Fatima Anniversary

This year that is dedicated to remembering the 100th anniversary of Fatima is a great time to refocus on deepening our union with God through prayer. One of Our Lady's special requests was the recitation of the daily rosary. How sorely this is needed now more than ever. Even if we already pray the daily rosary, we should reexamine how devoutly we are praying it.

We should also look at how we are responding to her request to make sacrifices for sinners and do penance, particularly through performing our daily duties well and with virtue. Every moment of every day provides us with opportunities to love God. We do not need to seek out sufferings, but rather accept the ones that come our way day by day and try to bear them in union with Christ on the cross.

Lucia said the most moving words made by Our Lady were: "Do not offend Our Lord and God any more for He is already too much offended." She also asked the devotion of the First Saturdays in reparation to her Immaculate Heart: to go to Confession, receive Holy Communion, pray five decades of the rosary, and spend 15 minutes meditating on the mysteries of the rosary.

Let us pray during this 100th year from her apparitions that the requests of Our Lady will be heeded, especially the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. And let us take to heart the words of Our Lady in her first apparition in May: "Are you willing to offer yourselves to God and bear all the sufferings He wills to send you as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners?"

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!