The focus of the message of Fatima is Salvation of humanity, but the background is and always will be: “Prayer Sacrifice and Penance”

In the first apparition of Our Lady of Fatima, she asked the shepherd children: “Do you want to offer yourselves to God to support all the suffering that He wants to send you, in acts of reparation for the sins with which He is offended and pray for the conversion of sinners?”

To this question the shepherd children responded: “Yes!”

Thereafter they made their lives a true offering of themselves to God. Which road did they use? Simply, through prayer, sacrifice and penance. They offered to God many sacrifices, among them, their own suffering. They suffered for the love of God. They suffered for consoling and in reparation to the hearts of Jesus and of Mary, so offended through our sins. They suffered and sacrifice themselves through conversion of sinners and for suffering souls in Purgatory. And thus, they offered voluntary sacrifices for the end of the war [WWI] and to neutralize atheism that Russia was spreading throughout the world.

Soon we can begin to perceive that our suffering as bad as it is, can become the antidote against the consequences that the sufferings cause in the heart of men and women. After the passion and death of our Lord, there does not exist suffering that does not have meaning because of the redemptive cross of Jesus Christ.

Our sufferings in view of the spirituality of the shepherd children, has profound reparational meaning and can become a true remedy for our heart, and as reparation and consolation to the hearts of Jesus and Mary, hearts pierced by the thorns of our sins everyday. Therefore, knowing suffering is to give a different answer before the depressed and unbelieving world. It is simply to suffer with meaning. Certainly you have many sufferings and your life should be surrounded by problems, then do not lose time, but the motives for you to offer your suffering should be thus much greater. Therefore, enter this school of the shepherd children and transforms your sufferings in antidote against the evil that triumphs in hearts of those who know not what they do.

That Our Lady teach us the road that brings us to Heaven.

Marcelo Pereira

Translated from Portuguese