Can prayer change the direction of history? Are prayer and acts of penance capable of preventing nuclear annihilation? Can prayers and penance increase our freedom? “Yes, yes and yes.” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), on June 26, 2000, in reference specifically to the request of Our Lady of Fatima to pray and do penance “to save souls,” wrote: “The future is not in fact unchangeably set, and the image [of terrible destruction and suffering] which the children saw is in no way a film preview of a future in which nothing can be changed. Indeed, the whole point of the vision is to bring freedom onto the scene and to steer freedom in a positive direction. The purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future. Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to mobilize the forces of change in the right direction.”
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When I was about the age of the three children of Fatima, Sister Veronica told my catechism class about God’s weapon for peace: the Rosary. Then, she invited each of us to take up this weapon and use it every day. I accepted her invitation and have been blessed in many ways because of it.
A century ago, as World War I continued its destruction across Europe, Pope Benedict XV, after making many multiple pleas for peace that went unheeded, called for a novena to the Mother of God. As many of the faithful were heeding the late Holy Father’s summons to prayer, on the eighth day of the novena, May 13, 1917, God sent Our Lady of Fatima to three children in a remote area of Portugal and called them to be protagonists for peace in the world by asking the faithful to pray and do penance for this intention.
The oldest of the children, Lúcia, described the apparition as follows, “A lady, clothed in white, brighter than the sun, radiating a light more clear and intense than a crystal cup filled with sparkling water lit by burning sunlight.” Mary told the children, “Do not be afraid, I will not harm you. … I come from heaven.” Then, just before rising and disappearing in the sky, she entrusted them with the mission of praying the Rosary every day to obtain peace for the world, an end to the war, reparation of sins and the conversion of Russia.
