May 13, 2022: today marks the anniversary of the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima.
Everyone knows Fatima and everyone knows about the apparitions of Fatima, but it is always moving to revisit those days when heaven bent down over earth and the Virgin called the world, through three shepherd children β Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco β to peace, prayer, and conversion.
Sister Lucia, in her Memoirs, recounts those extraordinary months starting with the first apparition: on May 13, 1917, the Virgin says to the shepherd children: Β«I have come to ask you to come here for six consecutive months, on the 13th, at this same hourΒ» and a month later (June 13, 1917) invites them to recite the Rosary every day.
At the sixth apparition, in October, the Virgin says that she is Our Lady of the Rosary and once again invites people to pray the Rosary: Β«Let them continue always to say the Rosary every day. The war will end and the soldiers will soon return to their homesΒ».
Her invitation and words now, in this world once again tragically swept by winds of war, unfortunately sound more relevant than ever. Recalling those days and allowing the invitations of our heavenly Mother to resound in our hearts, we entrust ourselves and the whole world to the Blessed Virgin Mary of Fatima, with an excerpt from the prayer of entrustment that Saint John Paul II recited at Fatima on May 13, 1982.
βBeneath your protection
we seek refuge, Holy Mother of Godβ!Β
O Mother of men and peoples,
you who βknow all their sufferings
and their hopesβ,
you who maternally feel all the struggles
between good and evil,
between light and darkness,
that shake the contemporary world,
accept our cry, which,
as if moved by the Holy Spirit,
we address directly
to your Heart and embrace,
with the love of the Mother and Servant,
this human world of ours,
whom we entrust and consecrate to you,
full of anxiety
for their earthly and eternal destiny
of men and peoples.Β
In a special way
we entrust and consecrate to you
those men and those nations,
that of this entrustment
and of this consecration
are particularly in need.Β
βBeneath your protection
we seek refuge,
Holy Mother of Godβ!Β
Do not despise the pleas
of us who are undergoing trials!
Do not despise them!Β
Accept our humble trust
and our entrustment!Β
