”
 
If you have only time to read the bold line above, you will have learned the lessons of Fatima, the Wisdom of the Blessed Trinity, the message of Our Lady.

Let nothing worry or frighten you! Let the Virgin Mary introduce you, too, into the immense ocean of God's light and teach you to adore Him. This immense ocean of light, this divine mercy, this infinite Love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is our strength! Adoring Him - before the mystery of the hidden Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, before the mystery of the hidden Jesus in the person or child in front of you, before the mystery of the hidden Jesus within you . . . Let us learn to adore God precisely BECAUSE HE IS LOVE, and let His perfect love chase out all our fear!

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Wonderfully, in this Jubilee year of Hope, it is also the Jubilee of the canonizations and beatifications of the many saints and blesseds Pope St. John Paul II brought to the honors of the altar in the millennial Jubilee of 2000. And among them were these littlest ones, Francisco and Jacinta, to whom he personally owed so much.
 
Present at the beatification on Saturday morning, May 13, 2000, were over 600,000 pilgrims gathered in the square and surroundings of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary in Fatima. Concelebrating were all the bishops of Portugal and other cardinals and bishops from around the world. Shining with a gladness greater than any others present, however, was Sister Maria Lucia of the Immaculate Heart, more commonly known as Lucia of Fatima, the oldest (then aged ten, compared to her cousins, eight and seven), of the three shepherds who saw Our Lady in 1917.
 
Sister Lucia had come on a rare outing from her cloistered Carmelite monastery in Coimbra to witness her cousins’ beatification eighty-three years after Our Lady’s rather understated words to her at the second apparition on St. Anthony’s feast, June 13, 2017:
 
“I shall take Jacinta and Francisco soon, but you will remain a little longer, since Jesus wishes you to make me known and loved on earth. He wishes also for you to establish devotion in the world to my Immaculate Heart . . . My child . . . you must not be sad. I will be with you always, and my Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way which will lead you to God.”
 
Note well: “A little longer” in Heaven can feel like a lot longer on earth! Lucia was now, at the beatification ceremony, ninety-two years old, and she would be with us for five more years, taking her long awaited flight to Heaven on February 13, 2005 – just twenty years ago last week – a mere two months before JPII went to the House of the Father that April 5th, Vigil of the fifth Divine Mercy Sunday – the feast he had proclaimed and instituted when canonizing St. Faustina on April 30, 2000, 2nd Sunday of Easter.
 
But returning to Sister Lucia and Pope John Paul II in their prime, here is what she heard the very Holy Father for whom the three seers, especially her littlest cousin Jacinta, had so fervently prayed, say in his beatification homily:
 
"Father . . . to you I offer praise; for what you have hidden from the learned and the clever you have revealed to the merest children" (Mt 11:25).
 
With these words, dear brothers and sisters, Jesus praises the heavenly Father for His designs; He knows that no one can come to Him unless he is drawn by the Father (cf. Jn 6:44); therefore, He praises Him for his plan and embraces it as a son:
 
"Yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will" (Mt 11:26). You were pleased to reveal the kingdom to the merest children.”
 
According to the divine plan, "a woman clothed with the sun" (Rev 12:1) came down from heaven to this earth to visit the privileged children of the Father. She speaks to them with a mother's voice and heart: she asks them to offer themselves as victims of reparation, saying that she was ready to lead them safely to God. And behold, they see a light shining from her maternal hands which penetrates them inwardly, so that they feel immersed in God just as—they explain—a person sees himself in a mirror.
 
Later Francisco, one of the three privileged children, exclaimed: "We were burning in that light which is God and we were not consumed. What is God like? It is impossible to say. In fact we will never be able to tell people." God: a light that burns without consuming. Moses had the same experience when he saw God in the burning bush; he heard God say that He was concerned about the slavery of his people and had decided to deliver them through him: "I will be with you" (cf. Ex 3:2-12). Those who welcome this Presence become the dwelling-place and, consequently, a "burning bush" of the Most High.
 
