As Hoser reportedly noted, Medjugorje has no imposing shrine. There are 35 confessionals in seven different languages in Medjugorje, which draw a constant line of penitents at all hours. According to the lore, the Virgin first appeared daily to six young people aged between 10 and 17 at the time, but since has continued to do so only to some of them — twice a month: on the 2nd and the 25th.
A report commissioned by Pope emeritus Benedict XVI found that there was reason to look further into the those first messages. In general terms, the message of peace that emerges from the Medjugorje phenomenon is always valid. This is the background that we must take into consideration if we are to understand the significance of what Our Lady did at Lourdes. From the banal rock outcrop of Massabielle on the outskirts of a provincial backwater called Lourdes, there surged forth across the world a flood of graces and a revival of belief in the supernatural.
The scientists whom everyone admired — even adulated! Nor could the scientists dismiss or explain these spectacular cures that began to happen one after the other. So when Our Lady cured — and still cures! While healing and mercy are very evident at Lourdes, it is not the whole picture. Our Lady also came there to beseech the world to convert from sin, above all the sin of atheism.
This is the supreme sin of our time. Her crystalline eyes painfully sought some far horizon. The lady shivered despite the fairness of the day. The roses at her feet were very faint and at the end of twenty minutes she withdrew. At Fatima we not only have Our Lady as a Mother full of anguish over her wayward children; we also have an avenging angel with a flaming sword.
During the sixty years between Lourdes and Fatima mankind did not amend, but sank ever more into sin. At Fatima it seems as if God can no longer prove His love through merciful miracles of healing. Mankind has grown deaf and nothing remains but the heavy hand of justice. Yes, but conversion is the condition. During the last apparition, on 3 October, Lucia again asks for the cure of some sick persons. And what will be the consequences of not converting?
One consequence will be hell. This is a reality often forgotten today — or worse, ridiculed. At Fatima Our Lady went out of her way to remind us of this reality. During the apparition of 13 July the three children were shown hell in all its horror. For the Fatima children, their more immediate sufferings stemmed from the incessant questioning they had to endure during and after the apparitions, and later, as a result of the Spanish flu epidemic that devastated Europe after World War I, and led to the early deaths of Jacinta and Francisco.
In comparing the lives of St. Bernadette and the Fatima children, they all came from simple backgrounds marked by poverty. In fact, St. No doubt Our Lady chose such poor children as a sign of the ultimate blessedness of poverty well-borne in this life, and also because it was the life lived by the Holy Family in Nazareth. Regarding the messages given by Our Lady at Lourdes and Fatima, it is certainly the case that her message at Fatima was more urgent.
This undoubtedly reflects the world situation that had become much graver in the nearly six decades following Lourdes. Still, the Fatima message echoes that of Lourdes, particularly the call to penance and the prayer of the Rosary made by the Blessed Mother. Today the shrines of Lourdes and Fatima attract millions of pilgrims each year. Lourdes has been regarded as a place of physical healing and Fatima one of spiritual healing.
There is some truth in this assertion—there is more of a focus on the sick and the healing waters at Lourdes, and the latter seems to have more of a reputation for the healing of the soul, which comes from the encounter with God and Our Lady at the shrine and through the Sacrament of Confession.
Still, there were many outstanding miracles of healing at Fatima in the early years and by , the 25 th anniversary, more than cures had been recorded at the shrine. What is striking about these two apparitions is the visionaries themselves and how conformed to the life of Christ both Bernadette and the Fatima seers were: they were born poor, lived in poverty, were educated in their Catholic faith, but were simple and uneducated otherwise, and suffered a great deal, just as Christ did in His earthly life.
Through it all they kept their eyes focused on the eternal glory.
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