Every first Saturday in October, the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese Division of the World Apostolate of Fatima (WAF) invites the faithful to recall the messages of Our Lady of Fatima, participate in public devotions, and pray for renewed personal sanctification and worldwide conversion. Photos by Joe RomieFollowing the annual World Apostolate of Fatima Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne on Saturday, October 5, four young men carry the statue of Our Lady of Fatima to the Grand Wayne Center for a special breakfast. Celebrating Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne, Father Mark Gurtner, Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia for the diocese, spoke on the inherent messages of mercy in Our Lady’s instructions to the three children she appeared to at Fatima in response to the sins of the world. Click here for more photos from the event. He emphasized the tragedy it is when human beings commit evil but do not fully know or understand the evil being done. He said, “This is why God in His great mercy, gave us the Ten Commandments: when humanity had lost sight of God and the full sense of good and evil, we needed to be given the truth of how we were created to live and to be shown the fundamental ways of acting which go against human flourishing. This was a great mercy!” Father Gurtner explained that God continues to call His people back to having an intimate and loving relationship with Him. He then mentioned the three ways that people get stuck in this muddy pit of sin which Our Lady of Fatima addressed in her messages: ignoring the existence of God, denying that sin is an offense against God, and indulging in the pleasures of this world contrary to the will of God. He said, “Even many who have some sense of belief in God live their lives in ways as though God did not exist: no prayer, practice of religion, or no entrustment of life to God, but ironically, when things go wrong will question or complain about God. In His great mercy, God sent Our Lady of Fatima to call humanity back to relationship with Him, above all through prayer and the sacraments. She said to pray the Rosary every day. She said that Confession is a sacrament of mercy. We must confess with joy and trust. Mary and the Angel of Peace taught the children prayers which adore God and to make reparation for those who do not.” Regarding denying the seriousness of sin, he said, “We see this even in the way many Catholics live, for instance through contraception, entering marriages outside the Church, cohabiting, and accepting abortion. Our Lady of Fatima said, ‘I have come to warn the faithful to amend their lives and to ask pardon for their sins. They must not offend our Lord anymore. For He is already too grievously offended by the sins of many.’ Many marriages are not of God and do not please the Lord. The Blessed Virgin’s revelation of the terrible reality of hell showed the children what St. Paul told us in his letter to the Romans, ‘the wages of sin is death.’ Sister Lucia of Fatima said, ‘Hell is a reality, God condemns no one to hell, people condemn themselves to hell.’” Finally, Father Gurtner emphasized, “How merciful is our God, that in spite of the many sins of the world, the many who indulge liberally in serious sin, in spite of our own sins, God waits to forgive. Our Lady prompts us to change and so to receive God’s great mercy. The sins of the world are very great. She said, ‘more souls go to hell for sins of the flesh than for any other reason,’ and ‘people must renounce sin and not persist in it,’ and that ‘it is essential to repent greatly.’ Our Lady’s call to repentance would be pointless if God’s mercy were not on the other end waiting to receive it. The question is, do we have the humility to receive it and to share it with others? May we, like the children of Fatima, have a childlike humility to receive and witness to God’s Fatima message of mercy, spoken to us by Our Lady, calling us and the world away from sin and into deep, intimate relationship with God.” Following Mass, a procession with a statue of Our Lady of Fatima led the faithful to the Grand Wayne Center for a breakfast and additional reflection on Fatima, given by Father Brian Isenbarger, pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Garrett. He expressed his joy to speak about Our Lady of Fatima, as it was a talk from the WAF when he was an eighth grader at St. John the Baptist school in New Haven that “opened up a whole new dimension” of his spiritual life. Recognizing that the three shepherd children were similar to him in age, he thought, “If Mary appeared to me, I would probably get my life much more in order.” But beyond this, he began to realize in a new way the power and reality of the encounter with God offered a regular basis through the Eucharist. He said, “This really was the beginning of both my prayer life and devotion to the Eucharist: after this realization, I began to pray a decade of the rosary each day and actually began to take Mass seriously.” Father Isenbarger’s talk focused on the Eucharistic dimensions of Fatima. He said, “The two central themes of Fatima are prayer and sacrifice, and of course the greatest sacrifice is the Holy Mass.” He also remarked that the Angel of Peace gave Francisco and Jacinta their First Communion, asking them to receive Jesus in reparation for those who are ungrateful for the gifts of God. He also reminded that Lucia’s prayer was, “Oh, Most Holy Trinity, I adore You. My God, my God, I love You in the Most Blessed Sacrament.” In July of 1917, Our Lady asked for the First Saturday Communion of Reparation, and in October she asked that a chapel be built on the spot of the apparitions so Mass could be celebrated and the Blessed Sacrament adored. All this was meant to make up for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifferences against the Eucharist, by those both inside and outside the Church. Father Isenbarger further emphasized the need for our current Eucharistic Revival to also be a “Reconciliation Revival,” indicating that more people are coming to Holy Communion on Sundays, but there are few who have regular recourse to Reconciliation, which means a higher chance of sacrilegious communions (receiving Communion in a state of mortal sin). He also made several practical suggestions for fighting against temptations towards indifference, specifically by taking Sunday Mass seriously – including arriving early and dressing well, visiting Jesus regularly in Eucharistic Adoration, and praying the Rosary daily. He stated, “If we allow ourselves to be constantly formed by Our Lady and to contemplate the life of Jesus through her eyes by praying the Rosary, we too can become a truly Eucharistic people. It was not the apparitions at Fatima that made Francisco, Jacinta, and Lucia saints – grace did, and the same grace is offered to you and I in all the Sacraments, but most especially at the Mass, so pray, sacrifice, and go to Mass. Let’s be saints!” Afterwards, WAF Board President Jerry Horban expressed his gratitude for the events of the day and the opportunity to remind people of Mary’s maternal love and desire for us to trust in God more deeply, following her example to “do whatever He tells you.” Jennifer Thatcher, a parishioner at St. Vincent de Paul in Fort Wayne, who visited Fatima in 2017, shared that this annual gathering always helps to refocus her spiritual life. She was particularly inspired by Father Isenbarger’s comment that “the Holy Mass means more than all the pilgrimages and Marian apparition sites put together,” reminding of the importance of the Eucharist as the source and summit, and the transformative power of daily Mass. 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