THE
P RTAL
June 2017
Page 9
Is the answer to
Manchester to be
found in Fatima?
Fr Julian Green suggests that the lessons taught to the three
children of Fatima are lessons for us all
I am sitting
down at my computer to write this article as the whole country is stunned by the atrocity
of the Manchester bombing. The wall to wall coverage in the national media focuses on the unspeakable
evil of the bomber, the innocence of the victims, the agony of the families, the suffering of the injured and the
plucky Dunkirk spirit of the residents of Manchester, rallying around to help, light candles and hold vigils.
All of this is very true, but there is one aspect missing… Where is God in all this? And following on from
that: what can I do?
On 13th May, we began to celebrate the centenary of
the apparitions of Our Lady at Fatima. Our Lady, true
to form, chose the small and seemingly insignificant
three child shepherds to bring a message of impending
trials and of the need to stay faithful. These monthly
apparitions of Our Lady were preceded by three
apparitions, the previous year, where the Angel of
Portugal appeared to the little shepherds.
His ministry to the children was a preparation for
the appearances of Our Lady which were to happen the
following year. If you read the messages of the Angel,
and the prayers which he taught the children to say,
alongside the messages of Our Lady of Fatima, quite
apart from the so-called secrets of Fatima, you will
see that the answers to the unspoken and unanswered
questions from Manchester are contained there.
Where is God in all this? It is certainly true that
anyone who claims it to be a holy duty in the name
of God, while indiscriminately killing and maiming,
is not serving God. Radical Islamism, far from being
a radical form of Islam, is really a satanic death cult. It
is founded on the lie that God can be served through
cruel torture and death. Satan, the Father of lies,
has managed to catch hold of the minds and hearts
of young men, many of whom disturbingly have
grown up in our own cities, and has turned them to
an obsessive desire to establish Islam – subjection to
God – by subjection to themselves and their evil fallen
desires.
power of evil, and offering himself to us as the source
of mercy, the remedy for our poverty. Where is God
in all this? Dying with the dying. Suffering with the
suffering. Being the power of forgiveness and healing
to all.
So what can we do? Many of us do not feel moved to
lay flowers, light candles, place teddy bears, or join in
open grief in public displays of emotion. Those who
do these things show that they realise that there is the
need to do something to try to atone for the evident
evil. The Angel of Portugal and Our Lady of Fatima
give us the reality of what we need to do, confronted by
so much evil in the world: reparation. Urging the little
shepherds to fidelity in prayer and penance was not in
order to achieve their own salvation primarily.
Rather it was to fulfil the call of our baptism,
emphasised by the Second Vatican Council, when it
calls us a priestly people. As a people of priests, we are
consecrated – set apart for sacrifice – so that we can
unite ourselves, our prayers, our penances with the
self-offering of Christ on the Cross. It is in our hands
to make the power of the Cross present in the human
race of today through becoming the self-offering of
Christ, and offering prayers, penances and our very
lives to bring about ‘reparation’ for the evils around
us, and to be the seed of a new humanity reflecting the
new life of the Risen Christ.
As we contemplate the Heart of Jesus in this
month of June, we should remind ourselves of the
Does God stand idly by, allowing this to happen in power which is there in our prayers and penances
his name? Just as he offered himself on the Cross for to bring about the renewal of the fallen world, and
our salvation, so Christ is actively offering himself to cooperate in bringing about God’s Kingdom of
to God for us in our human poverty, defeating the justice and peace.