FT Chapter 8 (Penance and Suffering)
The third part of the message of Fatima from July 13th, that is the third secret, is made up of three parts. The children saw three different scenes (Fatima for Today, 77). The first scene is about penance. We need to do penance, reparation, and offer our suffering in atonement for sin.
The second part of the message the children saw the death of the Holy Father and many other holy men and women in the Church (Fatima for Today, 82). There was an attempt on Pope John Paul II’s life on May 13, 1981. He survived the attack barely. “’That here ‘mother’s hand’ had deflected the fateful bullet only shows once more that there is no immutable destiny, that faith and prayer are forces which can influence history that in the end prayer is more powerful than bullets, and faith more powerful than armies’” (Fatima for Today, 83). Still, there were so many martyrs during the 20th Century. I have heard it said in many places that there are more Christian martyrs during this century than 19 centuries that came before.
The third part of the message that the children saw was the blood of the martyrs (Fatima for Today, 85). This is hopeful because the blood of the martyrs is the seed bed for the faith. We must trust that God is going to work even in the midst of this horrible taking of life.