THERE IS NOT ANY FOURTH FATIMA SECRET

CZESŁAW RYSZKA

A car of Wrocław registration number, announcing through a megaphone that soon ’God will give an unimaginable punishment. A catastrophe will come. Come back to Christ who is the light of the world. I am warning against events which will come soon. The third secret of Fatima Our Lady is being fulfilled’. The car, pasted with slogans: ‘Poland, wake up!’, has got a flag with the person of Jesus Christ on its roof. His driver, Leszek Panek uses his website to persuade us that he has experienced apparitions a few times’. He calls himself ‘a prodigal son who returned to Father’s home’. Announcing the coming apocalypse, he appeals for enthronement of Jesus Christ the King of Poland. He refers to the ‘apparitions’ of St. Father Pio, to the ‘Diary’ of St. Sister Faustyna, and first of all, he reminds that in 2017 there is the 100th anniversary of apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima. At that time all warnings of Blessed Mother about the Third World War, attack of China on Russia, nuclear explosion disaster will come true.

A few words of explanation

It is impossible to discuss everything in a short text, against which Leszek Panek warns Poles. I do not touch on the very important issue of the enthronement because it is a complex problem, connected with interpretation of private apparitions of Rozalia Celakówna. Also, I do not want to express my opinion about the authenticity of a letter of St. Father Pio, appearing on Internet about ‘Three days of darkness’, addressed to the Commission in Heroldsbach, appointed by Vatican to examine the authenticity of the ‘apparitions’ of the monk from San Giovanni Rotondo.

Whereas, my opposition is aroused by referring to something which has already been called in Fatima literature the ‘fourth secret’, that is, a further part of the third Fatima secret, allegedly concealed by Vatican. This undocumented and unauthorized hypothesis gains more and more popularity, especially that it is to include a scenario of the final catastrophe of the world and the collapse of humankind.

These, only journalistic, fantasies appeared in the context of revealing the so-called fourth Fatima secret by the Church in 2000, and their fervent promoter is the Vatican expert Antonio Socci. In the book entitled: ‘The fourth Fatima secret?’ he thinks that the Church concealed the words of Our Lady who was speaking about a crisis of faith, apostasy, about the decline in the hierarchy of the Church in the face of a wave of heresy. I will add that other authors moved further, saying that in the third secret of Fatima also the end of the world was mentioned.

Speculations about apocalyptic words of the third secret got stronger especially after the terroristic assassination on 11 September 2001 onto the World Trade Centre. In response, the late Fr. Mirosław Drozdek, a builder and custodian of the Polish Fatima in Krzeptówki emphasized, that apocalyptic speculations are something natural, the man is right to be afraid of a punishment for his deeds, is scared of a kind of a form of destroying the world. As he explained, today we have more reasons for fear than motivations for hope. But we believe and trust God. He created the world out of love, therefore, in his mercifulness he wants to redeem it, not destroy it. Even if in the Fatima message an apocalyptic aspect appears, we should interpret it in the way prophets did – we should remember that the end is connected with salvation.

Sowers of fear

After entrusting Russia and the world to Our Lady by John Paul II in 1984, various magazines in Western countries published articles concerning new apparitions of sister Łucja, including her alleged letters rebuking the Holy Father to reanalyze the Fatima message. Some ‘Fatima’ movements even accused John Paul II that he had not entrusted Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as Our Lady wished so. An Italian priest living in Canada, Nicholas Gruner, the chairman of the Fatima Centre in Fort Erie (Ontario), ignoring the warnings of the Church, was trying to persuade John Paul II to undertake another entrustment of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He stated that the entrustment of 1984 had been carried out not in a proper way.

