Chapter Ten
FINAL EFFORT
On such an important subject it may seem arrogant for an author to intrude personal opinions or views. But I feel I should do so because of my rather unique role in the unfolding intervention of God at Fatima.
In my own experience, which began in 1933 and spanned sixty-seven years, the Fatima message seemed essentially for the present moment. I seemed blind, for example, to the words of Our Lord that the response of one Pope after the other would be like that of three succeeding kings of France. And it came as a total surprise when Sister Lucia said, on the eve of the new millennium, that "The Fatima week has just begun."
The circumstances in which Sister Lucia made this statement signaled its importance. It was carefully prepared. She was fluent in Spanish, in which she had been speaking to the Cardinal. But she turned to an interpreter and said that she wished to make this statement in her own language (Portuguese).
That was to me a sign that Our Lord or Our Lady (her usual sources) had given her this statement. And it may be her final word, after more than eighty years of messages from God, to the atomic age.
My Reasons
My own involvement in the message began with a vision to a holy Carmelite brother, now long since gone, of which I wrote in one of my earliest books The Brother and I.
The basic message of Fatima was revealed to him in 1933, at a time when neither he nor I had heard of Fatima. He was told that God would save the world by means of a simple formula: To live the morning offering (sanctification of daily duty) with the aid of the Scapular and the Rosary. And I was to help make it known to the world.
Thirteen years later, in a more than three hour interview with Sister Lucia, I was awed by her confirmation.
I was more than awed. It seemed unbelievable. I had thought the main thrust of the message of Fatima was the Rosary. Had I influenced her because of the Brother's vision? I went to the Bishop of Fatima (who had sent me to Sister Lucia in the first place) for direction.
Almost without hesitation, the bishop said that this was indeed the basic message of Fatima. He added: "You may promulgate this as coming from me."
The Other Days?
A "march of pledges" began under the auspices of the bishop. It became popularly known as the Blue Army, and was ultimately recognized by the Church as the World Apostolate of Fatima. The number of pledges, in over a hundred countries, exceeded twenty five million.
But after the change in Russia, with the exception of places still under threat, like South Korea, the apostolate dwindled. Now, at the time when God requires the First Saturday Communions of Reparation, the apostolate's network of communications had become crippled (as described in my book The Day I Didn't Die, published in 1998).
But did not the statement that Fatima has just begun mean that the need to make the message heard is undiminished?
What will day four be? And how close is it?
Unfolding
It has for me been a constant source of surprise and wonder that everything in the apostolate has seemed to take so much longer than expected. I would anticipate something "tomorrow" and it would happen months or years later.
Is it not a cause for wonder that the light of devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary was first seen by some individual saints and mystics (like St. Gertrude) some thousand years after the gospels were written?
It is also striking that it was St. John the Evangelist who told St. Gertrude that the reason he had not written of the Sacred Heart in his gospel was because he was writing for the Church "in its infancy." And, almost four hundred years later, it was on the feast of St. John the Evangelist, December 27, 1673, that St. Margaret Mary Alacoque had the first of the apparitions which have opened the entire Church to this devotion.
Last Effort of His Love
"Before the Blessed Sacrament, I was so overwhelmed by this Divine Presence as to forget myself and the place where I was," the saint tells us, adding: "He (Our Lord) allowed me to recline for a long time on His Divine Breast, where He disclosed to me the marvels of His love and the unutterable secrets of His Sacred Heart, which He had always concealed from me."
Now was finally the time when Jesus was going to reveal his Heart, through this hidden saint, to us. He said:
"My Divine Heart is passionately inflamed with love for men that, not being able any longer to contain within Itself the flames of It's ardent charity, It must need spread them abroad through your means, and manifest Itself to men that they may be enriched with It's precious treasures."
St. Margaret Mary relates that in his next appearance to her, Jesus said:
"This devotion was the last effort of His love that He would grant
to men in the last centuries of the world in order to withdraw them from
the empire of Satan which He desired to destroy...."
This and other books by John M. Haffert
God's
Final Effort | Too Late? | The Day I Didn't Die