This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Fatima apparitions.  Every month, on the Sunday closest to the 13th, I’m preaching a homily series on Our Lady of Fatima and her messages to the world.  In my homily last month, we’ve seen that even the Vatican considers Fatima “the most prophetic of modern apparitions” (CDF).  The last three Popes - St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis - have all affirmed that the message of Fatima is more relevant today than ever before.  The Holy Father calls us to “Learn … Live … and Spread the message of Fatima.”

Before we go into the details of the Fatima apparitions, let’s consider why God is sending the Blessed Mother.  The Church teaches that Our Lady’s pivotal role in salvation history did not end with her giving birth to the Son of God, but rather continues to the present time.  Now, some people argue that this contradicts St. Paul’s teaching that “there is one mediator between God and men…Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:5).  We answer that Mary’s participation in salvation history as Mother of Christ and Mother of Christians does not diminish the unique mediation of Christ; rather, it points to Christ’s unique mediation and reveals its power (Lumen Gentium, 60).  Authentic apparitions of the Blessed Mother shed light on the Gospel.  Her authentic messages throughout the centuries are precisely the same message she gave at the Wedding Feast at Cana:  “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2: 5).

Christian tradition has always held that Our Lord, at the point of death, gave His mother to each one of us.  The Beloved Disciple John, present with Our Lady at the crucifixion, was standing in for each one of us as Christ said:  “Behold your Mother” (John 19: 27).  Down through the centuries, our Blessed Mother has come with love and hope, and even with warning, to places like England, Ireland, Mexico, Ecuador, France, Portugal, Japan, and many others.  There, she would leave an undying mark which stands as an everlasting witness to her coming and to her message.

Thus, we have the Rosary given to St. Dominic in 1214; the Brown Scapular to St. Simon Stock in 1251; the tilma of Juan Diego with the Miraculous Image that helped to convert 8,000,000 pagans in Mexico in a short span of 7 years beginning in 1531; to St. Catherine Labouré in Paris in 1830 she gave us the Miraculous Medal; to St. Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, France in 1858 she gave us the Healing Spring; and at Fatima, Portugal in 1917, the Blessed Mother appeared to 3 shepherd children and gave us the Miracle of the Sun along with certain predictions that would affect the shape of our world in the 20th century.

Even in recent times, we keep hearing about the appearances of Our Lady in various places.  The Mother of God, since her Assumption into Heaven, has been very active on earth and more prominently in the 19th & 20th centuries.  God continues to send her as the Mother of Christians to give us messages of hope and warning, and to call us back to her Son.

In several of her approved apparitions, Our Lady warns us of a great crisis of faith that would affect the Church in the 20th century:

I just came back from a 12-day pilgrimage to Quito, Ecuador, where I learned so much about Our Lady of Good Success.  In the course of several apparitions over a period of 40 years (1594-1634), Our Lady revealed to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres several prophecies.  She foretold that the Church would be in a state of crisis in the 20th century:  

In 1846, Our Lady appeared to Maximin and Melanie on the mountain of La Salette in the French Alps and gave the famous Secret:

“All the civil governments will have one and the same plan, which will be to abolish and do away with every religious principle, to make way for materialism, atheism, spiritualism and vice of all kinds.”  

In the 1970’s, Our Lady appeared to Sister Agnes Sasagawa in Akita, Japan, with the following message:

Our Lady said that the crisis will reach a critical point after the midpoint of the 20th century.  What happened at that time?  We had the societal and sexual revolution of the 1960’s, which radically challenged traditional faith and morals!  There can be no denying that we are in the midst of the crisis Our Lady prophesied.  Consider the following statistics from reputable sources:

The number of Catholics regularly attending Mass plummeted in the second half of the 20th century.  In 1958, 3 out of 4 Catholics regularly attended Sunday Mass.  By 2002, the number had dropped to only 1 in 4 (Catholic World Report, July 2007).

From 1965 to 2003, there was a 66% decrease among US religious sisters and a 94% decrease in teaching sisters (Index of Leading cCtholic Indicators, 2003).

Approximately 50% of US Catholic High Schools were closed from 1965 to 2002 (Index of Leading Catholic Indicators, 2003).

In 1965, there were 49,000 US seminarians in formation for the priesthood.  By 2002, there were 4,700 - a decrease of 90%.  In the same time frame, some 2/3 of the seminaries in the United States had to close their doors for lack of vocations.  

Since 1965, a 50% decrease in US Catholic weddings has been accompanied by a 50% decrease in infant baptisms (Catholic World Report, July 2007).  At the same time the number of Catholic annulments has soared from 338 in 1968 to over 50,000 in 2002 (National Catholic Register, July 2007).  

The staggering amount of co-habitation, Catholic marriages that end in divorce, and legislation in favor of “gay marriage” make it quite clear that the prophecy has come true.  We have only to turn on the radio, TV, or the Internet to see how the innocence of children is under constant assault.  Immodest dress, sexual innuendo, violence, crude humor, easy access to pornography - have all become too common.

