Votive Mass of Our Lady of Fatima
Centennial of the Apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, together with the Infant Jesus, to the Venerable Lúcia dos Santos at Pontevedra, Spain
Church of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe
La Crosse, Wisconsin
10 December 2025
Is 61, 9-11
Ps 45, 11-12. 14-15. 16-17 L
k 11, 27-28
Homily
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
One hundred years ago, today, the Virgin Mother of God, under her title of Our Lady of Fatima and of the Most Holy Rosary, together with the Infant Jesus, appeared to the Venerable Lúcia dos Santos, a novice at the Convent of the Sisters of Saint Dorothy in Pontevedra, Spain. The apparition of December 10, 1925, is strictly united to Our Lady’s apparitions from May 13th to October 13th of 1917 to the shepherd children of Fatima: Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and the Venerable Lúcia dos Santos. In the apparition of December 10, 1925, as in the apparitions in 1917, Our Lady of Fatima firmly directs us to the truth of our life in Christ in His holy Church. She directs us to our mission in Him for the salvation of the world. She reveals to us our dignity, in the words of the Prophet Isaiah: “a people whom the LORD has blessed,”[1] for she draws us into ever more intimate communion with her Divine Son, God the Son Incarnate, through Whom God the Father has caused “righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.”[2]
Our Lady of Fatima and of the Most Holy Rosary teaches us anew both the reality of the effects of original sin in our lives, and the reality of the victory of Christ over sin through her maternal mediation. She is the woman about whom God spoke directly to Satan and indirectly to Adam and Eve after they had rebelled against Him, believing the lies of Satan, and had thus found themselves in a state of enmity with God and, therefore, of profound unhappiness. The Blessed Virgin Mary is the woman whom God has put at enmity with Satan, for her Divine Offspring, God the Son Incarnate, has crushed Satan’s head forever.[3]
By the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima and through her Secret or Message, the Mother of God continues her maternal mediation of the salvation which her Divine Son alone brings to the world. She continues the mission confirmed by her Divine Son as He was dying upon the Cross. Just before His death, he spoke to His Sorrowing Mother standing at the foot of the Cross. Referring to His beloved disciple, Saint John the Evangelist who, also standing at the foot of the Cross, represented the whole Church, Christ declared to His Sorrowing Mother: “Woman, behold, your son.”[4] He then said to Saint John: “Behold, your mother!”[5] When minutes later He died and permitted that His Most Sacred Heart be pierced by the Roman soldier’s spear, the Immaculate Heart of Mary was also mystically pierced. The Blessed Virgin Mary exercised her vocation as Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church in the most perfect way by sharing fully, that is, with a sinless heart, in her Divine Son’s Passion and Death by which mankind is delivered from sin and its fruit: everlasting death.
From that moment, Our Lady, as she did at the Wedding Feast at Cana, leads us, in all spiritual and material affliction, to the only source of its remedy, her Divine Son, with the clear maternal instruction: “Do whatever he tells you.”[6] She is our model and intercessor, so that we may unite our hearts to the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, embracing a life of prayer and penance for the salvation of our souls and for the salvation of the world, as we implored God in the Opening Prayer: “O God, who chose the Mother of your Son to be our Mother also, grant us that, persevering in penance and prayer for the salvation of the world, we may further more effectively each day the reign of Christ.”[7] The more we unite our hearts to her Immaculate Heart, the more we understand Our Lord’s words regarding her singular vocation and our vocation to holiness of life: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”[8]
In a most wonderful way, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ and our Mother, through her apparitions to the three shepherd children, from May 13th to October 13th of 1917, and through her apparition to the Venerable Lúcia dos Santos, the one surviving shepherd child, on December 10, 1925, has brought us to Christ alive for us in the Church. The world at the time of the apparitions found itself torn asunder by the unimaginable destruction and death wrought by the First World War. Even worse was the lethal spread of atheistic communism, leading the hearts of men away from the Heart of Jesus, the sole font of salvation, into rebellion against God and the order which He has placed in His creation and has written on the heart of every man,[9] the only earthly creature made in His own image and likeness.[10]
All the apparitions and the Secret or Message of Our Lady of Fatima are set within the context of praying the Holy Rosary. Our Lady of Fatima appears with the Rosary in her hands, while the shepherd children are praying the Rosary. She urges the shepherd children and all who hear her message to pray the Holy Rosary for the salvation of the world. At her apparition on October 13, 1917, when God confirmed her apparitions and Message by means of the Miracle of the Sun, Our Lady asked that a chapel be built under her title, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.
