CONVERSION, REPARATION, CONSECRATION:

Sister Lucy herself left a description of the event, and so we quote her account at length, adding only a few subtitles: 4

«Russia 1929. Our Lord asks for the consecration.
«The Reverend Father Gonçalves sometimes came to our chapel to hear confessions. I made my confession to him, and as I felt at ease with him, I continued to do so during the three years he remained there as superior.» 5
THE REQUEST FOR THE CONSECRATION OF RUSSIA
«At this time Our Lord informed me that the moment had come when He willed for me to make known to the Holy Church His desire for the consecration of Russia and His promise to convert it... The communication took place in this way:
THE HOLY HOUR OF ADORATION AND REPARATION
«(13/6/29). I had requested and obtained permission from my superiors and confessor to make the Holy Hour from 11:00 p.m. until midnight from Thursday to Friday.
«Being alone one night, I knelt down before the communion rail in the middle of the chapel to say the prayers of the Angel, lying prostrate. Feeling tired, I got up and knelt, and continued to say them with my arms in the form of a cross. The only light came from the sanctuary lamp.»
A SPECTACULAR TRINITARIAN THEOPHANY
«Suddenly a supernatural light illumined the whole chapel and on the altar appeared a cross of light which reached to the ceiling.
«In a brighter part could be seen, on the upper part of the Cross, the face of a man and His body to the waist;
«On His breast was an equally luminous dove,
«and nailed to the cross, the body of another man.
«A little below the waist, suspended in mid-air, was to be seen a Chalice and a large Host on to which fell some drops of Blood from the face of the Crucified and from a wound in His breast. These drops ran down over the Host and fell into the Chalice.
«Under the right arm of the Cross was Our Lady with Her Immaculate Heart in Her hand... (It was Our Lady of Fatima with Her Immaculate Heart... in Her left hand... without a sword or roses, but with a crown of thorns and flames...)
«Under the left arm (of the Cross), some big letters, as it were of crystal-clear water running down over the Altar, formed these words: “Grace and Mercy”.
«I understood that it was the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity that was shown to me, and I received lights about this mystery which I am not permitted to reveal.»

«Then Our Lady said to me: “ The moment has come when God asks the Holy Father to make, in union with all the bishops of the world, the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means.”

«“ So numerous are the souls that the justice of God condemns for sins committed against Me, that I come to ask for reparation. Sacrifice yourself for this intention and pray.”

«I gave an account of this to my confessor, who ordered me to write what Our Lord willed to be done.»

Taken from: THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT FATIMA VOLUME II 
THE SECRET AND THE CHURCH - Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité

Thus the path of our return to God, the way of our conversion, is all marked out. It is the shortest way, the easiest way, the sweetest way, but also the narrow and enclosed way and the only way which leads to life. To despise it or depart from it is to despise the Mercy of God, to insult the divine predilections of His Heart. If it is folly or a diabolical lie to pretend to return to the Father while ignoring His beloved and only Son, sovereign Mediator between God and men, 23 it is a similar blasphemy, and a sure sign of the work of the evil spirit, to wish to go to Jesus while neglecting the Immaculate Heart of His Mother, whom He has established as our universal Mediatrix. «My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way which will lead you to God», Our Lady declared to Lucy on June 13, 1917.

Thus the wonderful dispensation of the mystery of grace whose aesthetic and mystical aspects we have considered now present themselves to our eyes as a dramatic requirement. In the plan of God, the cult and love of the Blessed Virgin are not something secondary and optional. On the contrary, the whole message of Fatima proclaims that they are the indispensable condition for obtaining salvation. At Tuy, the Blessed Virgin solemnly informed Her messenger of this fact: many souls are damned because they refuse to conform with docility to the predilections of God towards Her, because they despise and insult Her: «So many are the souls which the justice of God condemns for sins committed against Me...»

