AT THIS TIME OF WORLD CRISIS:

Fatima Is Our Only Hope

by Frre Michel de la Sainte Trinit
Hopelessly looking up blind alleys for an answer to stop the relentlessly
ensuing Communist Bear, the people of the free world must bend low
and turn to Our Lady of Fatima. Through this inspiring article taken
from Frre Michel's second Volume, on The Secret and the Church the
Queen of the Most Holy Rosary reminds us anew of the requests She
made over 70 years ago, "If what I request is done, many souls will be
saved and there will be peace."
It is through obedience to the Message of Fatima that "annihilation of
nations" can be avoided. It is only by the Pope consecrating Russia as
Our Lady of Fatima commanded that we shall avoid being enslaved by
Communist Russia. These facts are clear once a careful study of the
Second Fatima Secret is made.
In this passage taken from Volume II of Frre Michel's monumental The
Whole Truth About Fatima the key to understanding the present day
world crisis is given. We must be informed and then we must respond
generously to Our Lady's invitation to prayer, reparation and sacrifice.

The Second Secret: A Great Design Of Mercy For The Salvation Of

Christendom
"You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God
wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart."
After these words, which seem to us like the conclusion of the first part of Her
great Secret, and the introduction to the second part, Our Lady continued:
"If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will
be peace. The war is going to end.
"But if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will begin in the
reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light,
know that this is the great sign God gives you that He is about to
punish the world for its crimes by means of war, famine and
persecutions against the Church and the Holy Father.

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"To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to
My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the first
Saturdays of the month.
"If My requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be
peace.
"If not, she will spread her errors throughout the whole world, causing
wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred. The
Holy Father will have much to suffer. Various nations will be
annihilated."
The Secret is both spectacular and terrible. Its complex structure, bewildering
at first sight, in fact expresses a message packed with meaning, which we shall
discover little by little.1 To begin with, however, let us look only at the general
themes and principal ideas.
A SECRET FOR CHRISTENDOM. First important remark: this time it no longer
concerns, at least directly, souls taken individually vis-a-vis the drama of their
eternal salvation. No, now we are dealing with nations and the Church, and
their temporal salvation: war or peace for the nations, liberty or peace for the
Church. In short, even if the word is not found there, the salvation of
Christendom is the principal subject of this "second secret" of Our Lady. What
are the essential themes? These are easy to discern.
1. The Great Design Of God:
World Peace Confided To The Immaculate Heart Of Mary
To understand the Secret correctly, we must always return to the central phrase
which is the pivot, the divine oracle which determines the rest and from which
the other parts flow: "God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My
Immaculate Heart."
The great design of God for our century, His irrevocable decision, is to make the
Immaculate Heart of His Most Holy Mother loved, praised and glorified, by all
souls and by all nations as well. To this Immaculate Heart, God has entrusted
incomparable treasures of grace to be poured out on all Christendom, because
He wishes Her to receive a solemn, official and public cult everywhere, and
because He wills that She reign in truth over the Church and over all peoples.
One word is enough to call to mind all the benefits of the temporal order:
peace. In His love for Her and His eternal decree to make Her Mediatrix of all
graces and dispenser of all good things, the Holy Trinity wishes to make Her, in
our century, the source and the unique custodian of the gift of peace, to whom
we must have recourse.