The central message of Our Lady of Fatima was revealed in what is called the Secret of Fatima during the apparition which took place on July 13, 1917. The first part of the Secret has two essential contents. First, there is the terrifying vision of Hell, foreshadowed in the evils visited upon the world at the time, but, then, there is the offer of God’s healing peace through the intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that souls may be saved from grave sin and its fruit: eternal death.[11] While the first part of the Secret gives a severe admonition, it is also full of hope in the unfailing grace of God to bring about repentance for sins committed and peace in individual repentant souls and, through them, in the whole world.
The second part of the Secret is the announcement of the peace which God wants to give to souls and to the world through two means: the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the practice of the First Saturdays Devotion of Reparation.[12] While Our Lady indicated the spiritual remedy of the deplorable situation in which the world and Church found themselves, she also foretold the terrible physical chastisements which would result from the failure to consecrate the agent of the spread of atheistic communism to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through her Immaculate Heart and to undertake the regular practice of reparation for so many offenses committed against the immeasurable and unceasing love of God represented perfectly by the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus. The second part of the Secret also ends with the sure hope that the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph.
The third part of the Secret, committed to writing by the Venerable Lúcia dos Santos on January 3, 1944, is indicated by the phrase “et cetera,” at the end of the second part. It has to do with the spiritual chastisement brought about by the rebellion of man, who instead of giving his heart to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, gives over his heart to the corruption of the worldly materialism and relativism of the present age. In her description of the third part of the Secret, Sister Lúcia quotes “the Angel with a flaming sword” whom she saw at Our Lady’s left side. She writes: “Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’”[13]
The third part of the Secret has to do with the diabolical forces unleashed upon the world in our time and entering into the very life of the Church which lead souls away from the truth of the faith and, therefore, from the Divine Love flowing from the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus. It has to do with the apostasy of Christians and with the failure of their shepherds to declare the apostasy and to bring souls back to Christ, to His Truth and Love. As horrible as are the physical chastisements associated with man’s disobedient rebellion before God, infinitely more horrible are the spiritual chastisements, for they have to do with the fruit of grave sin: eternal death. As is clear, only the Faith, which places man in the relationship of unity of heart with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, through the mediation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, can save man from the spiritual chastisements which rebellion against God necessarily brings upon its perpetrators and upon the whole of society and of the Church.
Regarding the First Saturdays Devotion of Reparation, the Venerable Servant of God Lucia received a second vision of the Child Jesus on February 15, 1926, just some two months after the vision of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, with the Infant Jesus at her side on a bright cloud, which we joyfully commemorate today. In the vision of February 15, 1926, when the Venerable Servant of God observed to the Child Jesus that her confessor had declared that the devotion of the First Saturdays was not lacking in the world, He replied:
It is true, my daughter, that many souls begin them, but few finish them, and those who do finish them, do so to receive the graces that are promised. It would please me more if they did five decades with fervor and with the intention of making reparation to the Heart of their heavenly Mother, than if they did fifteen decades in a tepid and indifferent manner.[14]
In both the apparitions of December 10, 1925, and of February 15, 1926, Our Lady made clear the substance of the devotion of the First Saturdays is love of God and our neighbor. It expresses a profound realization of how sin offends Our Lord and His Immaculate Mother, humble contrition of heart which strives to make reparation for sins committed and the offense they cause to Our Lord and His Immaculate Mother, and trust in the promise which accompanies the devotion, that is, Our Lady’s promise to assist at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, those who observe the First Saturdays with true repentance and the desire to make reparation. The devotion is not an isolated act but expresses a way of life, namely, daily loving conversion of heart to Christ’s Most Sacred Heart, under the maternal guidance and care of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
The Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph in our lives and in our world, as the Mother of God has promised us at Fatima and Pontevedra, by drawing our hearts to her own, so that we, out of love for her Divine Son, seek the purification of our sins and the inspiration and strength of our thoughts, words and actions in the immeasurable and unceasing truth and love which flows into our hearts from His glorious-pierced Heart. Uniting our hearts to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we place our hearts completely into the Sacred Heart of Jesus Who purifies our hearts of all sin and Who sets them aflame with love of God and of our neighbor.
