Third Apparition of Our Lady at Fatima - July 13, 2021

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Gratefully adapted from this Our Lady of Fatima Chapel email:

In honor of [today's] commemoration of the Blessed Virgin's third apparition at Fátima, we provide the following account of this most important message which served as a vital warning to our current world in crisis.

July 13th, 1917

It was during the torrid days of July, the month consecrated to Christ's Most Precious Blood, that Our Lady of Fatima visited the little shepherds for the third time. The immense importance of this visit cannot be overestimated, for at this time, the Blessed Virgin revealed her Message for the World. We take the following account from The Whole Truth About Fatima; Volume I, by Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité.

At the Cova da Iria on July 13, 1917, a crowd estimated at between one and two thousand were gathered. Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta knelt before the scrubby little holm oak where Our Lady appeared. In her account, Lúcia relates that in answer to her question, “What does Your Grace want of me?”

Our Lady replied:

“I want you to come here on the 13th of next month, and to continue praying the Rosary every day in honour of Our Lady of the Rosary, in order to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, because only she can help you.”

When Lúcia asked her to perform a miracle so that all would believe, Our Lady responded,

“Continue to come here every month. In October, I will tell you who I am and what I want, and I will perform a miracle for all to see and believe.”

Our Lady continued:

“Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say many times, especially when you make some sacrifice: ‘O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary. “


From Sr. Lúcia’s account:

“As Our Lady spoke these last words, she opened Her hands once more, as she had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. (It must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me.) The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals.”

Here, in her Third Memoir, Sr. Lúcia added:

“This vision only lasted a moment, thanks to our good Mother in heaven who, in the first apparition, had promised to take us to heaven. Were it not for that, I believe we would have died out of fright and fear. Terrified and as if to plead for succor, we looked up at Our Lady, who said to us, so kindly and so sadly" :

“You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end, but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the reign of Pius XI.

When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine and persecutions against the Church and the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.

If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.

In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world. In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, etc. [This marks the third part of the secret, not yet not revealed] Do not tell this to anybody. Francisco, yes, you may tell him.

When you say the Rosary, say after each mystery: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fire of hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who are most in need.“

While this was going on, Ti Marto relates, the crowd was so silent that you could have heard a pin drop. And, like Maria Carreira and some other witnesses, Mr. Marto, who was very near the seers, perceived an unintelligible murmur: “then I began to hear a sound, a little buzzing rather like a mosquito in an empty bottle. But I couldn’t hear any words!” This mysterious murmur was heard by only a few witnesses.

However, two other unusual phenomena were noticed by a much greater number: The luminosity of the sky noticeably decreased, as during an eclipse, the whole time the ecstasy of the children lasted. At the same time, the temperature, which was very hot, went down noticeably, and the tint of the light was modified. The atmosphere became yellow as gold. In addition, a whitish cloud, rather pleasant to look at, formed around the seers. Here is the testimony of Mr. Marto:

“I saw what looked like a little greyish cloud resting on the oak tree, and the sun’s heat lessened and there was a delicious fresh breeze. It hardly seemed like the height of summer.”


THE TWO-FOLD MESSAGE OF JULY 13

In the cycle of apparitions, this one on July 13 is a watershed moment. The previous apparitions, including the Angel’s visits, prepared for this one and this apparition is essential for understanding the subsequent ones. For it was on this day, as Lúcia relates, that Our Lady deigned to reveal to us the Secret.

So true is this that the message of July 13 appears to us very clearly divided into two parts:

The first - there are the words which were divulged immediately. And the second - the long text of the secret which the seers carefully kept hidden. However, what is important is that the two parts of the message are very closely connected.

The great novelty of this apparition, the decisive word which would attract innumerable crowds to the Cova da Iria for the last three months, is the announcement of a great miracle.

Lúcia requested of Our Lady:

” … tell us who you are, and to work a miracle so that all may believe that you are appearing to us.” Although the request of Lucia reminds us of Bernadette’s request, the response of Our Lady is very different: At Lourdes, when Bernadette followed the advice of Father Peyramale and asked her to make the rosebush in the grotto bloom, Our Lady was content to smile. In this case, and here is the decisive, prodigious event, she accedes to her request:

“Continue to come each month. In October, I will say who I am and what I want; and I will work a miracle so that all may believe.”

Thus she announced three months in advance the place, day and hour of the promised great miracle. It was a clear promise, without any condition or the least ambiguity. On August 19th and September 13th, Our Lady repeated it in the same terms. Never before had heaven shown such condescension to the demands of men, to guarantee for them with certitude the truth of a message. Already, by this solid link between the prophecy and the miracle, the event of Fatima is unheard of, incomparable.

