Sixth Apparition at Fatima of the Virgin Mary

By October the news of Fatima spread more, and the people learned that a miracle was to happen. The children began to speak of the miracle which was to happen.

Seventy to one hundred thousand pilgrims came to the Cova da Iria.

It was pouring down rain and everything was very muddy. My family was very uncertain and feared that if the miracle did not take place; the people would want to kill the three children.

Once there, moved by an interior impulse, I asked the people to shut their umbrellas and pray a Rosary. Soon after that there was a flash of light, and Our Lady appeared above the oak tree. Lucia asked: "What do you want of me?"

I want to tell you that a chapel is to be built here in my honor. I am the Lady of the Rosary. Continue always to pray the Rosary every day. The war is going to end, and the soldiers will soon return to their homes."

"I have many things to ask you: the cure of some sick persons, the conversion of sinners, and other things . . . "

"Some yes, but not others. They must amend their lives and ask forgiveness for their sins." Looking very sad, Our Lady said: "Do not offend the Lord our God any more, because He is already so much offended."

Then, opening her hands, she made them reflect onto the sun, and as she ascended, the reflection of her own light continued to be projected on the sun itself.

Here, Your Excellency, is the reason why I cried out to the people to look at the sun. My aim was not to call their attention to the sun, because I was not even aware of their presence. I was moved to do so under the guidance of an interior impulse.

After Our Lady had disappeared into the immense distance of the firmament, we beheld St. Joseph with the Child Jesus and Our Lady robed in white with a blue mantle, beside the sun. St. Joseph and the Child Jesus appeared to bless the world, for they traced the Sign of the Cross with their hands. When, a little later, this apparition disappeared, I saw Our Lord and Our Lady; it seemed to me that it was Our Lady of Dolor's. Our Lord appeared to bless the world in the same manner as St. Joseph had done. This apparition also vanished, and I saw Our Lady once more, this time resembling Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, holding the child Jesus in one hand and the brown scapular in the other hand.


At the predetermined hour, the rain stopped, and the thick mass of clouds broke. The sun looked like a disc of dull silver, and began dancing wildly. The people shouted out: "MIRACLE!" It seems that the majority of the people saw the sun trembling and dancing, whirling around like a catherine wheel; it descended almost low enough to burn the earth with its rays. Many thought the end of the world had come, as the sun seemed to fall upon them. People reported color changes in objects on earth, caused by the rays of the sun. Some expressed sorrow for their sins aloud. Some who had come to ridicule now believed.

After the great miracle of the Sun which Our Lady had performed "so that all may believe," the events of Fatima became the subject of national attention in Portugal.

It took the Church over thirteen years to make an official declaration, and many clarifications were still necessary.

The first publication of the subject of Fatima came from Fr. Formigao in 1921. He too was a nonbeliever of the Fatima events and was converted by Our Lady of Fatima at the September 13, 1917, apparition.

Tradition dates the origin of the Our Lady of Pillar shrine to the year 40 A.D., when St. James the Apostle was sitting here on the bank of the Ebro River, discouraged and heartsick at his lack of success in bringing Christianity to the region. The Virgin Mary appeared to him and reassured him that his efforts would not be in vain. She also asked him to consecrate a church in her name, and left behind a pillar of jasper to mark the spot where she had made her appearance.

As Mary promised, St. James was indeed successful in bringing Christianity to Spain, and the place of his encounter with the Virgin became a holy place. Through the centuries—including years when Zaragoza was under Muslim control, when it suffered from plague and famine, and through years of civil war and unrest—this site has continued to draw the faithful. Holy men and women such as St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Ignatius of Loyola have all made the journey here to show their devotion to Our Lady of Pilar, who is the patroness of Spain.

The most prominent miracle associated with the shrine happened in the seventeenth century to a poor beggar named Miguel Juan Pellicer from the town of Calanda. Unable to work because of an amputated leg, he had a great devotion to the shrine and frequently prayed there for help. The Virgin Mary answered his prayers by restoring his missing leg, and after word spread of the miracle, the number of pilgrims to the church greatly increased.

Multiple church structures have occupied the site, each one larger than the one it replaced. Today the Basilica de Nuestra Senora del Pilar, as it is formally known, includes 11 brightly colored tiled domes and is the second biggest church in Spain (only the cathedral in Seville is larger). Its construction was begun in 1681 under the direction of King Charles II. Parts of its interior date back even farther, including a magnificent main altar of alabaster designed by Damian Forment in the fifteenth century. Two of the frescos that line its domes were painted by Goya, the famous eighteenth-century Spanish artist who was born in the nearby village of Fuendetodos.