What most impressed and entirely absorbed Blessed Francisco was God in that immense light which penetrated the inmost depths of the three children. But God told only Francisco "how sad" He was, as he said. One night his father heard him sobbing and asked him why he was crying; his son answered: "I was thinking of Jesus who is so sad because of the sins that are committed against Him." He was motivated by one desire - so expressive of how children think—"to console Jesus and make Him happy."
 
A transformation takes place in his life, one we could call radical: a transformation certainly uncommon for children of his age. He devotes himself to an intense spiritual life, expressed in assiduous and fervent prayer, and attains a true form of mystical union with the Lord. This spurs him to a progressive purification of the spirit through the renunciation of his own pleasures and even of innocent childhood games.
 
Francisco bore without complaining the great sufferings caused by the illness from which he died. It all seemed to him so little to console Jesus: he died with a smile on his lips. Little Francisco had a great desire to atone for the offences of sinners by striving to be good and by offering his sacrifices and prayers. The life of Jacinta, his younger sister by almost two years, was motivated by these same sentiments.
 
"Another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon" (Rev 12:3). These words from the first reading of the Mass make us think of the great struggle between good and evil, showing how, when man puts God aside, he cannot achieve happiness, but ends up destroying himself.

How many victims there have been throughout the last century of the second millennium! We remember the horrors of the First and Second World Wars and the other wars in so many parts of the world, the concentration and extermination camps, the gulags, ethnic cleansings and persecutions, terrorism, kidnappings, drugs, the attacks on unborn life and the family.

The message of Fátima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the "dragon" whose "tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth" (Rev 12:4). Man's final goal is heaven, his true home, where the heavenly Father awaits everyone with His merciful love.
 
God does not want anyone to be lost; that is why 2,000 years ago he sent His Son to earth, "to seek and to save the lost" (Lk 19:10). And He saved us by His death on the cross. Let no one empty that Cross of its power! Jesus died and rose from the dead to be "the first-born among many brethren" (Rom 8:29).
 
In her motherly concern, the Blessed Virgin came here to Fátima to ask men and women "to stop offending God, Our Lord, who is already very offended." It is a mother's sorrow that compels her to speak; the destiny of her children is at stake. For this reason she asks the little shepherds: "Pray, pray much and make sacrifices for sinners; many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray and make sacrifices for them.”
 
Little Jacinta felt and personally experienced Our Lady's anguish, offering herself heroically . . . One day, when she and Francisco had already contracted the illness that forced them to bed, the Virgin Mary came to visit them at home, as the little one recounts:
 
"Our Lady came to see us and said that soon she would come and take Francisco to heaven. And she asked me if I still wanted to convert more sinners. I told her yes."
 
And when the time came for Francisco to leave, the little girl tells him: "Give my greetings to Our Lord and to Our Lady and tell them that I am enduring everything they want for the conversion of sinners." Jacinta had been so deeply moved by the vision of hell during the apparition of 13 July that no mortification or penance seemed too great to save sinners.
 
She could well exclaim with St Paul: "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church" (Col 1:24). Last Sunday at the Colosseum in Rome, we commemorated the many witnesses to the faith in the 20th century, recalling the tribulations they suffered through the significant testimonies they left us. An innumerable cloud of courageous witnesses to the faith have left us a precious heritage which must live on in the third millennium. Here in Fátima, where these times of tribulation were foretold and Our Lady asked for prayer and penance to shorten them, I would like today to thank heaven for the powerful witness shown in all those lives. And once again I would like to celebrate the Lord's goodness to me when I was saved from death after being gravely wounded on 13 May 1981. I also express my gratitude to Blessed Jacinta for the sacrifices and prayers offered for the Holy Father, whom she saw suffering greatly.
 
"Father, to you I offer praise, for you have revealed these things to the merest children." Today Jesus' praise takes the solemn form of the beatification of the little shepherds, Francisco and Jacinta. With this rite the Church wishes to put on the candelabrum these two candles which God lit to illumine humanity in its dark and anxious hours. May they shine on the path of this immense multitude of pilgrims and of all who have accompanied us by radio and television. May Francisco and Jacinta be a friendly light that illumines all Portugal and, in special way, this Diocese of Leiria-Fátima.
 
