Today, faced with the urgency of the centenarian message of Fatima, we must take a position in face of Mary’s words. Let us learn from the little shepherd boy of Aljustrel to receive her supplications with worthy dispositions.
In the period between the apparitions of Fatima and the deaths of Francisco and Jacinta Marto, the Most Holy Virgin produced in their souls a work of perfection that made them worthy to figure among the great Saints of the Church. In casting her gaze upon these little shepherds, Our Lady desired to make use of their innocence to speak to the world, as She had done in La Salette and Lourdes. Indeed, the predilection for the pure of heart is a characteristic of Marian apparitions in the modern age.
Today, faced with the urgency of the centenarian message of Fatima, we must take a position in face of Mary’s words: what has our response been to the call to prayer and penance she personally made to sinful humanity? Let us learn from the little shepherd boy of Aljustrel to receive her supplications with worthy dispositions.
Deception incompatible with these children
The news that started to filter out of Leiria in May of 1917 awakened keen interest in the Portuguese people, who flocked to the site of the apparitions – many out of devotion, others impelled by curiosity. They also wanted to meet Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta, and to hear their stories first hand. Visitors to Fatima were left with an indelible impression, very different from that produced by certain phenomena of a sensationalistic nature in vogue at the time.
Those who went to see the little shepherds in their homes encountered simple country children with no human pretentious but endowed with a piety on par with what they alleged to have witnessed: “Everyone returned deeply impressed by their conversations with the little shepherds. At first sight of them, one is convinced of the truth of their words. An angelic smile illuminating their faces, a pure soul shining through the limpid eyes that had beheld, enraptured, the vision of the most sublime of God’s creature, an enchanting simplicity evident in their gestures and words; everything cried out that a lie was impossible here, that deception was incompatible with these children. The most hardened and the most rebellious yielded before such candour.” 1
However a grave prediction hovered over Francisco and Jacinta: Our Lady had foretold that they had only a short time to live before they would go to Heaven. Who would be taken first and under what circumstances? They themselves did not know. Meanwhile, they lost no opportunity to offer sacrifices in reparation for the offences committed against the beautiful Lady and her Son Jesus.
A placid, meditative and religious child
Francisco was the first to die, on April 4 of 1919, victim of the famous influenza that took on pandemic proportions at the end of the First World War. He was almost eleven years of age, a year and a half older than Jacinta. They were the two youngest children of Manuel Pedro Marto and Olympia de Jesus dos Santos. At play and in grazing the sheep and cattle, they were always accompanied by their cousin Lucia, whose house was close to theirs.
In her Memoirs, Sr. Lucia says that “Apart from his features and his practice of virtue, Francisco did not seem at all to be Jacinta’s brother,” 2 on account of the contrast between his quietness and her vivacity. He happily took part in games, but he readily yielded to the preference of others, and placed little importance on winning. When the other children denied him the title of victor, he would reply: “You think you won? That’s alright! I don’t mind!” 3
Singing and playing the fife was much more to his liking; he was content to withdraw from childish circles and amuse himself with his music. During the long hours of shepherding, he would climb up on a rock and alternately play and sing popular airs praising the charms of the Portuguese hill country.
Together with the two girls, he awaited nightfall so as to watch Our Lady and the Angels lighting their lamps, as they called the stars. They would count them, one by one, until they could no longer number them. But what he most liked was to contemplate the sunrise and sunset, more beautiful in his mind than the moon or the stars: “No lamp is as beautiful as Our Lord’s,” 4 he remarked to Jacinta, referring to the sun, knowing that his little sister preferred the moon, taken as Our Lady’s lamp, because it did not hurt the eyes.
A superficial observer of Francisco might judge him to be a boy like any other, even a bit of a daydreamer. But the events that unfolded in the Cova da Iria revealed the true stature of the seer who, among the others, was “the most religious of them all.” 5
Seriousness concerning supernatural realities
The apparitions of the Angel of Portugal, followed by the six visits of Our Lady, had a profound effect on the little shepherds, transforming them rapidly and permanently. Their direct contact with the angelic nature and with the very Queen of Angels dissolved the veil that separated them from eternal realities and produced a profound change in their mentality.
Favoured with a lofty vision of the universe and an understanding of the destiny of humanity, they were assisted by grace to faithfully heed Mary’s appeal. “Focused on and almost immersed in the supernatural, they no longer lived the mundane life of others, but in an infinitely superior world.” 6
Francisco showed that he took the apparitions very seriously, and never raised the question of limiting or weighing his response, for he understood that Our Lady expected complete adherence. As a good Portuguese, he was logical, given to reasoning and resolute in the fulfilment of his duties, and particularly aware of the moral aspects of his behaviour and that of others. Some even described him as severe, which would hardly be astonishing if we consider the vision of hell and the mysterious content of the message that occupied an important place in his thoughts.
