Secret
The secret of Fatima is perceived as a focal point of the Message of Fatima and it’s related to the visions and words that the little shepherds have witnessed in the apparition of July 1917. This secret, kept for a long time by the little shepherds and announced in the last century, is known by its “three parts”: the first two, written in 1941, mentioned a vision of hell and a devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary; the third, written in 1944 and revealed in Fatima in the jubilee year of 2000, stated the vision of the city in ruins.
It won’t be difficult to foresee the history of the twentieth century in the secret, with regard to all the tragedies and conflicts of this century. That doesn’t mean that the secret should be referred to the past; it reflects the present and projects itself into the future. It presents itself as the light to interpret human history, as a sign of times that points out the paternal and maternal care of God for the humanity.
The secret proves that history is an ongoing process and that the prayer, the conversion and self-giving – the pro-existence – are actors in the human plot. In the evocation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary – icon, on the one hand, of God’s tenderness, and on the other hand, model of acceptance of that tenderness by those who, like Mary, consecrate themselves to God – it is identified the core of the existence and the foundation of Christian Theology: the “secret” of gift, which is the revelation of love. The light of God, in other words, the revelation of Gift is the context in which the Heart of Mother is offered as a path that leads human history to redemption, suffered by the torments of the world but imbued with a trustful hope. In this way, in the first part of the secret, with the vision of hell, it is recalled the fundamental and historic choice to which mankind is invited; but the vision only becomes complete with the echoes of hope of the Immaculate Heart and its devotion. In the second part, we come across the humankind’s atrocities of the last century reflected in the request for the consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart; but the invitation to trust in the promise of Heart is renewed, in the final word of God’s tenderness. Finally, in the third part, the steep mountain and the city reduced to ruins would represent the portrait of the nonsense, had not been for the presence of the big cross, the fountain of blood in which the humanity is washed.
The echo of this announced secret is an echo of trust in the triumph of the Heart. The call to pro-existence arises from this trust, to self-giving, which, transformed in plan of life, will be the heart of the secret offered in Fatima.
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