We make spiritual progress when we rely on Mary
 
My last words are for the children: dear boys and girls, I see so many of you dressed like Francisco and Jacinta. You look very nice! But in a little while or tomorrow you will take these clothes off and …  the little shepherds will disappear. They should not disappear, should they?! Our Lady needs you all to console Jesus, who is sad because of the bad things done to Him; He needs your prayers and your sacrifices for sinners.
 
Ask your parents and teachers to enroll you in the "school" of Our Lady, so that she can teach you to be like the little shepherds, who tried to do whatever she asked them. I tell you that "one makes more progress in a short time of submission and dependence on Mary than during entire years of personal initiatives, relying on oneself alone" (St Louis de Montfort, The True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, n. 155).
 
This was how the little shepherds became saints so quickly. A woman who gave hospitality to Jacinta in Lisbon, on hearing the very beautiful and wise advice that the little girl gave, asked who taught it to her. "It was Our Lady," she replied. Devoting themselves with total generosity to the direction of such a good Teacher, Jacinta and Francisco soon reached the heights of perfection.
 
“Father, to you I offer praise, for what you have hidden from the learned and the clever you have revealed to the merest children.”
 
Father, to you I offer praise for all your children, from the Virgin Mary, your humble Servant, to the little shepherds, Francisco and Jacinta. May the message of their lives live on forever to light humanity's way!
 
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Twenty years ago, one week ago today, on February 13, 2005 - two days after the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes - the last remaining visionary of Fatima, Lucia dos Santos, the one whose job was to make Our Lady's Immaculate Heart known as our refuge, finally entered into the light of God's infinite Love forever.

Today as we celebrate the feast of her cousins, with whom she is reunited but with the title of Venerable and not yet Saint, it is again two days after a feast of Lourdes - namely St. Bernadette's. On February 18, 1858 Our Lady appeared to Bernadette in the grotto for the third time, and finally, for the first time, she spoke to Bernadette directly, who had taken to the grotto her paper and pen and asked the Lady, "What is your name and what is it that you wish from me?"

The lady smiled and said "It is not necessary for you to write what down what I have to say." Then she asked Bernadette for a favor. "Would you please return for the next fifteen days?" Bernadette agreed.  The Lady also told Bernadette "that she could not promise to make me happy in this world, but in the next."

In case you are thinking that this last remark of the Lady is for you: "I cannot promise to make you happy in this world, but in the next," let me reassure you.

First off, not to ruin the surprise, but the Lady speaking to Bernadette turns out to be, in fact, OUR Lady, Our own Blessed Mother, the Mother of Jesus our brother, best friend, Spouse of our souls, the one He gave to us just before giving His life for us - His inheritance and treasure for us, and the Immaculate Heart which gave birth to the Sacred Heart . . .

And secondly - don't let me throw you off, and you probably figured this out already - this Our Lady (of Lourdes) is actually the same Lady as the one of Fatima - who is also one and the same as Our Lady of Guadalupe . . . As Jesus explained to little Servant of God Marcel Van, He needs many apostles of HIs love so that He can reach every heart, every different temperament and personality, every disposition, every one of His sheep. You might say that while St. Paul teaches us to be all things to all men, our Blessed Mother has perfected (in her humility) being all ladies to all men (not to mention to all women and children)!

And so, as we love to do, let's re-visit those words of Our Lady's we find most consoling, most encouraging, most likely to immerse us in the immense ocean of God's love. She first said them (as far as I know) to her little son St. Juanito Diegito, and she says them every instant, every heartbeat, every single day to us too:

Hear and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little one:
Let nothing discourage you, nothing depress you.
Let nothing alter your heart or your countenance.
Am I not here who am your Mother?
Are you not under my shadow and protection?
Am I not your fountain of life?
Are you not in the folds of my mantle?
In the crossing of my arms?
Is there anything else that you need?
Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain.

Draw me, we will run!!!