We can easily understand this terrible rigour: Since She is truly our Mother, the Mother of all men, our Co-Redemptrix, Advocate and most loving Mediatrix, how could this Virgin who is all good, and also the Mother of God, the Immaculate One in whom the Trinity takes Its delight, not have an absolute right to the veneration, gratitude and filial love of all Her children? God would no longer be God if He did not severely chastise those who spit in the face of such a Mother and do not repent... The crime is greater still because God wills that She be better known, better loved and more exalted in our times.

Indeed «the moment has come», and for two centuries Heaven’s requests have become more and more pressing. The hour has come for the hierarchical Church, which has received as a deposit the treasure of divine Revelation, to now cause the full glory of the Immaculate Heart to shine, and to present Her to the world, authoritatively and in the name of Christ, as the Mediatrix of Grace and Mercy for all souls and for all nations, for the Church and for Christendom. The apparitions of Fatima, with their culmination at Pontevedra and Tuy, correspond to the apparitions of Paray-le-Monial. After the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary comes in the name of God to make known the devotion due to It in preparation for Its “triumph”, which in turn heralds the Reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY AND THE CHURCH, THE FINAL SALVATION OF THE WORLD. «God wishes to establish in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.» To this end He wishes to give us a striking proof that through Her, and only through Her, can we be saved from the frightful perils that menace us. Faced with an eternal Hell, faced with the hell on earth of the Bolshevik Gulag, God presents the Immaculate Heart of Mary to us as the final recourse, the last hope of salvation for a world on the way to perdition.

This is the oracle which Our Lady repeats insistently: “You have seen Hell, where the souls of poor sinners go.” And on June 13, 1929, the events speak for themselves. “You have seen the famines, the wars and the persecutions which overwhelm the poor people abandoned to the living hell of the communist Gulag, the veritable empire of Satan.” Well, Our Lady repeats insistently, to save them “God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart.”

GOD PROMISES A MIRACLE THROUGH THE MEDIATION OF MARY... It is in the tragic context of 1929, when Stalin was bringing the bloody terror and the horrors of the Gulag to their height, that the great divine promise must be understood: «It was at this time (Lucy writes) that Our Lord informed me that the moment had come for me to let the Holy Church know His desire for the consecration of Russia and His promise to convert it.» In another place Sister Lucy calls it His promise «to end the persecution in Russia», «His promise to save it». Finally the atrocious butchery, the cynically planned famines, the persecutions, the harassment by the police, the stupid and inhumane socialisation, all that was to be ended by the all-powerful intervention of the Mother of God, this Theotokos so beloved to the Russian people who continued to venerate Her icons in secret.

The conversion of Russia through the mediation of Mary was to be a first prodigy. But there was also a second...

... AND THROUGH THE MEDIATION OF THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY. This extraordinary miracle would have stupefied the world, reawakened faith and caused a hymn of thanksgiving to break out among the people. It was imperative that the whole world, heretics, schismatics, Jews and pagans, realise that God had performed the miracle through the mediation of the Queen of Heaven, but also in response to «a solemn and public act» of the Pastors of His one, true Church, which is Catholic and Roman. What admirable wisdom in this twofold mediation! For both are required by God for the long-awaited miracle, so necessary to world peace, to finally take place: «The good Lord promises to end the persecution in Russia, if the Holy Father will himself make a solemn act of reparation and consecration of Russia to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, as well as ordering all the bishops of the Catholic world to do the same...»

Poor Russia, dominated by Bolshevism, and still a victim of its centuries-old schism, would have been saved from both evils at the same time. Moreover, deliverance would have come at the request and on the decision of all the Catholic bishops obeying their head, this Pope of Rome, whose universal primacy of jurisdiction as successor of Peter the Russian Church, in its obstinate rebellion, had refused to recognise. Yes, let us admire the astonishing, divine stratagem through which God willed to bring back to His flock, by the millions, the multitude of His sheep led astray in the schism, and at the same time assure world peace.

