The Woman & the Dragon

Hope

Mary and the Saints in Time of Tribulation

We do not face the trial alone. The Mother of the Church and the saints have gone before us, and they help us now.

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“Woman, behold, your son.” … “Behold, your mother.”John 19:26–27

From the Cross, Jesus gave his mother to the beloved disciple, and the disciple to her. “And from that hour the disciple took her into his home” (John 19:27). The Church has always heard in those words a gift to every disciple. When the trial comes, we are not orphans. We have a Mother, and we have brothers and sisters in heaven who have already won the fight.

Through Mary to Jesus

Revelation 12 shows us the Woman clothed with the sun, the New Eve, whose Son crushes the serpent, and who becomes Mother of all “those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus” (Revelation 12:17). I have written about her verse by verse on Revelation 12. Here I want to say something simpler. Mary never keeps us for herself. She always brings us to her Son.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, one of this site’s patrons, knew this better than anyone. Pope Benedict XVI, speaking of Bernard, summed up his teaching with an old motto: “per Mariam ad Iesum,” through Mary we are led to Jesus (General Audience, October 21, 2009). Bernard’s own counsel is plain enough for a child: “In danger, in distress, in uncertainty, think of Mary, call upon Mary.” Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical on Bernard, Doctor Mellifluus, gathered the same homily into one refrain: “look at the star, call upon Mary” (no. 31).

In every age Our Lady has also come to warn and encourage her children. These are private revelations, and I want to be careful about them. The Church teaches that they do not belong to the deposit of faith. “It is not their role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it” in a certain period of history (CCC 67). Nothing Our Lady says at Fatima or Akita adds to the Gospel. If she is truly speaking, she is calling us back to it.

Fatima

On May 13, 1917, in the hills of Portugal, three shepherd children, Lúcia, Francisco and Jacinta, saw a Lady whom the Church honors as Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima. She asked them to return on the thirteenth of each month until October. At the last apparition, on October 13, a crowd of some seventy thousand people gathered and saw what came to be called the “miracle of the sun,” reported in the newspapers of the time.

The message of Fatima is the Gospel’s own message, spoken urgently. Repent. Make reparation for sin. Pray the Rosary every day. Our Lady asked for consecration to her Immaculate Heart and for the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. In the vision of the third part of the secret, an angel cries out three times, “Penance, Penance, Penance!”

That third part was made public by the Holy See in 2000, with a theological commentary by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He explains that private revelations of this kind are given so that “they help us to understand the signs of the times and to respond to them rightly in faith.” He also says plainly that the secret reveals no great mystery and does not unveil the future, and that the future is not fixed: prayer and penance can change it. So no one should read Fatima as a calendar. It sets no dates. It calls us to conversion.

Ten years later, as Pope Benedict XVI, he returned to the secret at Fatima itself. On the flight to Portugal he said that beyond the suffering of the Pope seen in the vision, “an indication is given of realities involving the future of the Church, which are gradually taking shape and becoming evident,” and that “the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church.” In his homily at the shrine on May 13, 2010, he said: “We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete,” and he prayed that the seven years until the centenary would “hasten the fulfilment of the prophecy of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” Even so, what he asked of us was not a calendar but “ongoing conversion, penance, prayer, and the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity.”

Here is the Church’s judgment, stated precisely. On October 13, 1930, the Bishop of Leiria, José Alves Correia da Silva, declared the visions of the three children worthy of belief and permitted the devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima. On May 13, 2017, at the shrine itself, Pope Francis canonized Francisco and Jacinta Marto. Still, Fatima remains a private revelation. A Catholic may believe it, and I do, but the faith does not rest on it.

If you would like to see the whole story told, from the angel's visits in 1916 to the miracle of the sun, this video retells it:

The entire story of the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima and the Angel, from the YouTube channel Fortiter non trepide. A devotional retelling; for the Church's own account, see The Message of Fatima.

Akita

In 1973, in a convent at Akita in Japan, a religious sister named Agnes Sasagawa reported messages from Our Lady, connected with a statue of Mary in the convent chapel. The messages, given between July and October of that year, echo Fatima: prayer, penance, reparation for sin, fidelity to the Church, and love for the Eucharist. Our Lady asked again for the Rosary: “Pray very much the prayers of the Rosary.” The messages also carry grave warnings about what sin brings on the world. I do not repeat them here, and I would ask you not to dwell on them. They are calls to conversion, not a timetable, and they set no date.

The Church’s judgment on Akita is more limited than on Fatima, and it should be stated plainly. On April 22, 1984, after eight years of investigation, the Bishop of Niigata, John Shojiro Ito, recognized the supernatural character of the events and authorized the veneration of the Holy Mother of Akita in his diocese, “while awaiting that the Holy See publishes definitive judgment on this matter.” He stressed that this was a question only of a private revelation. It is sometimes said that Cardinal Ratzinger later gave Akita definitive approval, but no such decree appears to exist. The Holy See has not issued a formal judgment of its own. The local bishop’s approval stands, and it permits the devotion; it does not bind anyone to believe.

There is also a prayer associated with Akita, the Eucharistic prayer of Akita. You will find it on the page of prayers and consecration.

The patrons of this site

This site, with the whole of The Ephesus Challenge, is dedicated to Our Lady, Queen of Heaven and Earth, the Woman clothed with the sun. I have placed it under the care of a small company of saints: St. Carlo Acutis, its principal patron, who used the internet to lead people to Jesus in the Eucharist; St. Bernard of Clairvaux, lover of Mary; St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein, who offered her life for peace in a dark time; St. Rose of Lima, who loved the Cross; and Pope St. John Paul II, who told the world not to be afraid. Each of them faced trial, and each of them points us to Christ. I tell their story, in their own words, on the About page.

Why keep company with the saints at all? Because holiness is caught as much as taught. Pope St. Clement of Rome, writing to the Church at Corinth before the end of the first century, put it in one line: “Cleave to the holy, for those that cleave to them shall [themselves] be made holy” (First Letter to the Corinthians 46). In a time of trial, choose your company well.

Newman: the Church in persecution

St. John Henry Newman, before he became a Catholic, preached four Advent sermons on the Antichrist. He reminded his hearers that it is the duty of Christians “ever to be watching for the advent of their LORD.” But what moves me most is how he speaks of the Church in persecution. Persecution is not a sign that Christ has forgotten her. It is the mark by which he knows her: “He left her in persecution, and He will find her in persecution” (Advent Sermons on Antichrist, Sermon IV). The Church began at the foot of the Cross, and she will be found there at the end, still faithful, still his.

St. Thérèse and Fr. Arminjon

When St. Thérèse of Lisieux was fourteen, she read a book by Fr. Charles Arminjon, The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life. It is the same book I quote on Stand Firm. You might expect a book about the end of the world to frighten a young girl. It did the opposite. “While reading this book my soul was flooded with a happiness quite supernatural,” she wrote (Story of a Soul, ch. V). She saw how small our sacrifices are beside what God has prepared for those who love him, and she wanted to love Jesus passionately while she still could.

That is what the truth about the last things is meant to do. It does not leave us afraid. It sets our hearts on heaven.

Under her mantle

The dragon makes war on the Woman’s children, but it cannot take them from her. Our Lady at Fatima told the children that in the end her Immaculate Heart will triumph. Cardinal Ratzinger explained what that means: a heart open to God is stronger than every weapon. Whatever comes, stay close to her. Pray the Rosary. Go to confession. Receive her Son in the Eucharist. Ask the saints to stand with you. Through Mary, we will be led to Jesus, and he has already won.

Sources

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