PAIN, PRAY AND SACRIFICE: A WAY TO PERFECTION

Blessed Jacinta and Francisco Marto

In the Jubilee year, the beatification of Jacinta and Francisco, the two little shepherds of Fatima, Portugal, was a landmark event. These two children, aged 10 and 11, are the youngest non-martyrs ever to be beatified in the history of the Catholic Church, proving that no matter how young you are, you can still become a saint. Francisco Marto was born in Fatima, Portugal, on June 11, 1908, and his sister Jacinta was born on March 11th, 1910. The brother and sister were not much alike; Francisco had a calm personality and loved nature and music, while Jacinta was more active and playful. Beginning at a young age, the two children accompanied their cousin Lucia Santo to the fields each day to watch the families' sheep. One day in 1916, they saw an Angel, who told them he was the angel of peace and the guardian angel of Portugal. The angel taught the amazed children a prayer to say in reparation for sins: "My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love You! I ask pardon of You for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love You!" The angel appeared to the children three times in all, reminding them to pray and make sacrifices. During the third visit, the angel appeared holding a chalice and a host, and taught them another prayer: "Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly, and I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference with which He Himself is offended. And, through the infinite merits of His most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of You the conversion of poor sinners." He gave Lucia, who was the only one who had made her first Communion, the host, and gave Jacinta and Francisco the blood in the chalice to drink. These apparitions filled the children with a sense of peace and the presence of God, preparing them for the apparitions of Mary which were soon to take place. The first apparition of Our Lady took place on May 13, 1817, an event which would change their lives forever. In this first of the several apparitions at Fatima, Our Lady asked the children to say the Rosary and to make sacrifices, offering them for the conversion of sinners. Seven-year-old Jacinta especially took this request very seriously, even though it had earlier been her idea to save time in reciting the Rosary by only saying the first two words of every prayer! She was particularly struck by the Blessed Virgin's request to pray for sinners, especially after seeing the vision of Hell which Mary showed to the three children. Francisco was affected by the vision in a different way; he saw how sad Jesus and Mary were, and how much they were offended by sins, and his great desire was to console them. The children began to make sacrifices for sinners, and in reparation for the sins which wounded the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Sometimes they gave their lunch to beggars, going without food themselves; they refrained from drinking water on hot days; they offered up their daily crosses; they wore little ropes around their waist until Our Lady told them not to; they prayed often, alone, or together. In October of 1918, Francisco and Jacinta became seriously ill with the Spanish flu. Our Lady appeared to the two children and told them she was coming soon to take them to Heaven: Francisco first, and then Jacinta later. Francisco, who had longed for Heaven, was thrilled at the thought of being able to see Jesus and Mary forever. In his last illness, he continually made the sacrifice of taking any medicine or food which was given him, no matter whether he liked it or not, without complaining. As his illness progressed, he could no longer say his prayers out loud, but he continued to pray "with his heart." At Francisco's request, the parish priest came to give him his first Communion, which he had not yet received. It would be his last Communion - Francisco died peacefully the next day, April 14, 1919. Poor little Jacinta, who was still extremely ill, missed her brother greatly. At the same time, she was suffering from an abcess on her chest. Despite her sufferings, she continued to make sacrifices and offer her pain to God for her dearest intention - the conversion of sinners. She was ready to suffer anything to save souls from Hell. Eventually Jacinta was transferred to a hospital in Lisbon, but her condition did not improve, despite a painful operation. Our Lady continued to console Jacinta with her presence, and on February 20, 1920, the little girl died in the hospital, attended only by a nurse. The lives of Jacinta and Francisco teach us that even young children can become saints. In 1999, the Vatican accepted a miracle for the beatification of the two children. They were beatified on May 13th, 2000, the 83rd anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady at Fatima. Blessed Jacinta and Francisco, PRAY FOR US!

