Thursday 24 August 2017

Fatima: August 13.

2017: Fatima Centenary Year
August 26-27:  21st Sunday in Ordinary Time.

An unusual, unprecedented type of apparition 

The fourth apparition apparition of Our Lady in Fatima, Portugal, on August 13, 1917, is less well known than those of July 13th and October 13th. Yet it deserves to be, for it is completely atypical and unique in the history of apparitions.  First, because of the vast number of witnesses. Already, on July 13th, the number had reached an exceptional figure of about 5,000 people. On the 13th of August, there were 18 to 20,000 people in attendance—an astounding figure. In com-parison, the affluence in Lourdes peaked at only about 8,000, on March 4, 1858. 

But what sets this apparition apart is that it took place without the seers. This had never happened in the history of  recorded apparitions. On that day the young seers were   absent, for they were locked up in a jail by the civil authorities! Yet the thousands of people present witnessed all the external signs seen in the previous apparitions: the flash of lightning, accompanied by two formidable claps of thunder, then the apparition of a small cloud on the green oak with a noticeable change in the natural light around. 

These external signs seen by thousands of people without the presence of the seers is a unique event.
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” St. Augustine said: “Bad times! Troublesome times! This is what people are saying. Let our lives be good, and the times will be good. We make our times. Such as we are, such are the times.”
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