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Little Jacinta had understood this quite well. Shortly before leaving for Lisbon,
she explained it to her cousin, almost as though she were leaving us her last
will and testament:
"Jacinta said to me: 'It will not be long now before I go to Heaven. You will
remain here to make it known that God wishes to establish in the world
devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. When you are to say this, don't go
and hide. Tell everybody that God grants us graces through the Immaculate
Heart of Mary, that people are to ask Her for them; and that the Heart of Jesus
wants the Immaculate Heart of Mary to be venerated at His side. Tell them also
to pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for peace, since God has entrusted it
to Her'."2
In Her most maternal kindness, Our Lady has even willed to make it clear how
we are to ask of Her the precious gift of peace, and be sure of being heard. Her
"little requests" are nothing less that the revelation of the best way of asking
Her, a way in which men can be certain of meriting the gift of peace, because it
is a way chosen by God Himself.
2. The Requests Of Our Lady, Conditions For World Peace
On July 13, 1917, even before revealing the great Secret to them, Our Lady had
explained the first condition for peace to the children, so that the children could
promptly make it known: "I want you to continue reciting the Rosary every day
in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary to obtain peace in the world and the end of
the war, because only She can help you."3 And during each of the subsequent
apparitions, right up until October 13, Our Lady had repeated this same
pressing invitation. This shows how important this point of the message is; this
is still true today, because since that time, Sister Lucy has unceasingly
reminded us of its urgency.
The Secret, however, mentions two other requests, and these are just as
decisive. They express and summarize all the desires of Heaven. These two
requests are the Communion of Reparation on the five first Saturdays of the
month, because according to Her promise, Our Lady of Fatima came to ask for it
in 1925 at Pontevedra, and the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart.
Our Lady came to ask for this consecration at Tuy, in 1929. Later on we shall
see in what circumstances She came.
Thus does God will to achieve His ends: to establish on earth the reign of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary, not only over souls, but over all nations, and the
whole of Christendom. The means are unassuming, simple, and easy but as
we will gradually discover, what a sublime and divine wisdom they disclose!
To invite men, who are so easily distracted and deaf to His appeals, to urge and
finally compel them to accomplish the Divine Will regardless of the cost, God
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decided to link these humble requests of His Mother with wonderful promises
and terrible chastisements. Line by line, the great Secret evokes the stages of
these dramatic alternatives with which the Church and the nations have been
confronted since then. First of all, it puts forward the way of obedience, which is
rewarded by heavenly promises.
3. Wonderful Promises:
Heaven For Souls, Peace For Nations
"If My requests are heeded", these are the words Our Lady uses. What will
happen? What graces, what signal blessings will Heaven pour down upon the
earth? Our Lady of Fatima is neither verbose nor pretentious, as are so many of
our false prophets of good things to come! On the contrary, what sobriety in Her
words: "Many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to
end." There it is. Is that all? Yes, because all is said there.
She promises an end, in the first place, to this terrible war of usury which for
almost three years had been ravaging Europe, causing rivers of blood to flow
with no apparent results. In that summer of 1917, there was still no end in sight
to the war. But Our Lady announces that for the time being, the chastisement
will end, and soon the soldiers will return home. What good news and grounds
for hope!
When the men finally come out of this ordeal of purification if only they have
the wisdom to understand the meaning of it, if only they learn their lesson and
are converted, says Our Lady, peace will follow. It would be a true and genuine
peace, a harmony between the nations as they return to fidelity to their
Christian traditions. In each of these nations would reign the tranquility of order
in the service of the common good. Full liberty would finally be granted to the
Church, whose work for the salvation of men would be facilitated and increased
tenfold: "many souls will be saved, and there will be peace". Such is in fact the
eternal idea of Christendom. We dream of no other ideal, for outside of this one
there are only chimerical utopias; sooner or later they always result in bloody
catastrophes.
But when, for the second time in this great Secret, Our Lady reiterates Her
promises, She gives them an astonishing precision, a concrete shape apt to
move human hearts to accede to Her requests. By a real miracle of grace, the
fulfillment of Her requests will preserve humanity from the horrible
chastisements which threaten it.
"To prevent this", She declares. Then above all there is the incomparable
promise: "If My requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be
peace." This is the Pax Christiana, the true peace of Christendom, "the peace
which the world cannot give," as we chant in the Roman liturgy: Illam, quam
mundus dare non potest, pacem. By their own efforts, it is impossible for men
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to attain it, but in 1917, Our Lady of Fatima promised it to the whole world. For
in both Her Secret of July 13 as well as Her other messages of May 13 and
October 13, Our Lady always spoke of the peace of the whole world to the three
shepherds of Aljustrel.
As a Sovereign in Her own right, Regina Pacis, Our Lady indicates the concrete
means by which this extraordinary peace is to be obtained: "Russia will be
converted." In fact, what a grace it would have been for the whole world if in
1929-1931, by a miracle of Heaven, Russia had suddenly been delivered from
the barbarism of Soviet tyranny, not to mention the unfortunate centuries old
schism of the Russian Church, and finally returned in an official way to the
sheepfold of Roman unity!
Surely the face of the world and the political history of this century would have
been changed. The Second World War would not have taken place. And the
heretical, schismatic or pagan countries, drawn by the example of an immense
and powerful Russia, would have found the road leading back to Catholic unity.
Having conquered the hearts of the Russian people, the Roman Church by this
very fact would have regained its power and prestige everywhere.
Such, therefore, was the great plan of God for our epoch: to grant peace to the
nations at the dawn of a century when material progress had turned the specter
of war into an apocalyptic menace. God also wished to return full liberty and
conquering force to the Church after four centuries of inroads made by heresy
and apostasy: Luther in 1517, Freemasonry in 1717, and the Russian Revolution
in 1917. Such was God's plan for extending to the whole world the Kingdom of
the Sacred Heart of Jesus, prepared and heralded by the Reign of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary.
It was indeed a great design of mercy which God had conceived for the world,
renewing through Our Lady of Fatima this oracle of Jeremiah the prophet: "For I
know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace
and not of affliction, preparing for you a future full of hope." (Jer.29:11)
The preceding, then, summarizes in all their fullness without us having
distorted or unduly exaggerated them in any way the promises made to the
world in 1917 by Our Lady of Fatima. They are as wonderful as the
chastisements corresponding to them are terrible and frightful.
4. Terrible Chastisements:
Hell, War And Persecutions

