Models in Responding to the Message of Fatima
There is so much about the occurrences in Fatima a century ago that should provoke wonder. If the Mother of God was going to be permitted to appear on earth to echo her Son’s call to conversion, prayer, and sacrifice, if she was going to reveal in symbolic visions the reality of Hell, the ascent of Bolshevik communism, the dawn of World War II and the persecution of the Church, if she was to call the world — and in a special way, Russia — to be consecrated to her Immaculate Heart, why would she have appeared in a Fatima, a truly out of the way place, to three shepherd children — ages 7, 8 and 10 — with very little formal education and even lesser influence? It’s true that St. Paul’s words about God’s selection criteria have no expiration date, that God preferentially chooses “the foolish of the world to shame the wise, … the weak of the world to shame the strong, … the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so