Our Lady made this announcement of the miracle so that all will believe, immediately before revealing to the three seers her great prophetic secret. This was to make them understand, in all clarity, that the miracle would guarantee the divine origin of the secret, as well as the fulfillment of this prophetic secret. Thus the great miracle of October 13th was closely associated, by the Blessed Virgin Herself, not only with the whole of her message, but especially with the prophetic secret of July 13th.

It was when Our Lady opened Her hands again as in the two previous months, that the children had the vision of hell. This month, no doubt the Blessed Virgin remained in this attitude while she revealed the secret. And the supernatural light which they received then was not limited to the vision of hell. Once again, as on May 13th and June 13th, they enjoyed a sort of vision of God as Sr. Lúcia reports:

“Francisco seemed to be the one on whom the vision of hell made the least impression, though it did indeed have quite a considerable effect on him. What made the most powerful impression on him and what wholly absorbed him was God, the Most Holy Trinity, perceived in that light which penetrated our inmost souls.

Afterwards Francisco said: ‘We were on fire in that light which is God, and yet we were not burnt! What is God? …We could never put it into words. Yes, that is something indeed which we could never express! But what a pity it is that He is so sad! If only I could console Him!’"

This great sorrow of God, which reveals to us His Fatherly Heart, outraged by our sins, and as it were overwhelmed by the chastisements which these sins justly draw down upon us, profoundly marked the soul of Francisco during the first three apparitions. He never forgot it, and his whole ideal would be to pray and sacrifice himself to ‘console God.


THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

The apparition of July 13th also marks the high point of the revelation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the center and very heart of the whole message. The three apparitions of the Angel, followed by those of Our Lady on May 13th and June 13th, had prepared this revelation which the great secret expresses in all its fullness. But it is a remarkable fact that in the last three apparitions there is no more mention of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This great design of divine mercy for the salvation of the world would not be unveiled until later…

That is why, on July 13th, Our Lady solemnly announced that she would come back. She kept her promise and returned on December 10th, 1925 at Pontevedra, to manifest once again her Immaculate Heart pierced with thorns, and to request the practice of the communion of reparation on the five First Saturdays of the month. And she came back again, on June 13th, 1929, at Tuy, to ask for the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart.

Russia? On July 13th, Lúcia did not yet know what this word meant. Yet she always affirmed having heard the word Russia. Similarly, she is sure of having heard no reinado de Pio XI. "We did not know if it was a Pope or a king", she confided to Father Jongen in 1946, "but the most Holy Virgin spoke of Pius XI." As for the announcement of a night illumined by an unknown light, it was fulfilled to the letter during the night of January 25th, 1938.

Let us point out here, since it is important for critical purposes, what perfect harmony there is between the two parts of the message, that which was divulged immediately, and that which remained secret a long time. The convergence of themes, which marks the profound unity of the same message pronounced by the Blessed Virgin the same day, is striking.


"ONLY SHE CAN HELP YOU"

Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité:

The secret of the secret is that God wills to give us everything through the mediation of the Blessed Virgin, in response to our devotion to Her Immaculate Heart, not only spiritual goods but even temporal peace, and this for the whole world. Has anyone noticed that one of the words of Our Lady, faithfully reported by Lúcia to her parish priest the next day, has the same vigor, the same exclusivity? "Continue to pray the Rosary every day… to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war, for only she can help you." It is equivalent to saying: there is no salvation for us except from Jesus through the Blessed Virgin; this was already the essential core of the secret of Fatima which was disclosed as early as July, 1917.

Frère Michel continues:

THE OBSESSIVE FEAR FOR THE SALVATION OF SOULS - which is the other key of the secret, with its terrible first part, the gripping vision of hell, was clearly manifested at the very moment of the apparition, inscribed on the faces of the seers. All the witnesses in fact noticed the great sorrow which suddenly overwhelmed them. Those who were very near were very much moved by the sudden cry which fell from the lips of Lúcia. "At this moment", says Ti Marto, "Lúcia took a deep breath, went as pale as death, and we heard her cry out in terror to Our Lady, calling her by name."

Photograph after the Vision of Hell

Is it not this same fright, distorting their faces, which is still visible on the photograph of the three seers taken by Mario Godinho, a few minutes after the apparition?

It was also on July 13th that Our Lady revealed the only two prayers she taught the children, the one just before the secret, to invite them to sacrifice, and the other right after, to complete each decade of the Rosary. These are two very brief formulas, which show once again the humility and also the great pedagogy of the Virgin Mary. They are almost ejaculatory prayers which can easily come unceasingly to our lips. They are two precious pearls which, in a few words, synthesize the whole essence of Her message…

AN URGENT SUPPLICATION FOR THE SALVATION OF SOULS

Right after the end of the secret, Our Lady continued:

“When you say the Rosary, say after each mystery: ‘O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fire of hell; lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need.”

