Greenwood Marian conference marks Fatima anniversary

Archbishop Raymond L. Burke of St. Louis delivers the homily during the Oct. 13 Mass celebrated at the “Behold Your Mother” conference at Our Lady of the Greenwood Church in Greenwood. The event was sponsored by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. Members of the order staff the Mother of the Redeemer Retreat Center in Monroe County.

By Sean Gallagher

GREENWOOD—Oct. 13 was the 90th anniversary of an event that thousands claimed to have witnessed at Fatima, Portugal, the place where three young children were said to have experienced apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary for several months prior to that fall day in 1917.

Those present that day were said to have seen what is called “the miracle of the sun.” The sun seemed to give off different colored lights, rotate in strange ways and careen toward the Earth.

On the 90th anniversary of that event, approximately 1,000 people gathered for a Marian conference titled “Behold Your Mother” at Our Lady of the Greenwood Church in Greenwood to pray and learn more about the Church’s teachings about Mary as co-redemptrix with Jesus.

It was sponsored by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, an international religious order founded in 1990. Members of the community staff the Mother of the Redeemer Retreat Center in Monroe County.

Archbishop Raymond L. Burke of St. Louis was the primary celebrant and homilist for the conference’s Mass.

In his homily, Archbishop Burke meditated upon the advice Mary gave to the three young children at Fatima each time she appeared to them: to join their personal sufferings to those of Christ to further his work of redemption, which he referred to according to the traditional term, “reparation,” and to pray the rosary daily.

“Our Lady of Fatima’s counsel was not a matter of pious words to console her suffering children,” he said, “but, rather, a concrete program for her children called to be, in Christ, heralds and instruments of peace in their personal lives, in their homes and in the world.”

Later in his homily, Archbishop Burke reflected on the Church’s teachings on Mary, which were the focus of the conference.

“From the very beginning of our Lord’s public ministry until its fulfillment on the cross, we witness the intimate cooperation of Mary in the work of our salvation,” he said. “[It is] a cooperation which we celebrate with special joy today, calling to mind the manifestation of that cooperation in a most striking way through the apparitions of the Mother of God to the three shepherd children at Fatima.”

But he emphasized that the truth of Mary’s cooperation with Jesus in his work of redemption is more than a historical fact. It has an impact on believers here and now.

“Queen of Peace, she pleads unceasingly before the throne of God for peace in the world,” he said. “And she draws us, her children, to Christ, the Prince of Peace, by teaching us the way of reparation and of prayer.”

Leading up to the late morning Mass, two speakers invited those gathered to ponder the close relationship between Christ and Mary in his work of redeeming the world.

The first was Brazilian-born Catholic apologist and speaker Raymond de Souza, who lived for many years in Australia and is now based in the United States.

The starting point for his remarks was the book True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort (1673-1716).

“The purpose of his book was to make Mary known,” de Souza said. “He says that she is unknown, but that she must be known and once she has become known as much as we are able to know her, the reign of Christ will come.”

The apologist said St. Louis de Montfort taught that Mary has such a close connection to the reign of Christ because she cooperated in a unique way with each person of the Blessed Trinity.

Regarding Mary’s relationship with God the Son, de Souza said, “Every cell, every drop of blood that she gave to him was forming that body that would be united to his divinity. You can’t imagine any way to be closer to God than this.”

But her connection with him and his work of redemption did not end there.

“She led him to the height of the cross and from the height of Calvary, she offered him to God,” de Souza said.

The next speaker, Redemptorist Father Pablo Straub, has lived in Mexico the last 16 years. Before that, he ministered for 20 years in Puerto Rico, Peru and the Philippines.

In his presentation, in which he went from a quiet whisper to a passionate bellow from one moment to the next, Father Pablo reflected on an event that connected Mary to Christ’s redemption that went even further back than the Incarnation and the Crucifixion: her own Immaculate Conception.

“In Mary being conceived, God the Father reached into history and, with that divine omnipotence, he brought the future death of his son [and made it] present in the being conceived full of grace,” Father Pablo said. “The very first person saved by Jesus was Mary, his mother. The very first person redeemed by Jesus was Mary, his mother.”

Near the end of his remarks, Father Pablo laid out, in very simple terms, the fact that while Mary’s cooperation with Christ was not necessary, it was nonetheless part of God’s plan.

“Could [Christ] have come into the world without a mother?” Father Pablo asked. “Of course he could have. Could he have saved the world without anybody’s help? Of course he could have.

“Did he want to? No.”

(Read more about the “Behold Your Mother” conference in next week’s issue of The Criterion.) †