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The Holy Father venerating the

Statue of Our Lady of Fatima. As
though leaning forward, She
seems to say to him, World
Enslavement or Peace ... It's up
to You My Son, but have
confidence In Me and proceed
with the Consecration of Russia
and all will be well.
"The war is going to end, (Our Lady continued) but if people do not cease
offending God another worse one will begin in the reign of Pius XI." And She
insisted, repeating for our blind "modern men", who are no longer able to read
the true "signs of the times", the eternal lessons of sacred history; this war,
even more atrocious and deadly than the first one, will, like the first war, be the
chastisement of God, Who is justly angered at an apostate and rebellious
humanity. Yes, Our Lady in Her goodness deigned to explain clearly the meaning
of events, just like the prophets: it is God Who will "punish the world for its
crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and the Holy
Father."
When Our Lady outlined these chastisements for the second time, She made
clear their nature and their cause. First of all, She gives the cause. Then, finally,
this conversion required by Heaven is all summarized in the fulfillment of Our
Lady's request. "If My requests are heeded ... if not ..."Such, in the final
analysis, is the Will of God: that the future of humanity hang in the balance
between these two alternatives. If Russia is not consecrated to the Immaculate
Heart of Mary, if the devotion of reparation on the first Saturdays of the month
is not propagated, God will use Russia with pernicious errors of communism,
and its bloody wars, as a devastating scourge, the instrument of His wrath over
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humanity: "If not, Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, causing
wars, and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy
Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated."

Justice In The Service Of Mercy

What a fearsome drama, what terrible menaces! Yet they remind modern man
of the sovereignty of God, Who when He commands, expects to be obeyed.
Imprisoned in the walls of their laicism, or completely secular vision of history,
they think they are absolute masters of it, that God never intervenes in history.
In a few words, Our Lady of Fatima sweeps away this foolish pride, this vain
pretension. No, it is God who directs history. In our century He wishes to make
His Most Holy Mother the Regent of His omnipotent Providence. If men refuse to
enter into this great design of love and mercy, it will cost them dearly.
Chastisements will rain down upon them until they finally understand and enter
into His ways.
But if God directs His children as a sovereign Master, He also does so as a most
wise Father: if He requests, if He promises and threatens, if He rewards and
punishes through either peace or war, it is still by virtue of His mercy towards
them; it is to save them for all eternity as it were in spite of themselves,
moving their rebellious wills to finally be converted. This is the reason why He
has doubled the dramatic choice incumbent upon them: the way of Heaven and
the way of hell. There is another choice parallel to it: this time between
temporal chastisements and rewards, to lead carnally inclined hearts on the
road to salvation. God willed this correspondence; He willed that Christian peace
with its wonderful benefits, both spiritual and temporal, be an image reminding
us of the eternal peace in the midst of the heavenly Jerusalem: beata pacis
visio, the blessed vision of peace. Similarly, God willed that war, with its black
trail of horrors and atrocious sufferings already give us here below a terrifying
vision of eternal chastisement.
This is why the great Secret of Our Lady is summed up in a double dramatic
alternative, where the terms correspond to each other: Heaven or hell for all
eternity. Already here below as well, either the blessing of peace and the good
life in Christendom under the benevolent and protective eyes of the Immaculate
Virgin, or war and famine, persecutions, blood and tears in the Soviet gulag.

The Response Of Men

To avert so many evils, and to merit the wonderful promises, so that the Queen
of Heaven pour out upon Christendom a shower of graces and blessings as She
had announced, it sufficed for men to obey. This would have been enough. But
it was absolutely necessary. And it did not take place.