O MY JESUS

The two prayers taught by Our Lady are addressed to Her Son, to Jesus Christ our Savior. This alone suffices to destroy the calumnies of the reformists opposed to Fatima under the fallacious pretext that her message is not Christo-centric enough! What an error! At Fatima, Our Lady willed to add to the Rosary, the great prayer in her honor this short invocation addressed to Jesus the Savior. Inserted between the Gloria Patri to the Holy Trinity, the Our Fathers and the Aves, which supplicate God our Father and our Blessed Mother in heaven, this little prayer enlarges the divine horizon of our Rosary.


FORGIVE US

The thought of our sin, this sin so profoundly rooted in us and which threatens to cause our ruin, is present everywhere in the message of Fatima. There is not one of the nine apparitions of the Angel and the most Blessed Virgin which does not make some allusion to sin. Each of the four prayers taught to us, brief as they are, all make some mention of it. This prayer, which is no exception, echoes the litany of Paters and Aves: Forgive us our trespasses (the Our Father), and pray for us sinners (the Hail Mary).


DELIVER US FROM THE FIRE OF HELL

This supplication, the most urgent, refers of course to the vision of hell. The concrete evocation of its terrifying fire was willed expressly to call to mind the description of hell sketched by Lúcia. Yes, it is willed by Our Lady, who is the sovereign teacher, that this word hell will always remind us of this devouring fire, which most exactly expresses its terrible reality. [Editor’s note: this was also a warning against the heretical notion that hell is empty that is so prevalent today.]

‘Livrai nos do fogo do inferno!’ The expression is strong and vigorous, and deliberately so. Not only ‘preserve us’, but more exactly, ‘deliver us’! It makes explicit the last request of the Our Father, with the same verb, but ‘deliver us from evil’. This is to say that hell is not for us an imaginary and far off danger, from which we can escape by ourselves.

No, it is the just and certain culmination of rebellions against God and hardening of hearts, where we would go without the pardon of Jesus, our Savior, and without the help of His grace full of mercy. Without Him, without His Passion and His redeeming Blood we are already lost. We owe our salvation to Him alone, and He desires that we ask Him: ‘O my Jesus, deliver us from the fire of hell!’

The prayer of Fatima is very close to what the liturgy says: ‘From eternal death, deliver us, O Jesus!’ implore the litanies. And the prayer of the Roman Canon, stating clearly the intention of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, says: ‘Deliver us from eternal damnation - ab aeterna damnatione nos eripi - and number us in the flock of Thine elect.’

The same vigorous expression is found in the Litany of the Saints, and this time it makes quite clear who is meant by the ‘us’: it is we ourselves and all our dear ones who have the faith, and we implore pardon for ourselves: ‘That You would deliver our souls and the souls of our brethren, relations and benefactors, from eternal damnation, we beseech You, hear us! Ut animas nostras ...ab aeterna damnatione eripias, te rogamus audi nos.’

It is an urgent supplication, but it is also full of an immense trust. For in hope we are already sure of obtaining the forgiveness of Our Savior, and eventually reaching the happiness of heaven… Thus, our horizons are enlarged, leading us to the second part of the prayer:


LEAD ALL SOULS TO HEAVEN

Our ardent desire to be saved, ourselves and our dear ones, is necessarily extended to all souls. Christ offered His life for all men, without exception, and God His Father wishes to save all men; so why shouldn’t all souls go to heaven? The little prayer becomes… a universal prayer. It is mystical, and it expresses a true and ardent charity.

‘Lord’, Father de Foucauld loved to repeat, ‘if it could be possible, make all men go to heaven!’ [Ed: Indeed, that is true, Christ our Savior made salvation possible for all, but few there are who choose it. However, we are called by charity to pray for all poor sinners, for we may not judge; that is for Christ alone to do.]

‘All souls’, ‘as almas todas’, or in the version most often quoted by Sister Lucia, ‘as alminhas todas’, with this diminutive of commiseration, ‘all these poor souls’, just as we would say, ‘poor sinners’. ‘Levai para o Ceu!’ ‘Lead them to heaven!’ The word can hardly be translated: take them, carry them, and lift them right up to heaven!

And perhaps even better, as Father Simonin and Dom Jean-Nesmy translates: ‘Draw all souls to heaven.’ It reminds us of the words of Jesus on the evening of Palm Sunday, just before entering into the work of His redemptive Sacrifice: ‘Now is the prince of this world cast out; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.’ He said this to show by what death He was going to die. ‘Omnia traham ad me ipsum.’