Our Lady, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, insistently asks us to observe the First Saturdays of Reparation throughout the universal Church. Let each of us, members of the one Mystical Body of Christ throughout the world, do our part to practice the First Saturdays Devotion and to assist others to do the same. If Our Lady is asking us to do something, as indeed she is with insistence, let us lose no time in doing whatever she is asking.
The glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, seated in glory at the right hand of God the Father, now pours out the gift of His divine Life for us in the Eucharistic Sacrifice. May our hearts, one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, receive now the gift of His divine truth and love, so that, through loving prayer and penance, Christ will accomplish, in us, the conversion of our souls and, through us, the conversion of the world. So, as we prayed in the Opening Prayer, “we [will] further more effectively each day the reign of Christ.”[15]
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE
[1] Is 61, 9.
[2] Is 61, 11.
[3] Cf. Gn 3, 15.
[4] Jn 19, 26.
[5] Jn 19, 27.
[6] Jn 2, 5.
[7] “Deus, qui Genetricem Filii tui Matrem quoque nostram constituisti, concede nobis, ut, in paenitentia et oratione pro mundi salute perseverantes, in dies valeamus regnum Christi efficacius promovere.” “Die 13 maii Beatae Mariae Virginis de Fatima, Collecta,” Missale Romanum ex decreto Sacrosancti Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum auctoritate Pauli PP. VI promulgatum Ioannis Pauli PP. II cura recognitum, Editio Typica Tertia (Città del Vaticano: Typis Vaticanis, 2008). English translation: “May 13 Our Lady of Fatima, Collect,” The Roman Missal renewed by decree of the Most Holy Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, promulgated by authority of Pope Paul VI and revised at the direction of Pope John Paul II, English translation according to the Third Typical Edition (International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation, 2010).
[8] Lk 11, 28.
[9] Cf. Rom 2, 15.
[10] Cf. Gen 1, 26-27.
[11] Cf. Carmelo de Coimbra, Um caminho sob o olhar de Maria. Biografia da Irmã Maria Lúcia de Jesus e do Coração Imaculado (Marco de Canavese: Edições Carmelo, 2013), p. 63. [Hereafter, Carmelo de Coimbra]. English translation: Carmel of Coimbra, A Pathway under the Gaze of Mary: Biography of Sister Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart, tr. James A. Colson (Washington, NJ: World Apostolate of Fatima, USA, 2015), p. 68. [Hereafter, Carmel of Coimbra].
[12] Cf. Carmelo de Coimbra, pp. 63-64. English translation: Carmel of Coimbra, pp. 68-69.
[13] “O Anjo aponque la mão direita para a terra, come voz forte disse: Penitência, Penitência, Penitência!”, Carmelo de Coimbra, p. 64. English translation: Carmel of Coimbra, p. 69.
[14] “É verdade, minha filha, que muitas almas os começam, mas poucas os acabam e as que os terminam é com o fim de receberem as graças que aí estão prometidas; e me agradam mais as que fizerem os 5 com fervor e com o fim de desgravar o Coração da Tua Mãe do Céu, que as que fizerem os 15, tíbios e indiferentes.” Carmelo de Coimbra, p. 171. English translation: Carmel of Coimbra, p. 160.
[15] Cf. Footnote no. 7.