What fullness of wisdom in this great design of mercy! This already would suffice to show that it is not of man, but of God. The more we examine it, the more we understand its divine coherence. We understand also that this design is irrevocable, and that God does not will to change any part of it. When Sister Lucy asked Him why He would not convert Russia without the Pope making this consecration, Our Lord responded: «Because I want My whole Church to recognise that consecration as a triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to extend its cult later on and place devotion to this Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to My Divine Heart... The Immaculate Heart of Mary will save Russia. It has been confided to Her.» 24

What will be this triumph, which has been foretold? The universal expansion of devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. As for this devotion, it is summarised completely in two words: consecration and reparation.

THE CONSECRATION TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY. Clearly, by establishing such a close connection between the conversion of Russia and its consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, God wants to show us how supremely pleasing this consecration is to Him, not only for Russia, but for all nations. What Lucy says about the “Portuguese miracle” applies, a fortiori, to the conversion of Russia. She wrote to Pope Pius XII: «This will be the proof of the graces God would have granted to other nations, if like Portugal they had been consecrated to Her.» 25

If this is the case, it is clear that all other societies, and persons themselves, will receive great graces by consecrating themselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But why? The Blessed Virgin did not ask the Russian people or the Portuguese people to consecrate themselves, but for the Pope and the bishops to do it in their name. This is because it is the best way of accepting fully, with love and humility, all the mediations willed by God and which are the true antidote to modern pride, where each individual raises himself into an autonomous and sovereign monad. Yes, against this sin, which is the very essence of the democratic revolution, this is what is most pleasing to God. All those who exercise any authority, the Pope at the head of the Church, the bishop in his diocese, the King as the head and father of his nation, the pastor in his parish, the father in his family – to show that they hold this authority from God and intend to use it in His name and in conformity with His will – must publicly make this act of obedience to the divine Good Pleasure of the Heavenly Father and His Son. However small or large their flock be, they must consecrate it to the Immaculate Heart of Mary which is inseparable from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as to their King and their Queen, to whom they belong and who enjoy the full right of true sovereignty. They can be sure that in exchange for this filial recognition of their power, the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary will mercifully bless, protect and fill with graces all those who shall be confided to Them. 26

THE DEVOTION OF REPARATION TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY. If the consecration is related to the mystery of the divine mediations, reparation puts into effect this other mystery which is equally at the centre of the message of Fatima: the communion of saints.

During the messages of the Angel in 1916, and again during the apparitions of Our Lady on June 13 and July 13, and shortly after that in the apparitions of Pontevedra, Heaven urgently asks for reparation for all «the sins by which God is offended», «for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference» which wound the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, and finally, for «the blasphemies and ingratitude» of men who pierce the Immaculate Heart of Mary. 27

It is remarkable that at Tuy, Our Lady insists on this point again, in two ways. First of all by this grave and terrible warning, which seems to us like an echo of the first part of the Secret with its terrifying vision of Hell: «So numerous are the souls which the justice of God condemns for sins committed against Me that I come to ask for reparation. Sacrifice yourself for this intention and pray.» 28

Prayer and sacrifice offered in reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to snatch souls from Hell – this is a theme which we find constantly in the letters of Sister Lucy of this epoch. Let us remark also that the spectacular trinitarian theophany took place while she was devoting herself, with generosity, to this work of reparation. Fulfilling to the letter the requests of the Sacred Heart to Saint Margaret Mary, each week during the night of Thursday to Friday, between eleven and twelve in the evening, she would make a holy hour of adoration and reparation. Prostrate in the chapel there, or on her knees with her arms in the form of a cross, she would repeat untiringly the two beautiful prayers of reparation taught by the Angel at the Cabeço.

This demonstrates how exact is the continuity between the message of Fatima and that of Paray-le-Monial. Fatima is the continuation, the complement, the fulfilment of Paray-le-Monial, for in the great design of divine Mercy the most Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary are indissolubly linked. 29 So they must be, as well, in our own love and in the acts of reparation that we offer them.