Our Lady of Pilar came to international prominence when in 1492 Christopher Columbus landed in the New World on her feast day of October 12. She was subsequently named patroness of the New World. In the early twentieth century, the shrine also played an important role in the founding of the Opus Dei movement. As a young seminarian in Zaragoza, St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, made daily visits to Our Lady of Pilar to pray for guidance. Opus Dei members continue to honor her feast day each year.

The Pilar Church (also known as the Basilica de Nuestra Senora del Pilar) in Zaragoza is the center of pilgrimages to Our Lady of Pilar. Inside, a Roman-style pillar is topped by a statue of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus that dates from the fifteenth century. It is housed in a chapel of marble, jasper, and gilded bronze that forms almost a church-within-a-church (see here for more on the history of the shrine).

The pillar itself is typically covered with an elaborate vestment called a manta. The vestments have been donated by countries, states, cities, and individuals from around the world, including every Latin American nation. Some 20 new mantles are donated each year.

Visitors to the church may notice a curious memorial that hangs to the side of the chapel. Two bombs are displayed there, a symbol not of violence, but of miraculous intervention. During the opening days of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, the two bombs were dropped on the church by airplanes. Miraculously, neither exploded. They remain today as a reminder of how the power of love is stronger than any armament.

The Pilar Church is the dynamic center of life in Zaragoza. Each day hundreds of visitors pass through its doors to attend mass or pray privately in the shrine’s chapel. Most also go to the back of the chapel, where people can kneel and kiss the pillar itself. Another popular custom happens each evening when young children are presented to the Virgin. Altar boys take the children and carry them to the front of the pillar, where their picture is taken by families standing outside the altar rail.

Outside the basilica lies the largest pedestrian plaza in Spain, a picturesque expanse lined with cafes and fountains and the site of frequent musical performances, festivals, and other public events. The Plaza del Pilar is at its most colorful in mid-October, when it becomes the focal point of a nine-day festival in honor of Our Lady of Pilar. More than 400,000 people flock to Zaragoza for the celebration, which includes folk dancing, theater performances, concerts, and procession with Gigantes y Cabezudos (giants and bigheads), huge papier mache characters that bob and weave through the crowds.

At the other end of the plaza stands the cathedral of La Seo. Built originally as a mosque, it blends Gothic and Baroque elements with a uniquely Spanish architectural form called Mudejar. Characterized by rich ornamentation in brick, plaster, and ceramics, Mudejar buildings were created by Muslim artisans working under Christian rule. Zaragoza has some of the finest Mudejar structures in the country, including La Seo and the Magdalena Church, another Zaragoza landmark. Pilgrims may also want to visit Santa Engracia Basilica, which holds the bones of martyrs killed by the Romans in 303 A.D.

                                                                             Our Lady of Pilar Ribbons

One of the most charming customs associated with Our Lady of Pilar involves brightly colored ribbons. In years past, people would ask to have a manta of the Virgin (one of the vestments that cover the pillar) brought to them when they were sick or dying. The requests became too numerous to accommodate, and so the church began to offer ribbons that are about 15 inches in length, the height of the statue on top of the pillar.



Offered in a rainbow of colors, each ribbon is stamped with these words in Spanish: “The measurement of Our Lady of the Pillar.” While there is no charge for the ribbons, a donation of one Euro (about $1.40) is requested.

The brightly colored ribbons that pilgrims receive at the shrine can be seen throughout the Aragon region, adorning taxi cabs, bicycles, and other vehicles as a sign of protection and blessing

THE LITURGICAL YEAR, Dom Gueranger

IN the sixteenth century, even amidst their many divergences, the so-called Reformers agreed in utterly rejecting all the honors paid by the Catholic Church to the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the grounds that such veneration of the Mother detracted from the supreme worship due to her Divine Son. Four centuries have more than sufficed to show the result of so doing: the Son has followed the Mother! The descendants of those who refused to Mary the title and rights of Theotokos -----Mother of God-----refuse to Jesus the title of Son of God in the traditional sense of the term. Many reject His Godhead altogether, placing Him merely at the head of the line of great moral and social world-teachers; others still retain the word "divinity" with respect to Him, but for them it is no longer synonymous with "deity."

Holy Scripture tells us that those who first came to adore Him Who is Son of God and Son of Mary found Him "with Mary his Mother." At the scene of the first miracle at Cana, which marked the opening of his public life, "the Mother of Jesus was there." In the tremendous hour when all was consummated, when types and shadows gave place to the mighty reality, " there stood by the Cross of Jesus His Mother." And when the little flock who were to be the nucleus of the Church of God awaited in prayer the coming of the Paraclete, Who would teach them all truth, again it was in company with "Mary the Mother of Jesus." Far from taking from the honor and love due to the Word Incarnate, devotion to Mary is a strong bulwark protecting the central doctrine. He is ever found with His Mother; where Mary is denied her rights, sooner or later Jesus is denied His; they stand or fall together.