ESPECIALLY THOSE MOST IN NEED

These last words bewildered Canon Formigao. Indeed they are surprising: How can we ask Jesus to lead all souls to heaven, and thus all without exception, and then immediately add a formula which on the contrary is partial and restrictive? The words, ‘all… especially’ seem to defy simple logic.

And yet the formula is surely authentic, and the difficulty disappears when we consider that it concerns the salvation of souls, which is always a pure and infinite mercy of God. The logic here is one of love, full of implications which cause the too narrow framework of the exact relation of the concepts to explode.

The suppliant soul, in the zeal of its love, would like to obtain from the Sacred Heart the salvation of all souls… but it knows that its request cannot be heard in all its extension… it does not merit it. In this case, it immediately clarifies its request, and says to God: ‘I ask You to have mercy at least on some souls, and most especially, as a priority, on the souls of the greatest sinners, who most surely risk being lost!’ Such is the logic of the saints…

This is how the three seers understood this prayer, in the light of its immediate context, the vision of hell. A striking passage from Lucia's Memoirs shows us how the little prayer of Our Lady often returned to the lips of Blessed Jacinta, and not only between decades of the Rosary, but to implore often the salvation of souls:

“Jacinta often sat thoughtfully on the ground or on a rock, and exclaimed: ‘Oh, hell! hell! How sorry I am for the souls who go to hell! And the people down there, burning alive, like wood in the fire!’ Then, shuddering, she knelt down with her hands joined, and recited the prayer Our Lady had taught us: ‘O my Jesus! Pardon us, save us from the fire of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need.“

‘Now’, Sr. Lucia continues, ‘Your Excellency will understand how my own impression was that the final words of this prayer refer to souls in greatest danger of damnation, or those who are nearest to it.’

These last words turn our attention towards those in their last agony. In all the myriads of Ave Marias we shall have prayed all during our life, we ask the Mother of Mercy to pray for us ‘at the hour of our death’. But all these hardened souls who outraged her unceasingly and never invoked her? It is for them, in their place that Our Lady has us pray during our Rosary.

This priority accorded the greatest sinners, was not understood, and was the principal reason why the original version of the prayer was abandoned for so long in favor of another, more classical one. Yet this prayer brings us to the full reality of the Gospel. It is the priority given to the erring sheep for the twofold reason that it is lost, and that its salvation will show more strikingly the untiring Love of its Good Shepherd!

It was St. Therese of the Child Jesus who, ‘devoured by a thirst for souls, burned with the desire to snatch from the eternal flames the souls of the greatest sinners’. Hence her decision ‘to prevent at any price from going to hell’ the horrible criminal whose three murders had monopolized the news. On him also, ‘this poor unfortunate Pranzini’, did she wish to pour out the salvific and ‘divine dew’ of the Blood of Jesus.

We will see that this concern for the salvation of the greatest sinners is a frequent theme in later revelations granted to Sr. Lúcia. It was equally the constant thought of Jacinta:

“Jacinta remained on her knees like this for long periods of time, saying the same prayers over and over again. From time to time, like someone waking from sleep, she called out to her brother or myself: ‘Francisco! Francisco! Are you praying with me? We must pray very much, to save souls from hell! So many go there! So many!“

THE LITTLE PRAYER OF REPARATORY OFFERING

Sr. Lúcia humbly confesses in her second Memoir: ‘During this month (June 13th – July 13th), I lost all enthusiasm for making sacrifices and acts of mortification… To reawaken my fervor which had grown cold, Our Lady told us:

‘Sacrifice yourselves for sinners, and say often to Jesus, especially each time you make a sacrifice: O Jesus, it is for love of You, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary."

Here is a very simple prayer, whose significance is immediately grasped. Again it is to Jesus our Savior that our offering is addressed, but in addition to the desire to please Him through love, in accomplishing the action we offer Him, two other intentions are added. And the whole richness of this prayer consists precisely in their indissoluble bond of reciprocal implication, which causes each of these intentions to remind us of the other two.

Note how the thought of the salvation of sinners is found inserted there like a wedge between the two acts of love for Jesus and Mary. This shows to what extent the missionary intention is at the very heart of the message of Fatima, as necessarily flowing from the true love of the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Since many have erroneously commented on their aversion for the Fatima Decade Prayer, this commentary by Frère Michel seemed most opportune to share. The two Fatima Prayers recommended by Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima urge us to reparation for the conversion of sinners, and it cannot be stressed enough the importance of this at this particular time. Our Lady of Fatima has promised that there is nothing, nothing at all, which we cannot accomplish by means of her Rosary.