Yet, in the messages of Pontevedra and Tuy, by an admirable mystery of love and a unique predilection for His Mother, it seems as though the Sacred Heart of Jesus itself willed to be effaced, or at least to be approached only through the sweet mediation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is as if Jesus said to us: “The acts of reparation to be made for all the offences and crimes which insult the sanctity of My Father, the perfect worship which must be rendered unto Him, I Myself as eternal High Priest accomplish in My Sacrifice of the Cross, which is renewed at every moment. The offences, the outrages which wound My Heart, which mock Me in the Sacrament of My Love – to make reparation for them it suffices for you to offer Me the superabundant merits of the Heart of My most holy Mother, and join Her in Her sorrowful compassion. But the injuries, the blasphemies which sadden Her Maternal Heart so cruelly – it is for you, Her children to make reparation for them by consoling Her, and by your prayers and sacrifices obtaining the conversion of the poor people who have had the misfortune of offending Her gravely. For they have merited by this unpardonable crime, by this sin against the Holy Spirit, the condemnation of eternal fire. For very many are the souls that My justice condemns for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of My Mother!”

This is why, according to the message of Fatima, the work which is proper to us, the work most within our grasp, is reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. «You, at least, try to console Me!...»

God is so insistent about this reparation that He has placed it at the beginning and end of the whole great plan revealed at Tuy. First of all at the beginning, for at the same time as the act of consecration, God asks the Pope and the bishops for « a solemn and public act of reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary», undoubtedly for all the profanations and blasphemies committed against Her in Bolshevik Russia by so many fanatical atheists, but also for the communist revolution which is itself an abominable crime, since it wrongfully exercises a Satanic power over an ancient country of Christendom, which by right belongs to the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Reparation figures also at the end of God’s great design, which in fact promises «to end the persecution in Russia», if the Pope and the bishops consecrate it to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, «and if His Holiness promises, through the end of this persecution, to approve and recommend the practice of the devotion of reparation» on the first Saturdays of the month. It is an admirable exchange of promises by which God wishes to draw the Vicar of Christ to resolutely commit the whole Church to this reparatory devotion which He so greatly desires to see practiced everywhere.

From then on, after June 13, 1929, when God completed His solemn revelation of His great design for the Church, for Russia, and the world, one can say that the drama of our century was cast. The outcome depends in the last analysis on the Holy Father, and on him alone. We will explain why. And because the message of Fatima is perfectly limpid and coherent, three propositions, the truth of which is even more striking in 1983 than in 1917 or 1929, sum it all up.

«If My requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace.» If not, Russia «will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions... The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated.» Thus everything had already been said on July 13, 1917. Our Lady even predicted the Second World War, which would be worse than the first, as a direct consequence of the non-conversion of Russia.

We will soon demonstrate the unquestionable historical truth of this surprising statement. As for Soviet expansionism (both ideological and military) prophesied by Our Lady, this too is a fact of history – a more and more prominent fact, which causes the future of the entire world to depend on Russia alone. Solzhenitsyn, who saw this fact, wrote: «Communism cannot stop itself in its desire to conquer the world, whether it be by overt war, subversive and terrorist action, or by the destabilisation of social structures... Nothing can be hoped for from communism itself: no compromise with the doctrine of communism is possible; one can foresee either its total triumph in the whole world, or its complete disappearance everywhere. The only salvation for Russia, for China and the entire world consists in rejecting it. Otherwise, the world runs the risk of being ruined and annihilated.» 30

This is precisely the prophecy of Fatima. As long as it remains under the communist yoke, Russia will continue to be a perpetual menace for the world, because its Bolshevik revolution is like a growing cancer, which by its nature will never be able to do anything but spread. We must give this serious reflection: the only escape, the only possible salvation for Russia and the world is its conversion... And the latter can only be an extraordinary miracle, granted by God in His mercy.