PAIN

" All one that sins turns slave of sin " the pain is not a value itself. It is a way. The example we have it in the Passion of Jesus: the Crucifixion is means of salvation for the humanity " I came to give my life in pay by the one of many ". The human pain is generally more difficult to accept to affect to us directly, but it has the same purifying sense. If we analyzed most of world's pain we see of which it has a human origin (wars, hunger, genocides, etc). They exist other evils whose origin is more difficult to establish and than we atributed to God. They are the evils without apparent cause that we do not understand. The will of God is then prohibitive to our understanding and we doubted Its Justice because we do not understand it, but exists a logic that single the Divine Mind knows, of the same form that an ant does not understand the human acts... Badly is a product of the human freedom. The directed human freedom in the erroneous sense produces pain. Pol Pot assassinated to a third of the population of Cambodia. Adolf Hitler send six million Jews to the gas chamber and caused a war in which 55 million people died. Gengis Kan was a case of extreme badness. Asked in certain occasion on as he was the greater one to please of the life responded: the best thing of the life is fight the enemy, to sink the sword in its belly and to feel as their bones crunch, to contemplate the steppe dyed with its blood, to delight with its women, to set afire its houses and to contemplate the tearful eyes of its relatives... Before these historical personages of so large monstruosity, somebody can doubt the existence of that other one of supreme badness that Jesus defined: THAT WAS HOMICIDE FROM THE BEGINNING.



BADLY TAKES IMPLICIT HIS OWN PUNISHMENT

The deluge exterminated based whole civilizations in an extensive plain that is now the Black Sea. The Bible says this and other disasters were caused by the human badness. Badly it takes implicit his own punishment, and the fact that children and innocents perish in him he is consequence of badness. Of the same form it happens at the moment: many children of prostitutes or drug addicts are born with AIDS or chronic hepatitis, or many children undergo traumas by life to the being violated by adults, or they are even assassinated by his own parents. The children are innocent; but they undergo the sin of surroundings. Because it is as well as the badness works. Imaginate a ventilator scattering excrement in all directions with unusual force, same way works human badness. Everything what touches sin is dipped in grease by a sign of hatred, bitterness and pain. And when this badly it reaches certain extreme limits, it does not take in arriving total disaster. History demonstrates until incredible point can reach human badness. If it were not because the reality confirms it, nobody could at least to imagine that a chosen regime democratically could stop, to jail, to let die of hunger and finally to gas to six million people makes sixty years so single. The result of a so extreme badness was let feel in all the planet by means of the bloodiest war of all history. And the person in charge of this disaster was not God, but, again, the infinite human badness.

GOD BEFORE THE HUMAN PAIN

" I saw the affliction of my people in Egypt, and have listened its outcry in the presence of its opressors; then already I know its sufferings. I have lowered to free to him of the hand of the Egyptians... " (Ex- 3,7-8) Where it is God? I believe that to speak of the suffering it is necessary to divide it in two types, according to its origin: the suffering caused by the same nature, where we found the natural diseases, the children that are born with some deficiency, tragedies, etc.; and on the other hand, the suffering caused by men's injustice: egoism, avarice, inconsciency and insensibility of many; between these sufferings we found: the extreme poverty, the hunger of millions, the acts you dehumanized as prostitution, murders, children used for pornography, " systematic " unemployment, etc. The God's presence in both situations is evident. It has been revealed to us, throughout human history, the same history of salvation. This we stated it in the dialogues that God has maintained with men through prophets, kings and their Son, Jesus Christ. Our faith does not show a God to us other peoplés to human history; it suffers with whom he suffers and he enjoys with who has found the happiness true; Jesus Christ feels sorry itself of the patient and for that reason he heals it, as well as he enjoys himself because his small Father has wanted to him to reveal his Truth to the humble ones. But this presence of God is not equal in both situations of the suffering. We know that the presence of God is also Word of God: where God is, it is his Word there. Thus, the divine Word has messages very different for each one from the suffering situations that we enumerated above. In the case of the suffering by the same nature, God is present to console, to give to strength and hope, to animate with the consolation and Peace that his Spirit gives us. Thus, who suffers in this sense, finds in God's Presency the force and Peace to continue walking, assuming his suffering like sanctification means, of delivery, with the conscience to share the sufferings that Christ suffered by us. The one that it suffers does not let wait for the miracle that removes it from that situation, but knowing that its faith takes it to watch beyond the physical well-being. The presence of God is tranquillity that cures the wound deeper than a suffering can cause, the desperation, and full to the man with the Light that leads by the footpath of Peace and consolation. However, the divine presence in the injustice situations has a very different character. Its presence is Word of denunciation, is presence that calls men's heart since the prophets did (Amos, Oseas, Jeremiah) before the injustices of powerful ones; its Word cries out justice. Who suffer by these reasons they can find its identity in the same Jesus Christ who underwent the death by the injustices and you envy them of its people; for them the presence of God is breath, hope, support to initiate the denunciation of injustices. They have to know itself inspired by the Holy Spirit not to lose the hope, knowing that its same life is already a testimony that denounces the injustice and quiet cries out justice, its same life is Word of God that cries out a change, a conversion.




INDEX