This was realized in the year 431 when, at the General Council of Ephesus, the Church condemned the Nestorian heresy, whereby the Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, had taught that, since in Christ there are two persons, a Divine and a human, Mary was mother only of the Man "Christ", and therefore could not be called "Mother of God." He therefore denied "that wondrous and substantial union of the two natures which we call hypostatic."

On the occasion of the fifteenth centenary of the Council of Ephesus, the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius XI, issued the Encyclical Lux Veritatis, recalling the history of the heresy and commenting thus upon the dogma of the hypostatic union: "When once the doctrine of the hypostatic union is abandoned, whereon the dogmas of the Incarnation and of man's Redemption rest and stand firm, the whole foundation of the Catholic religion falls and comes to ruin. . . . When once this dogma of the truth is securely established, it is easy to gather from it that, by the mystery of the Incarnation, the whole aggregate of men and of mundane things has been endowed with a dignity than which certainly nothing greater can be imagined, and surely grander than that to which it was raised by the work of creation."
 Proceeding to speak of the special dignity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Pope emphasizes that, "because she brought forth the Redeemer of mankind, she is also in a manner the most tender Mother of us all, whom Christ our Lord deigned to have as His brothers; wherefore we may confidently entrust to her all things that are ours, our joys, our troubles, our hopes; especially if more difficult times fall upon the Church --
if faith fail because charity has grown cold, if private and public morals take a turn for the worse."

In this last connection we are reminded of another result of the loss of devotion to the Mother of God. Frequently and truly we hear and speak of the "paganism" of the present age. The decay of faith has been followed inevitably by a decline in morality, and our elaborate and complex civilization is threatened with the dissolving agent which contributed in no small measure to the overthrow of the magnificent civilization of old Rome: namely, the loss of the domestic virtues, the disappearance of healthy, normal family life, consequent upon the abandonment of the Christian ideals of marriage and parenthood.

It is a truism that one of the greatest social effects of Christianity was to raise the status of womanhood. Her legal position in the Ancient World was little better than that of a slave, and although classical literature furnishes us with examples of women who, in pagan homes, yet enjoyed high honor and affection, such are few indeed, and but serve to prove the rule. Divorce, infanticide, general degradation of womanhood, and not infrequently of childhood, were accepted features of pagan social order. The ideal and model of the "new woman " of the Christian dispensation was the Mother of God. It was Mary, "Mother of fair love," "Madonna," "our Lady," who ennobled the degenerate old civilization, just as she tamed the fierce barbarian peoples; she it was who inspired the ideals of the later chivalry. In Mary, all her sex was uplifted; in her motherhood all motherhood became blessed. Now again the world needs the hallowing influence of the Mother of God and of men, if "the life of the family, the beginning and the foundation of all human society" is to be preserved in all its nobility and its purity.

Desirous "to mark the commemoration, and help to nourish the piety of clergy and people towards the great Mother of God," His Holiness concludes the Encyclical by establishing the new feast of the Divine Motherhood, to be celebrated on October 11th  by the universal Church.

When the heresy of the Albigenses was making head against God in the County of Toulouse, and striking deeper roots every day, the holy Dominic, who had but just laid the foundations of the Order of Friars Preachers, threw his whole strength into the travail of plucking these blasphemies up.  That he might be fitter for the work, he cried for help with his whole soul to that Blessed Maiden, whose glory the falsehoods of the heretics so insolently assailed, and to whom it hath been granted to trample down every heresy throughout the whole earth.  It is said that he had from her a word, bidding him preach up the saying of the Rosary among the people, as a strong help against heresy and sin, and it is wonderful with how stout an heart and how good a success he did the work laid upon him.  This Rose-Garden, or Rosary, is a certain form of prayer, wherein we say one-hundred-and-fifty times the salutation of the Angel, and the Lord's Prayer between every ten times, and, each of the fifteen times that we say the Lord's Prayer, and repeat tenfold the salutation, think of one of fifteen great events in the history of our Redemption.  From that time forth this form of godly prayer was extraordinarily spread about by holy Dominic, and waxed common.  That this same Dominic was the founder and prime mover thereof hath been said by Popes in divers letters of the Apostolic See.

