Info from this site:
www.catholic.org/news/hf/faith/story.php?id=74861
🙏🏼Faith
"The first point, the first appeal of the Madonna, is an appeal to faith. It is very current because, unfortunately, we live in a world in which the faith is falling. Unbelief is growing, and the Catholic faith, the faith of the Gospels, is increasingly decreasing. We are walking toward a pagan world. People have an "abstract faith," but the Gospel is not a part of their concrete lives. Man today needs faith, to believe in something; to believe in God, who is our common father, to believe in our brothers, we are all children of the same Father, we are all brothers. Understanding the link between these two aspects is fundamental for the world today, not just for Christians, but for all mankind, he said, adding that man needs to recognize that "one's origin is from God, it is not autonomous.
🏃🏽Conversion
The second key appeal made by Mary "which is very important, and that is conversion. The Madonna spoke many times to the shepherds about the need for man to convert ... to increasingly draw nearer to God, and so to always draw nearer to our brothers and sisters, the second appeal depends on the first. Throughout her six appearances Mary encouraged them to pray the rosary daily and to offer sacrifices in reparation for sins. In her third appearance to the shepherds, Mary told them: "Sacrifice yourself for sinners, and say many times, especially whenever you make some sacrifice: O my Jesus, it is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Conversion is something still missing from in the world
✌🏼️Peace
The third "chapter" of Our Lady of Fatima's message is an appeal for peace. Mary spoke to the children about peace often and urged them to pray for peace, her request came as the global armies were embroiled in World War I. Our Lady's message was to "do penance, ask for peace, because otherwise man will disappear, as is evidenced in the vision the children had of hell and the souls who anguishing there. Perhaps one of the most impressionable aspects of the apparitions is Mary's insistence on the absolute, urgent need to have peace, to fight for peace, to ask God for peace. Man today needs many things, but especially peace, with himself and others. One of the most painful wounds today is this fighting one with the other; the lack of peace between Muslims and Christians, the inhabitants of this country and the inhabitants of that country, etc.
⚓️Hope
"Many people today lack many things, but lack one above all: hope. Hope is the fourth and final chapter of Mary's message. Man today doesn't have hope, he lives a life without a future, without the hope of a future. And if a person doesn't have hope in the future - whether in his own life or in his relationships with others - then what life is this? It's a life that many times, unfortunately, many times ends in suicide. Many youth end up killing themselves because they live a life that has no meaning for them. They lack hope, they lack a vision for the future. Hope is fundamental for man, so it's natural for those who lose hope to turn to suicide in their despair, because they feel that there is no sense to my life if it doesn't have a destination that it must reach. So what Mary asks for from the men of today, and what God demands of men today, (is) a deep faith, a hope, brotherhood among us - which is greatly lacking - so we will have peace, which we need to live a dignified life.
The message of Fatima is not only relevant for the world today, but "it's an obligation for the Church. The message of Fatima ought to be lived not just individually, but "as a human community. The three children were able to respond to Our Lady's appeals with "an extraordinarily unique, unrepeatable mission. Even though they were young children, they were able to communicate and spread Mary's message to the entire world with their sacrifices and prayers. The centenary of the apparitions, coupled with the canonization of Francisco and Jacinta, "does nothing but underline this importance."
Through that darkness came light. Three poor shepherd children in a small city in Portugal received a visitation from a woman who was clothed in light. The children were confused by her presence, but over the course of several encounters, they understood that the heavenly woman was the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ. By 1917, the world had given up hope. People had become cynical. Faith had lost its meaning. It was entirely possible, people told each other, that the end of the world was at hand; who could dispute the signs?
Through that darkness came light. The Lady, radiating light, was there to give the children a message: despair was not inevitable. She was there to point to another option for the human race: a different way of life. Her message was consoling, yes; but it was also a call. A call to prayer and spiritual awareness, a call to rejection of and freedom from sin, a call to pursuing worldwide peace. She gave the world another option besides darkness: she offered a remedy to the human family’s undiagnosed spiritual illness. She invited us to choose faith, goodness, and beauty as the path for humanity’s future. She offered some hope for peace to a world at war. She offered the opportunity to heal to a world that was spiritually ill.
Not everyone who heard, believed. Many people are loathe to think that the Lady could speak to anyone, much less to uneducated children in the last country to enter the war. Others feel that her message doesn’t apply to the new world and the new century.
And yet, one hundred years on, the message of Fátima still echoes and the Lady in light’s invitation still stands.
What is she calling us to today? How can we work for peace in a world that grows more dangerous every day? How can we take the call of Fátima and make it our own, for our day and in our time? How can we help her light pierce our darkness? Just as it was in 1917, once again, the choice is ours."
Info from this site:
http://pauline.org/Pauline-Books-Media-Blog/ArticleID/3211/The-Call-of-Fátima
Info from this site:
pauline.org/Pauline-Books-Media-Blog/ArticleID/3212/Knock-on-Wood
"You’ve probably heard the expression, “knock on wood.” But what you may not know is that this popular saying refers to one of our own Catholic traditions – that of the recitation of the Rosary. The Rosary was a physical representation of one’s inner faith, and it was natural to finger or touch it when one was in distress or pain. “Knocking” the rosary beads together, people said, was sure to make one’s wish come true!
The word itself comes from a Latin word, rosarium, meaning “a garden of roses,” which doesn’t sound like it has very much to do with praying! In the thirteenth century, a garland of roses was used to crown a secular lady, and then eventually as a crown for the statues of the holy Lady; and thus this devotion to her took on the name of that garland.
Nothing in life is static. Much of what many Catholics think is “the way it’s always been done,” is in fact relatively recent in practice.
In the thirteenth century, for example, the Hail Mary sounded very different from what we say today. The word “Jesus” didn’t appear as part of the prayer until the fourteenth century; and the last line, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,” wasn’t added until after a famous sermon preached by St. Bernard of Siena in 1487 captured pious people’s imaginations and got transferred to their daily devotions.
The Gloria was not part of the Rosary in its earliest stages; and the pendent (comprised of the cross and the five extra beads) was also a later addition.
The most recent change was in 2002, when Pope John Paul II commemorated the 25th anniversary of his pontificate by adding the mysteries of light, or luminous mysteries, to the saying of the Rosary. In his apostolic letter, the Pontiff spoke specifically of using the Rosary as a path to contemplation. In that sense, we can see the Rosary as a unique pairing of both prayer and contemplation, connecting us back to the roots of our tradition and to the practices of the earliest Christians–our ancestors in the faith.
Renew your devotion to Our Lady's rosary.
One could argue that there is less need for the Rosary now than in the past. During the Middle Ages and beyond, people were required to attend a liturgy that was celebrated in a language that they did not understand, often in places where they were unable to even see what was happening. They could, however, continue their private devotions through praying the rosary and feel as though they had been spiritually uplifted by the experience. But the Second Vatican Council brought the liturgy into the languages of the world, and people can now understand what the priest is saying.
So why the Rosary now? Part of the answer has to do with its very intimacy. The rhythm of the prayers, coupled with the fact that many Catholics have been reciting them since early childhood, make the rosary a familiar touchstone in a world that often feels very unfamiliar indeed.
Moreover, one of the truths of the Catholic Church is that it is an incarnational church, concerned with articles of daily life: with bread, wine, homes, and relationships. The fact that the rosary is an object, part of the material world, can help to celebrate the incarnational side of our religion. And remind us all of where we started, and who we are."