Overflowing love for Our Lord Jesus Christ
The apparitions elicited different effects in the souls of the little shepherds, attracting them to specific missions within the great expiatory way to which they were convoked. This unfolded naturally yet clearly, as can be seen in this episode narrated by Sr. Lucia:
“I asked him one day:
“Francisco, which do you like better – to console Our Lord, or to convert sinners, so that no more souls will go to hell?
“I would rather console Our Lord. Didn’t you notice how sad Our Lady was last month, when she said that people must not offend Our Lord any more, for He is already much offended? I would like to console Our Lord, and after that, convert sinners so that they won’t offend Him any more.” 7
Intriguingly, even though he saw Our Lady on the 13th of every month and felt so much enthusiasm for her that he was unable to verbally express it, the boy was even more fascinated with the Holy Trinity, especially with Our Lord Jesus Christ. This veritable enchantment polarized his heart, “his entire capacity to love,” 8 and led him to exclaim: “I love Him so much!” 9 Or: “I am thinking about God, Who is so sad because of so many sins! If only I could give Him joy!” 10
The parents of Francisco and Jacinta were pious people and accepted the revelation from the beginning, with reverential fear. Knowing the honesty of their children, they did not punish them, nor did they judge these phenomena to be the fruit of their puerile imagination. The reaction was quite different at Lucia’s house, where a barrage of persecution brought her much suffering. Francisco encouraged his cousin: “Never mind! Didn’t Our Lady say that we would have much to suffer, to make reparation to Our Lord and to her own Immaculate Heart for all the sins by which They are offended? They are so sad! If we can console them with these sufferings, how happy we shall be!” 11
The boy’s overflowing love for Jesus and his determination to comfort Him can be traced back to the Communion administered to them by the Angel and, above all, to the apparitions of June, July and October, in which Our Lady showed them the inaccessible light of the Trinity. This grace attracted them in a definitive manner, prompting unsurpassed awe: “We were on fire in that light which is God, and yet we were not burnt! What is God?… We could never put it into words. Yes, that is something indeed which we could never express! But what a pity it is that He is so sad! If only I could console Him!…” 12
This yearning, born in his virginal soul, was not merely the fruit of a fleeting ecstasy. Blessed Francisco Marto had decided to console Jesus by every means in his reach, particularly by his own conversion.
Profound and radical change of life
The ascension to the peak of sanctity is a work of grace that demands of souls a continual disposition of self-detachment, so as to be transformed by God. In the classical ways of spirituality, this implies tremendous interior battles which often must be waged until death.
With the shepherds of Fatima the method was different: Our Lady transformed them by the communication of her spirit. What took place in them can be compared with what St. Louis Grignion de Montfort, in his prophetic writings, calls the Secret of Mary. 13 In effect, owing to the direct action of the Blessed Virgin, they became increasingly inclined to practice good, freed from their defects, and shaped by her virtues in all things.
Meeting the Queen of Heaven, Francisco begins to live on another plane: his affections are entirely for her and her Divine Son, his thought soar at every moment to the tabernacle and to the hidden Jesus, as he refers to the Blessed Sacrament, and his actions are born of a continual and deeply rooted interior relationship with the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
How could he be the same and return to his former amusements after feeling the most sweet gaze of the Lady of the Rosary upon him? Thus, beginning to sing the first lines of one of the songs that had previously so delighted him, he decides: “Let’s not sing any more. Since we saw the Angel and Our Lady, singing doesn’t appeal to me any longer.” 14
Francisco’s sporadic domestic negligence or bouts of laziness vanish; they give way to a penitential and contemplative spirit, avid to console Jesus and collaborate with the offering of his life for the magnificent victory of the Holy Church in the events that had been revealed to him.