Here we are entering into the realm of entirely supernatural faith and hope. Still, this fact is not therefore any less certain than things which are proved empirically; far from it! To the eyes of faith, the plan of salvation revealed at Fatima and Tuy appears as the work of divine wisdom, which has no equal for its unquestionable efficacy. Yes, for every Catholic who understands the profound underlying intention, and the wonderful, supernatural fruits, the two requests of Our Lady appear as the adequate means, the conditions necessary for the miracle which is possible and so to speak necessary for the conversion of Russia. This is a second truth which, like the first one, is just as certain and even more obvious than it was in 1929.

«If the Holy Father will himself make (a solemn act of reparation and consecration of Russia) as well as ordering all the bishops of the Catholic world to do the same... The Holy Father must then promise to approve and recommend the practice of the reparatory devotion.» The texts are clear: what room is there for doubt? In God’s great design, everything depends in the final analysis on the Supreme Pontiff, and on him alone, since it is for him to order the bishops to make the requested act of consecration with him. The faithful, of course, can also act effectively: by their prayers and sacrifices they merit this grace. Still, this does not change the fact that no decisive solution for the peace and salvation of the world can be reached without the Pope. Here we must be insistent, because this point of the message of Fatima is often passed over in silence. God promises to accomplish miracles of grace through the mediation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but on one formal condition: that the Pastors of the Church solemnly request it of Her, and demonstrate by their obedience to Her requests that, in the face of the extreme perils of the hour, they hope for deliverance from Her and Her alone.

In other words, since the extraordinary trinitarian theophany of Tuy on June 13, 1929, more than ever before everything depends on the Pope: « The moment has come when God asks the Holy Father...» It remains for us to examine what his response was to the requests of the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Endnotes

(1) Cf. supra, Part I, Chap. VI.

(2) Letter to Sister Lucy, May 9, 1929, Uma Vida, p. 365. Also must reading is the moving account of a miraculous healing obtained by the seer at this period (cf. infra, Chap. XII, Appendix IV).

(3) In God’s great design, the reparatory devotion and the consecration of Russia are so intimately connected with each other, that resuming our account of events, after 1925, in the next chapter we will examine the Church’s response to these two requests of Our Lady.

(4) Doc., p. 463-465. This text, which is the most detailed one we have, was written by Sister Lucy in May 1936, when her spiritual director, Father Gonçalves, asked her to write some biographical notes. Documentos does not give us a reproduction of the original manuscript, which was destroyed by Sister Lucy, but reproduces a literal copy which Father Gonçalves made at the end of April 1941, during the course of a visit to Sister Lucy.

Unfortunately, the translations of this text appearing in MSC (p. 41) and in an appendix to the Memoirs of Sister Lucy are faulty on several points. Thus the reader need not be astonished at any discrepancies he may notice.

A second, more succinct account of the vision of Tuy may be found infra, Chap. VII, Appendix.

(5) We know that Father José Bernardo Gonçalves, who was superior of the Jesuit community at Tuy, heard Sister Lucy’s confession for the first time on May 19, 1929, thus hardly a month before the apparition (Doc., p. 399).

(6) Letter received by Father Gonçalves on May 29, 1930 (Doc., p. 405). The letter of next June 12, addressed to the same person, literally employs the same formula (Doc., p. 411), which indissociably unites the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

(7) Fourth Lateran Council: « Absque initio, semper ac sine fine: Pater generans, Filius nascens, et Spiritus Sanctus procedens» (Denz., 428).

(8) Council of Florence (Denz., 691).

(9) CRC 184, Dec. 1982, p. 16 & 18. This wonderful history of mystical and Christian Russia, from Saint Vladimir to Saint Seraphim of Sarov and the “Way of a Pilgrim” in the entire nineteenth century, is related with much charm in two works available to all: Pierre Kovalevsky, Saint Serge (collection Maîtres de la vie spirituelle, Seuil 1958); and John Meyendorff who relates the continuation in Saint Grégoire Palamas (same collection).

(10) Doc., p. 413.

(11) Abbé de Nantes, Way of the Cross, “Prayer to the God of Pity”.

(12) Cf. Vol. I, p. 76, 88, 104-105.

