The First Apparition of Our Lady To the Children

On this Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, we thank God for the apparitions in Mexico in 1531, where over nine million conversions were realized because God sent Mary to turn their hearts to Jesus. At the time, they were worshipping idols and sacrificing humans to appease the gods. To Juan Diego, the pious poor instrument God chose, Mary said. “Am I not here?  I who am your mother?” You will note in the 2^nd Apparition (my Sunday blog) she gives the same assurance to the children of Fatima.” My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.

Perhaps you would like to know more about these apparitions, so I am providing two links:

Story of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Evangelization:  St. Paul Center

We are all God’s children, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Fr. Mike Schmitz

The historical landscape of 1917, when Mary came to the children of Fatima, was also in a time of peril when the men of no faith, self-professed atheists, were plotting ways to infiltrate their godless religion into Portugal.  Mary came to warn that if men did not stop offending God, the errors of Russia (communism) would spread.  This message was not to the children themselves, nor just their Country, but to the world. 

If we look at the world from God’s eyes, peering down at us universally, we might see a world that is compromising its faith or leaving it, wars, corruptness, the unbalanced scales of poverty and materialism.  I think it is safe to say that the errors of Russia's “communism and socialism” have carved a place in various societies.  And we saw its head rise during WWII, a war prophesied by Our Lady of Fatima.

Communism was carefully scripted to dismantle societies, to weaken them by creating unrest, and to tantalize new disciples with promises of a better life where material conditions make life easier and more just.  This gives birth to secularism, in which the world provides, not God, and to moral relativism and Human Rights when one shifts from a religiously based morality to secular ethical systems, often centered on human rights, equality, and individual autonomy.  From here, the decline in church attendance, the rise of religiously unaffiliated youth, and the application of the “My God is not necessarily your God” mentality rise.

Many live lives wandering in and out of spaces and situations as if they have no place where they belong, no relationships where love feels authentic or free of turmoil, no inner peace that the future holds hope. These lost souls are pickings for the evil one.

Sr. Lucia wrote, “It is the light of faith that guides our steps, leading us by the narrow way that leads to Heaven.

It is by faith that we see Christ in others, loving, serving and helping them when they are in need of our assistance.

And it is also by faith that assures us that God is present within us, that his eyes are always upon us.

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was from the beginning with God; all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.  In him was life, and the life was the light of men. Jn 1-15’

…But faith does not consist solely in believing in the existence of God, in his power and in His wisdom.  It has many other facets turned in other directions, and our full adherence must extend to their utmost extremities.

The word of God contained in Sacred Scripture is a revelation which we cannot deny because – as Jesus Christ himself tells us in His Gospel – ‘The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.  Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves...’ Jn 14, 10-11

We see that Jesus Christ draws our attention to his works, because what a person does bears true witness to what a person is, and confirms what a person says…His Word is eternal life for those who listen to it and carry it out.  To reject it is to carve out one’s own sentence of condemnation’." CALLS  by Venerable Sr. Lucia of Fatima, pgs 62-63 (Authorized by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Rome)

Here we go forward with what Mama Mary wants us to learn…

First Apparition of Our Lady to the Children of Fatima

Location: Cova da Iria

Date: May 13, 1917

In the past three posts, you read of the Angel appearing to the children three times in preparation for the event that would happen on May 13, 1917, the start of six visits from Mary to the children. 

From the time the angel appeared to them until Mary came, they suffered greatly from the humiliation and disbelief of many.  But they never wavered on what they saw and what the angel had said. Their lives became intentional in prayer and sacrifices for the conversion of sinners.  They were children, Jacinta was seven, Francisco nine, and Lucia ten.  The little poor shepherd children had been chosen by God to become instruments of the “most prophetic of the modern apparitions,” May 13, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI's address on the 90^th anniversary at Fatima.

The following are excerpts taken from the book “A Pathway under the Gaze of Mary, a biography of Sr. Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart, O.C.D., pgs. 33-34, and Fatima in Lucia's own words, Fátima, pp.174-177 (IV Memoir)

In blue are Mary’s words to Lucia. Take note of the key words our Lady used throughout the messages, “rosary, reparation, conversion, and consolation.”

It was Sunday, and after mass, the children took the sheep to graze in the field that Lucia’s family owned in the Cova da Iria.  As the sheep were grazing and the three children were building a little wall with rocks, they suddenly saw what they thought was lightning and started to go down the slope when they saw another flash of lightning. Then they saw, on a small holm oak tree, “a lady all in white”.

“Then Our Lady Spoke to us”

“Do not be afraid. I will do you no harm!”

Where are you from?

I am from Heaven.

What do you want of me?

I have come to ask you to come here for six months in succession, on the 13th day, at this same hour. Later on, I will tell you who I am and what I want. Afterwards, I will return here yet a seventh time.

Shall I go to Heaven?

Yes, you will.

And Jacinta?

She will go also.

And Francisco?

He will go there too, but he must say many Rosaries.

Is Maria das Neves in Heaven?

Yes, she is.” (I think she was about 16 years old).

And Amélia?

She will be in purgatory until the end of the world.[…]Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you, as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and of supplication for the conversion of sinners?”

Yes, we are willing.

Then you are going to have much to suffer, but the grace of God will be your comfort.

As she pronounced these last words “...the grace of God will be your comfort”, Our Lady opened her hands for the first time, communicating to us a light so intense that, as it streamed from her hands, its rays penetrated our hearts and the innermost depths of our souls, making us see ourselves in God, Who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in the best of mirrors. Then, moved by an interior impulse that was also communicated to us, we fell on our knees, repeating in our hearts:

O most Holy Trinity, I adore You! My God, my God, I love You in the most Blessed Sacrament!”

After a few moments, Our Lady spoke again: Pray the Rosary every day, in order to obtain peace for the world, and the end of the war." After that she began slowly to rise in the direction of the east until she disappeared.

On 13 October, 2025 the pilgrims gathered in Fátima were urged to become builders of peace by undergoing personal conversion. 

Bishop Claudio Dalla Zuanna, who presided over the International Anniversary Mass on 13 October in the Prayer Area of the Shrine, urged the approximately 110,000 pilgrims gathered there to participate in building peace through personal evolution.

“Our Lady has shown us that the path to building peace and saving the world is through personal conversion. The peace that we so badly need in our days, as in the time of the apparitions, can only be achieved if each person's heart embarks on the path of conversion and opens itself to goodness, forgiveness, solidarity and care for life,” said the Archbishop of Beira, who put this attitude into practice by challenging each person to act as a missionary of hope in their own lives.

God Bless.

theresa