Generous response to the heavenly appeal
In the first apparition, when Lucia asked if Francisco would go to Heaven, Our Lady replied: “He will go there too, but he must say many Rosaries.” 15
This rebuke was an evident allusion to the abbreviated manner in which the boy was accustomed to reciting them in order to finish sooner. And it was received with the best dispositions: “Oh, my dear Our Lady! I’ll say as many Rosaries as you want.” 16
From then on, Francisco greatly increased the number of Rosaries, praying many with his two companions and others alone. Sr. Lucia relates that “If we told him to come and play with us, and say the Rosary with us afterwards, he replied:
“I’ll pray then as well. Don’t you remember that Our Lady said I must pray many Rosaries?” 17
This spirit of fervent prayer distinguished the little shepherd until the end, as his most efficacious weapon for carrying out the mission received from Heaven. Along with that were the sacrifices, which occasioned no less generosity from him: “Our Lady told us that we would have much to suffer, but I don’t mind. I’ll suffer all that she wishes! What I want is to go to Heaven!” 18
One of his greatest offerings was to wear a rope around his waist, as his cousin describes: “as we were walking along the road with our sheep, I found a piece of rope that had fallen off a cart. I picked it up and, just for fun, I tied it round my arm. Before long I noticed that the rope was hurting me.
‘Look, this hurts!’ I said to my cousins. ‘We could tie it round our waists and offer this sacrifice to God.’
“The poor children promptly fell in with my suggestion. We then set about dividing it between the three of us. […] Either because of the thickness or roughness of the rope, or because we sometimes tied it too tightly, this instrument of penance often caused us terrible suffering.” 19
Our Lady saw fit to mitigate the use of the instrument of penance, commenting in the September apparition: “God is pleased with your sacrifices, but He does not want you to sleep with the rope on; only wear it during the day.” 20
Beginning of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart in souls
At the end of October of 1918, Francisco and Jacinta fell gravely ill, never to recover. A strong fever ravaged them. At first there was hope of a cure, but this soon faded as their condition only worsened.
The heavenly Lady visited the Marto family house to comfort them, as Jacinta told her cousin Lucia: “Our Lady came to see us. She told us she would come to take Francisco to Heaven very soon.” 21 From that moment on, the two siblings awaited with ardent love the joyful day of their departure for eternity.
On April 3 of 1919, a priest came from Fatima bringing the Viaticum to Francisco, who had been requesting it ardently for months. That was his second Communion, preceded by that which he received from angelic hands. The vehement desire to receive Communion, during his illness, was the sole incentive that encouraged him to live and, when he was finally able to receive the Eucharist, he confessed to Jacinta: “I am happier than you are, because I have the hidden Jesus within my heart. I’m going to Heaven, but I’m going to pray very much to Our Lady for them to bring you both there soon.” 22
On the following morning, without agony or death-rattle, with the serenity of one who enters the gentle repose of the just, Francisco Marto died a saintly death in Aljustrel. The funeral procession of the little shepherd was accompanied by only a few friends, reciting the Rosary in simple homage on the way to the cemetery of the village of Fatima. Who could have imagined, at that time, the throngs of pilgrims who would gather at the tomb of this confidant of Mary, to beseech his intercession?
Mary Most Holy is not the Lady of unfinished works! And the life of Francisco opens to us the most encouraging of hopes: “If the work of Our Lady in Fatima – especially with these two children called to Heaven – was such, we can surely ask ourselves if this does not have symbolic value, indicating how Our Lady’s action will be over all of humanity when she fulfils the promises made in Fatima.” 23 ◊
Notes
1 DE MARCHI, ICM, João M. Era uma Senhora mais brilhante que o sol. 8.ed. Fátima: Missões Consolata, 1966, p.249.
2 SISTER LUCIA. Fatima in Lucia’s own words. Fourth Memoir, c.I, Postulation Centre, Fatima, Portugal, 1976, p.119.
3 Idem, ibidem.
4 Idem, p.120.
5 COSME DO AMARAL, Alberto. Jacinta e Francisco. Virtudes heroicas. Braga: CAS, 1991, p.110.
6 DE MARCHI, op. cit., p.119.
7 SISTER LUCIA, op. cit., p.136.
8 COSME DO AMARAL, op. cit., p.30.
9 SISTER LUCIA, op. cit., p.129.
10 Idem, p.125.
11 Idem, p.124.
12 Idem, p.127.
13 Cf. ST. LOUIS MARIE GRIGNION DE MONTFORT. Le Secret de Marie. In: Œuvres Complètes. Paris: Du Seuil, 1966, p.439-479.
14 SISTER LUCIA, op. cit., p.125.
15 Idem, c.II, p.158.
16 Idem, c.I, p.123.
17 Idem, pp.123-124.
18 Idem, p.124.
19 Idem, Second Memoir, c.II, pp.75-76.
20 Idem, p.77.
21 Idem, First Memoir, c.III, p.42.
22 Idem, Fourth Memoir, c.I, p.145.
23 CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio. Os pastorinhos de Fátima e o Segredo de Maria [The Little Shepherds of Fatima and the Secret of Mary]. In: Dr. Plinio. São Paulo. Ano XVI. N.179 (Fev., 2013); p.29.