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"THEY DID NOT WISH TO HEED MY REQUESTS."4 Since that time, the other
branch of the alternative has been accomplished to the letter, inexorably. We
will not describe right away this exact coincidence between the actual events
and the prophecy, the final phases of which are being fulfilled today, before our
eyes. We shall describe it little by little, as we show how first the Shepherds of
the Church and then the faithful were not docile to the voice of their Mother,
resisted Her appeals, and continually delayed the fulfillment of Her requests.

Important Analysis Of The Structure Of The 2nd Secret

At first glance, the structure of this second part of the Secret is confusing. In
fact, if we analyze this text attentively, we discover that it is perfectly
constructed in two strictly parallel parts, where fourteen terms rigorously
correspond to each other, following a clear, logical plan. We present here this
rigorous correspondence in the form of a synopsis. To see how the two terms
correspond to each other, it suffices to read first the column on the left, and
then the one on the right. To read the text of the entire authentic Secret, one
can read the entire column on the left, then the whole column on the right.

I. The Salvific Intention Of God Is Evoked

A. Description of
hell: "To save
them."
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A. Description of
chastisements: "To
prevent this."

II. Our Lady States Her Requests

B."God wishes to
establish in the
world devotion to
My Immaculate
Heart."

B."I will come to ask

for the consecration
of Russia to My
Immaculate Heart
and the Communion
of Reparation on the
First Saturdays."

III. First Possibility: If Men Obey

C. "If what I say to
you is done."

C. "If my requests
are heeded."

IV. Our Lady States A Double Promise

D. "Many souls will
be saved."
E. "And there will
be peace. The war
will end."

D. "Russia will be
converted."
E. "And there will be
peace."

V. Second Possibility: If Men Refuse To Obey

F. "But if men do
F. "If not" ("If My
not cease offending requests are not
God."
heeded.")

VI. The Threat Of Terrible Chastisements

G. "Another worse
war will begin in
the reign of Pius
XI. When you see
a night illumined
by an unknown
light, know that it
is the great sign
God gives you that
He is about to
punish the world
for its crimes by
means of war,
famine,
persecutions of
the Church and
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G. "She (Russia)
will spread her
errors throughout
the world, causing
wars and
persecutions
against the Church.
The good will be
martyred. The Holy
Father will have
much to suffer.
Various nations will
be annihilated."

the Holy Father."

The Key To The Drama

The question occurs: why this construction of the Secret in two parts? What
meaning might it have?
First of all it seems that this text, where twice in a row the most attractive
promises alternate with the most terrifying chastisements, is much more
eloquent, more convincing, more persuasive than a straightforward exposition
would be, simply listing events as they follow chronologically.
However, there is something else also. This duplication, this "rebounding" effect
of the prophecy, in which are repeated the same themes corresponding to each
other with precision, visibly tends to underline the capital, decisive importance
of the sentence found in the center of the exposition. This becomes the key
phrase.
In expressing the requests of Heaven as precisely as possible, She puts forward
the unique condition of salvation, the unique remedy for all the terrible evils
mentioned in the text, and which are stated again even more vigorously: "To
prevent this (the chastisements) I shall come to ask for the consecration of
Russia to My Immaculate Heart and the Communion of Reparation on the first
Saturdays."
This is the heart of the drama. The structure of the text brings this out in the
most striking way. This is the key to the prophecy, for everything depends on
this twofold request: everything which precedes it and everything which comes
after it. Placed in the center of the presentation of promises and chastisements,
it clearly stands out as the unique condition of their fulfillment:
A. First presentation of the promises.
B. First presentation of the chastisements.
The requests of Our Lady, conditions for salvation.
A. Second presentation of the promises.
B. Second presentation of the chastisements.

