THE EXTRAORDINARY REASON OUR LADY APPEARED IN FATIMA FOR THE FIRST TIME ON MAY 13TH

T'was a morning like any other in late spring for three little shepherds, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, natives of a tiny hamlet some distance from Lisbon. When the sun came up, they led their flock of sheep to the lush pasture, and once the sheep had settled and were pulling at blades of grass, they played among the oak trees. After lunch, they lazily attempted to pray the Rosary, but only said the first few words of every prayer. They were not especially pious children, and were not selected for the level of sanctity they had reached by May 13th, 1917, but rather for the potential for great holiness and fortitude that each of them possessed.

A little while later in the afternoon, the children were astonished by dramatic flashes of white in the sky, and to their amazement they were met with an apparition of Our Lady dressed in white, "shining brighter than the sun, giving out rays of clear and intense light...We were so near that we were in the light that encircled her." The lady wore a sparkling white mantle, trimmed with gold, and in her hands the beads of a rosary sparkled like stars with the crucifix glowing even more. Our Lady deftly assured the three children, "Please don't be afraid of me...I come from Heaven." When Lucia asked Our Lady, "And what do you want of me?", she was given this instruction, "I want you to return here on the 13th of each month for the next six months..."

In the course of the next months the shepherd children, guardians of woolly wards, became guardians of extraordinary secrets entrusted to them by Our Lady on the 13th day of the month.  In other pieces of mine, I have discussed the multiplicity of reasons as to why number 13 is Our Lady's number, one reason being because it signifies her fidelity and the choice before us humans, we may be the 13 that symbolizes Judas or the 13 that symbolizes Our Lady. Venerable Mary of Jesus Agreda (a favorite mystic of Solanus Casey) wrote in Mystical City of God, that the Assumption of Our Lady occurred on August 13th.

But talking specifically about the first time Our Lady introduced herself to the three children - the fact that she did so on May 13th deserves a more unique analysis - that will lend us a truer understanding of the role of Fatima in salvation history and in our personal salvation. Granted, May is Our Lady's month, and this was enshrined by the English Catholics of old who on account of May being the most beautiful month in England, May was dedicated to Mary. Still more to the point, May 13th 1917 fell on a Sunday, which is hard to fathom because the children were so hard at work tending to the sheep that it sounds so much like a weekday, but it was the Lord's Day and was exactly two weeks before the feast of Pentecost, which fell on May 27th, in the year 1917. When Our Lady made herself known to the children, they were in preparation for the next big feast; the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Ah, Pentecost, the celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the 12 Apostles and Mary, who was the 13th person present in the upper room. Our Lady appeared deliberately on May 13th as a way of establishing herself in the minds of the faithful as the person who was the 13th person in the room when her Spouse, the Holy Spirit came in the form of tongues of fire over her and the Apostles. The secrets given the children are actually mandates for the successors of the Apostles, the powerful men of the cloth who rule the Catholic Church in their roles as bishops, cardinals and Popes. At Fatima Our Lady made specific requests of the Catholic Church's leaders, or the successors of the Apostles, she asked for the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart and for the promulgation of the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. Our Lady, as Spouse of the Holy Spirit, was with the Apostles when they were given the gifts of the Spirit so they had the wherewithal to convert the masses from sin to repentance, and from unbelief to belief in Christ. After the descent of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles sprang from the upper room, filled with bravery, and preached the Gospel to the Jews and 3,000 were baptized that same day.

On May 13th, 1917, Our Lady came to the children in the lead-up to Pentecost, as she was the 13th person in the upper room, so that through the children acting as her emissaries, she could inform the actions of the successors of the Apostles so these men may lead souls to new repentance and conversion.

Truer still to the magnificent multiplicity of meanings that 13 has to the Mother of God, I submit that the number 13 is a succinct numerical definition of Our Lady's relationship with the Blessed Trinity, the "1" stands for Our Lady and the "3" stands for the Three Persons of the Trinity. 13 is a numerical portrait of Our Lady's relationship with each Blessed Person of the Trinity in that the Three Persons are distinct from each other, God the Father is distinct from His Son and the Son is distinct from the Holy Spirit. In accordance to the distinct nature of Each, Our Lady has a different status with each Person, she is Daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son and Spouse of the Holy Spirit. The Son of the Father, Jesus came into the world through the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of Our Lady.