There is also failure of catechesis in the Church in the last 50 years.  70% of Catholics born after 1958 consider the Holy Eucharist a mere “symbolic reminder” of Jesus (Index of Leading Catholic Indicators, 2003).  

There is so much confusion in the Church today.  Doctrines that have been held by the Catholic Church since time immemorial are now being questioned.  A good example is Christ’s teaching on divorce and re-marriage.  Christ is very clear in today’s Gospel:  Whoever divorces his spouse and marries another commits adultery.  The Church has held for centuries that those in this situation are barred from receiving Holy Communion.  Now, that perennial teaching of the Church is subject to debate.  We see “cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against other bishops,” as Our Lady of Akita prophesied.

In this time of crisis, it is good to affirm the traditional teaching of the Church:  No one has the authority to change Christ’s teaching - no power in heaven or on earth, neither an angel, nor the Pope, nor a council, nor a papal encyclical, nor a law of the bishops, has the faculty to change it (cf. Galatians 1:8).  The First Vatican Council declared that the task of the Pope (and the bishops) is to hand on the faith to us unadulterated:  “For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles” (Pastor Aeternus, 6, July AD 1870).

My brothers & sisters, we are in the midst of the great crisis of faith that Our Lady foretold in many of her apparitions.  The sad thing is that most Catholics don’t even realize it.  They go on with their lives as if this is normal, and it’s business as usual.  Many are caught up in worldliness.  There is so much lukewarmness, so much indifference, and many souls are perishing as a result.

The great evil in our world will surely bring down God’s chastisement if we don’t do anything about it, if we don’t turn away from sin.  God’s punishment is a consequence of His love and mercy, “For whom the Lord loves He chastens” (Hebrews 12:6, Proverbs 3:11).  

Our Lady of Akita warned:  "If men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity.  It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never have seen before.  Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful.  The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead.  The only arms which will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by My Son.”

That was in the 70’s.  We’ve only gotten worse since that time!  We now have over 58 million aborted babies (in the US alone) crying out to God for justice.

The good news is that the prophetic messages of Our Lady do not end in gloom and doom.  She has promised her “good success” to the current crisis in the Church.  Our Blessed Mother foretold that it would seem that evil had triumphed.  “This will mark the arrival of my hour, when I, in a marvelous way, will dethrone the proud and cursed Satan, trampling him under my feet.”  This is an obvious reference to Genesis 3:15 when God said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between her seed and your seed:  she shall crush your head, and you shall lie in wait for her heel.”

Our Lady promised the restoration of the Catholic Church, which I believe coincides with the triumph of the Immaculate Heart and the era of peace.  But our Blessed Mother needs our help.  Our Lord and Our Lady want us to participate in “Heaven’s Peace Plan.”  We must redouble our efforts, now more than ever, especially as we approach the 100 year anniversary of the Fatima apparitions.  The peace of the world, the restoration of the Church, and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart, depend on our response.

No matter how late the hour, so long as the threatened disasters have not yet struck, there is still hope of averting them if enough people will amend their lives and do what God asks.  Almighty God spared Nineveh because they listened to the prophet Jonah.  Almighty God would have spared Sodom and Gomorrah had there been found only 10 just people in them.

In our times, Almighty God sends us His very best - the Queen of Prophets herself, the Blessed Virgin Mary, no less!  And she gives us “Heaven’s Peace Plan"— Conversion, Eucharistic Adoration, Prayer (especially the daily Rosary), Penance and Reparation, the Five First Saturdays, Devotion to the Immaculate Heart — in order that the world might yet be saved.

We cannot just sit around while watching our children and grandchildren suffer corruption.  We cannot sit around while our society self-destructs before our eyes.  We have to do something.  And it will require heroic effort on our part to commit to Our Lady’s requests, to participate in “Heaven’s Peace Plan.”

So, what are you doing?  How are you responding to Our Lady’s requests?  Well, if you’d like to know what I’m doing, I’m doing the Nineveh thing!  Nineveh 90 is a world-wide crusade of prayer, penance and conversion, which starts tomorrow, February 13, and ends on May 13, the 100th anniversary of Fatima.  It is inspired by the story of Nineveh, a pagan and evil city in the Old Testament.  God told the prophet Jonah:  “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you: Forty days more and Nineveh will be destroyed.”  The Ninevites believed, the king proclaimed a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth and ashes.  “When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, He relented and did not bring on them the destruction He had threatened” (Jonah 3:3-10).  For more information on Nineveh 90, see hand-out or go to www.nineveh90.com.

Our Lady of Fatima has given us “Heaven’s Peace Plan,” which simply consists of Prayer, Penance and Conversion.  Oh how loving, how merciful Almighty God is for giving our sinful and ungrateful world such simple solutions to save our souls and bring peace to all mankind.  Let’s not ignore Our Lord and Our Lady.  They’ve been largely ignored by the people who came before us and we’re suffering the terrible consequences of it.  Let’s not remain complacent anymore, for the sake of our children and grandchildren.  Let’s firmly commit to Learn, Live, and Spread the message of Fatima!