From this healthy exercise have grown up numberless good fruits in the Christian Commonwealth.  Among these deserveth well to be named that great victory over the Sultan of Turkey, which the most holy Pope Pius V, and the Christian Princes whom he had roused, won at Lepanto.  The day whereon this victory was gained was the very one whereon the Guild-brethren of the most holy Rosary, throughout the whole world, were used to offer their accustomed prayers and appointed supplications, and the event therefore was not unnaturally connected therewith.  This being the avowed opinion of Gregory XIII, he ordered that in all Churches where there was, or should be, an Altar of the Rosary, a Feast, in the form of a Greater Double, should be kept for ever, to give unceasing thanks to the Blessed Virgin, under her style of Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, for that extraordinary mercy of God.  Other Popes also have granted almost numberless Indulgences to those who say the Rosary, and to those who join its Guild

In the year 1716, Charles VI, Elect-Emperor of the Romans, won a famous victory over countless hordes of Turks, in the kingdom of Hungary, upon the day when the Feast of the Dedication of St. Mary of the Snows was being kept, and almost at the very moment when the Guild-brethren of the most holy Rosary were moving through the streets of Rome in public and solemn procession, amid vast multitudes, all filled with the deepest enthusiasm, calling vehemently upon God for the defeat of the Turks, and entreating the Virgin Mother of God to bring the might of her succour to the help of the Christians.  A few days later, the Turks raised the siege of Corfu.  These mercies Clement XI devoutly ascribed to the helpful prayers of the Blessed Virgin, and that the memory and the sweetness of such a blessing might for all time coming endure gloriously, he extended to the whole Church the observance of the Feast of the most holy Rosary, for the same day and of the same rank, Benedict XIII commanded the record of all these things to be given a place in the Service-book of the Church of Rome; and Leo XIII, in the most troublous times of the Church and the cruel storm of long pressing evils, by fresh Apostolic letters vehemently urged upon all the faithful throughout the earth the often saying of the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, raised the dignity of the yearly festival, added to the Litany of Loreto the Invocation Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, and granted to the whole Church a special Office for this solemn occasion.  Let us all then be earnest in honouring the most holy Mother of God in this form which she liketh so well, that even as the entreaties of Christ's faithful people, approaching her in her Garden of Roses, have so often won her to scatter and destroy their earthly foes, so she may gain for them the victory over their hellish foes likewise.

Sermon of St Bernard

To commend his own love towards us, and to bring to nought the wisdom of men, God was pleased to take flesh of a woman, albeit a virgin, that he might bring like against like, heal by opposites, pluck out the poisonous thorn, and blot out mightily the handwriting of our sin that was against us.  Eve was a thorn, Mary is a rose.  Eve is a thorn that pierceth, Mary is a rose that charmeth all the senses.  Eve was a thorn that fixed death into all, Mary is a rose that bringeth health to all.  Mary was a white rose through her virginity, and a red rose through her love.  She was white in her flesh, red in her mind; white in that she followed the path of grace, red in that she trod down sin; white by the purity of her affection, red by the mortification of her body; white by her love for God, red by her compassion for her neighbour.

The Word was made flesh, and dwelleth even now among us.  He dwelleth in our memory.  He dwelleth in our thought.  He hath come down even unto our imagination; and how sayest thou doth he so?  By lying in the manger, by nestling in his Mother's breast, by preaching upon the mountain, by remaining all night in prayer to God, by hanging upon the Cross, by turning pale in death, by going down free among the dead and triumphing in hell, by rising again the third day, by shewing to the Apostles the places of the nails, the marks of his victory, by ascending up into heaven while they all beheld him―of which of these things think we not with truth, with godliness, with holiness?  If I think of any of these, I think of God, and he is my God through them all.  To think of these things I have decreed to be wisdom, and to set forth the memory of their sweetness I have judged to be prudence.  The rod of Aaron the Priest brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds; but these things are the almonds of that Rod which came forth out of the stem of Jesse, the Rod whereof sprang the flower, a Rod which was raised in Mary into places higher than the earthly tabernacle, higher indeed, even into places higher than angels, since she received the Word into herself out of the very heart of the Eternal Father.

The God, whom earth, and sea, and sky
Adore, and laud, and magnify,
Whose might they own, whose praise they swell,
In Mary's womb vouchsafed to dwell.
The Lord whom sun and moon obey,
Whom all things serve from day to day,
Was by the Holy Ghost conceived,
Of her who through his grace believed.

How blest that Mother, in whose shrine
The great Artificer divine,
Whose hand contains the earth and sky,
Once deigned, as in his ark, to lie:-

Blest in the message Gabriel brought,
Blest by the work the Spirit wrought;
From whom the Great Desire of earth
Took human flesh and human birth.

All honour, laud, and glory be,
O Jesu, Virgin-born, to thee,
Whom with the Father we adore,
And Holy Ghost, for evermore.  Amen.