In order to deprive critics of their arguments, on 17 November 2001, from the initiative of John Paul II, there was a meeting with sister Łucja who confirmed that in the issue of the third Fatima secret ‘everything was published, there are not any more secrets’. Whereasshe said to the one who speaks and writes about new apparitions: ‘There is not truth in it. If I had new apparitions, I would not say about them to anybody but I would pass them to the Holy Father’. Being asked: ‘How had the vision of 13 July of 1917 (the third secret) influenced her life before it was written and given to the Church?’ she answered: ‘I was feeling safe under the care of Our Lady who is guarding the Church and Pope’, and she added an unrevealed detail to the known prophetic vision, that Mary emanated with beauty and that she was holding heart in her right hand, and a rosary in her left hand. Being asked what the heart in Madonna’s hands means she answered: ‘It is a sign of love which protects and redeems. This is Mother who sees her suffering children and she suffers with them, also with those who do not love her. Because she wants to save everybody, not lose anybody among those whom Lord entrusted to Her, Her heart is a guaranteed, safe shelter. Worshipping the Immaculate Heart of Mary is the means of salvation for the difficult times of the Church and the world’. She answered similarly to the question about the comment to the words: ‘My Immaculate Heart will triumph’, that heart open up to God, purified through contemplation of God is stronger than guns and weapons of any kind. ‘Fiat’ of Mary, the word of Her heart changed the history of the world, because She gave this world the Redeemer because thanks to Her ‘Yes’ God could become the man. The evil spirit has power in this world, we see and feel it constantly: he has power, because our freedom constantly allows for turning away from God. But since God has the human heart, he directed human freedom to good, to God. Freedom towards the evil has not got any last word any more. So, now only the words are important: ‘You will suffer persecutions in the world, but be courageous: I overcame the world. (see J. 16.33).

I will add that other speculations, and rather journalistic fantasies connected with the third Fatima secret, ‘exploded’ just before the 90th anniversary of the apparitions in 2007. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone intervened, stating that the whole secret had been published and properly interpreted. Moreover, as he added, just before her death in 2005, sister Łucja confirmed that John Paul II had faithfully passed the message of the third secret. So, do we have a right not to trust even the confidante Mary?

A possible but conditional apocalypse

In the picture of the third Fatima secret shown to children on 13 July 1917, we see an angel who is to punish the world for its sins. God would like to bring humankind back from the road leading to an abyss, he wants to help people to repent. Maybe suffering will repent their hearts? Maybe sparks of fire falling on the ground and setting fire to it will prevent humankind from eternal suffering?

Our Lady appears who in the vision watched by the children of Fatima, is stretching out her arm towards the angel, and glow coming from Her is extinguishing the fire falling from the sky. Humankind can feel a relief: God gives a new chance, the angel’s mission was suspended, therefore he is calling in a loud voice: ‘Repentance, repentance, repentance’. Punishment of eternal death was changed into repentance.

Sister Łucja emphasized many times that the message of Fatima and punishments and promises included in it are conditional. She wrote in 1943: ‘As it concerns the present difficult times, we know that God will save us through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, our Heavenly Mother who is so good. More trustfulness! But, as you know, the promise is conditional: if they stop insulting God, if they make repentance, if they devote themselves to a prayer’.

‘If humankind had listened the call of Our Lady – the late Fr. Mirosław Drozdek wrote in ‘Niedziela’ – the third part of the secret of Fatima would have ended with the call for repentance. It does not end because people did not get concerned about the appeal of the Blessed Mother. Therefore, we read about ruins of a city, about the killed, about martyrdom and about Pope who suffers at the cross.

But beside the repentance, about which sister Łucja wrote in the letter of 20 June 1939 to a Jesuit, Fr. Jose Aparicio da Silny, her former confessor and spiritual guide, ‘ Blessed Mary the Virgin promised to suspense the whip of the war for a later time, if this divine service (the divine service of the first Saturdays) will be promoted and practiced. We can expect postponing the punishment by Her, proportionally to efforts which will be taken in order to promote the divine service, but I am afraid that we could do more than we do, and that God, being less pleased, can raise His hand of his Mercifulness and allow for devastating the world by this purification which will be terrible like never in life’.

So, it is true that that today humankind – as sister Łucja says – ‘deserves the punishment more than in Noah’s times’, but we can recall the appeal for repentance, as well as practice of the divine service of five first Saturdays of months, so that the day of victory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, that is, the promised time of peace, was closer to us. Hence, we should perceive Fatima not as an announcement of apocalyptic catastrophes as such, but as a great appeal to the man for the spirit of sacrifice, for conversion and repentance, so that the announcement of the victory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary would be fulfilled. It is an extremely optimistic scenario of the redemptive finale for us.

(AA)

"Niedziela" 46/2013

Editor: Tygodnik Katolicki "Niedziela", ul. 3 Maja 12, 42-200 Czestochowa, Polska
Editor-in-chief: Fr Jaroslaw Grabowski • E-mail: redakcja@niedziela.pl