One Single Prophecy

Once the structure of the Secret is explained, everything is clear. There is one
single prophecy; the various elements of it are expressed in successive
developments: the second is not a simple repetition of the first, but each
element gives greater precision and brings out more of the implications. Now let
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us repeat our "synoptic" reading of the text, pointing out a few interesting
remarks which it suggests.
THE PLAN OF GOD AND THE REQUESTS OF OUR LADY. To call to mind the
great design of God's mercy, the first text simply says, "to save them", referring
to the phrase immediately preceding it: "You have seen hell, where the souls of
poor sinners go." The second formula, "To prevent this", is much more
complete, because in addition to the danger of eternal damnation, it also calls
to mind the temporal chastisements which prefigure it here below. Heaven
proposes to us obedience to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as the unique means
of preserving ourselves from all the evils which threaten us, the eternal ones
and now also the temporal ones. What extraordinary, stupefying importance
Heaven thus attributes to these two small requests: the consecration of Russia
and the devotion of reparation on the first Saturdays of the month!
WONDERFUL PROMISES. "If what I say to you is done", "If My requests are
heeded ".This is the unique condition for the fulfillment of Her promises. The
two formulas are equivalent; both of them refer us to the apparitions of
Pontevedra and Tuy.
As for the promises, they are twofold. Both are of the spiritual order: "Many
souls will be saved." The second formula, which introduces the theme of Russia,
gives a wonderful detail on the meaning: "Russia will be converted". The
similarity is eloquent. In the eyes of God and the Blessed Virgin, the conversion
of Russia is before anything else the grace of eternal salvation granted to
millions of souls returning to the flock of Christ's one, true Church, and put back
on the road to salvation by that same Church.
Then comes the second promise, added to the first almost as a "throw-in": the
temporal benefits which follow and ordinarily accompany supernatural
grace. "And there will be peace. Yes, this is an essential point of the message
of Fatima, although the primary element is the salvation of souls. Then peace
follows, as the fruit of the conversion of peoples.
Let it be noted that in the text of the Secret, it would be wrong to exaggerate
the importance of the promise concerning the end of the First World War: "The
war is going to end." This announcement which is a part of the message
intended to be revealed right away since Our Lady was to repeat it on
October 13 figures here only in passing. It could almost be put in
parentheses. For it merely illustrates like a limited promise, the fulfillment of
which is at hand and already granted the more vast and unconditional
promise which constitutes one of the essential elements of the Secret: "many
souls will be saved and there will be peace."
This peace which is mentioned three times in the great Secret is a universal and
lasting peace which God wishes to grant to the world in our time by an
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extraordinary miracle of grace, "granted to men by the Mediation of the

Immaculate Heart of Mary. This wonderful peace which Our Lady proposed to
the world in 1917 on a condition is the same peace which will certainly come in
Our Lady's eventual triumph which She also predicted: "In the end, My
Immaculate Heart will triumph ... and a certain period of peace shall be granted
to the world."
TERRIBLE CHASTISEMENTS. Once again, the resemblance in the two
successive expressions is a rich source of instruction for us. What is the cause
of these divine chastisements? There are two reasons.
"But if people do not cease offending God", Our Lady says first of all, employing
the formula which She was to repeat with such sorrow on October 13. Yes, it is
all the sins of men which draw down on the world the chastisements of God.
The second time, however, a single phrase sums it all up: "If not", meaning, "If
My requests are not heeded". The brevity is striking.
For Heaven, to not stop offending God and to refuse to fulfill the requests of Our
Lady are one thing. Indeed, these two requests, which seem like mere nothings,
are so well chosen by God that they serve as an infallible gauge of the
dispositions of men in this regard. To conform to them with docility as soon as
they are known is already showing a genuine and sincere desire for conversion.
On the other hand, to refuse them obstinately is to reveal one's own blindness
of intellect and hardness of heart, a proud pretense of knowing the means of
salvation better than the Blessed Virgin Herself. It is like resisting God to His
Face, since He desires more than ever today to grant Heaven to souls and peace
to nations by the sweet and powerful mediation of the Immaculate Heart of
Mary.
The two announcements of coming chastisements are equally complementary:
the first one gives prominence to the Second World War, still worse than the war
of 1914-1918, while the second reveals the profound causes, unmasks the
secret reasons for it and describes its lasting and disastrous consequences of
worldwide scope. The cause of the chastisements? It is the non- consecration of
Russia in conformity with the precise requests of Our Lady. The secret reason,
the cause for this horrible future war breaking out? It is the non-conversion of
Russia. For the Secret leaves no room for doubt: if Russia had been converted
beforehand, the Second World War would not have taken place. The
consequences? They are so terrible in this context that the disaster of 19391945 seems like only an episode, a first phase of the true chastisement. This
true chastisement is the war waged everywhere today by Communist Russia, by
its armies and those of its satellites, by its emissaries and by its spies, finally by
all the traitors and ideologists it has been able to enroll in the service of its
satanic combat for world domination by Communism, a godless power which
persecutes the Church.

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