(13) Matins Antiphon for the Feast of the Holy Trinity. 2 Cor. 13:13: «Gratia Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et caritas Dei, et communicatio Spiritus Sancti sit cum omnibus vobis.»

(14) Saint Pius X, Ad diem illum, February 2, 1904.

(15) Mass of Mary, Mediatrix of all Graces and Mass of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

(16) Ven. Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus.

(17) Ez. 47:1-12; Jn. 19:34; Apoc. 22:1.

(18) See our Vol. I, p. 112.

(19) Abbé Georges de Nantes, Way of the Cross, 1974.

(20) See for example A. Feuillet, Jésus et sa Mère, the spiritual maternity of Mary, p. 135-139. In the light of «the woman who gives birth» of Apocalypse 12, the author gives Jesus’ words, «Woman, behold Thy son», all their richness of affirmation of a permanent mystical reality, merited by the Cross but already pre-existing in fact, like the grace of the Immaculate Conception: «The dying Christ sees Mary and the beloved disciple, and He says something which nobody sees and nobody knows: that Mary is the Mother of the disciple and the disciple His son. What does this mean, if not that this episode does not relate the creation of something new, but simply reveals a reality that already exists.» (p. 138) Cf. also the very developed exposition of M. Braun, “La Mère des fidèles”: La Mère du disciple, p. 97-129 and La Femme de l’Apocalypse, p. 131-176, Casterman, 1953.

(21) Cf. supra, p.265 and etc.

(22) Letter of May 9, 1929, to Sister Luz (Uma Vida, p. 365). The letter of July 24, 1927, addressed to her mother, and entirely devoted to the devotion of the five first Saturdays, is even more significant: «A devotion... which our dear Heavenly Mother has requested», «our dear Mother», «our most Holy Mother with Jesus on Calvary», «the tenderest of mothers», «in this way console your Heavenly Mother, and seek to make many others console Her in the same way» (cf. supra, p. 261-262.). She could hardly be more insistent on Mary’s Maternal Heart.

(22a) Ad diem illum, February 2, 1904.

(23) «If God were your Father, you would love me, for from God I proceed and came... But you seek to kill me... You are of your father, the devil.» Jn. 8:39-44.

(24) Letter to Father Gonçalves, May 18, 1936. Doc., p. 414.

(25) Cf. supra, p. 427-428.

(26) Let us remark that it is in this very spirit that the Portuguese bishops made the consecration of their country in 1931. We will also have the opportunity to cite eloquent historical examples which illustrate the incomparable supernatural fecundity of such a consecration: the consecration of France to Our Lady by King Louis XIII in 1638, the parish of Our Lady of Victories consecrated on December 3, 1836, to the “Most Holy and Immaculate Heart of Mary” by Father des Genettes; or finally the parish of Ars, consecrated by its holy parish priest that same year, 1836, to Mary conceived without sin.

(27) We have already explained this important aspect of the message at length, cf. Vol. I, p. 86-89 and supra, in the chapter on “The Great Promise”, p. 153 etc., “The Reparatory Devotion, a Secret of Mercy for Sinners”.

(28) Cf. supra, Part I, Chapter VII, note 36.

(29) To such a point that, relating the Divine request for the consecration of Russia, Sister Lucy sometimes speaks of a « consecration of Russia to the most Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary», which is necessarily addressed at the same time to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This is how true it is that «... to come to the Heart of Mary is to come to Jesus; to honour the Heart of Mary is to honour Jesus, to invoke the Heart of Mary is to invoke Jesus...» Saint John Eudes, Le Coeur Admirable, Vol. II, chap. V. Cf. Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary, No. 148.

(30) L’erreur de l’Occident, p. 89, 1980.

«Then Our Lady said to me: “ The moment has come when God asks the Holy Father to make, in union with all the bishops of the world, the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, promising to save it by this means.”

«“ So numerous are the souls that the justice of God condemns for sins committed against Me, that I come to ask for reparation. Sacrifice yourself for this intention and pray.”

«I gave an account of this to my confessor, who ordered me to write what Our Lord willed to be done.»