In this video, Luke LeTourneau, Co-Founder and Chief Fellowship Officer for Live Vertical ministries in Springfield, Pennsylvania, discusses the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima and reflects on how we can embrace the Blessed Mother’s example during Lent.

Transcript:

It’s actually really cool— the first time that I ever was exposed to Our Lady of Fatima was actually, funny enough, when I went to Fatima. Just the story of the message of what Our Lady shared, and what she shared to the three little children, Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco, she revealed this beautiful message.

She appeared to them six times. In October we have the blessed gift of the miracle of the sun, where 70,000 or 100,000 people— it’s actually recorded in the paper— saw the sun dancing through the skies. So just a beautiful, miraculous moment that really culminated with the message that Our Lady was sharing: Pray the rosary every day, and through our sacrifices and sufferings for the salvation of souls.

So as we take this journey of the message of Fatima and think of what Mary revealed to those three little children as well, to pray for the salvation of souls. And that’s what our call is. So during this Lent, f you haven’t prayed the rosary before, make today a new day. That’s our call. And taking that message from Our Lady, to pray it every day. As the kids saw all the suffering and the pain they actually started to do their own sufferings, their own sacrifices, of actually tying themselves with ropes just for penances for all the souls that are lost.

Sister Lucia, later in life, had shared that what’s beautiful in the message of Fatima isn’t that we have to have the sufferings and do these hardcore penances that the three children did, but our penance is actually just living in the world today. Our world of today is struggle enough. Our world of today is challenging enough. But our call is: how do we live as faithful Christians, how do we live as faithful Catholics, to really let Our Lady’s message, and that message of hope, of just how do we not just talk about Jesus, but how do we be Jesus to everybody we meet, especially in the secular world, especially in this time right now with so much confusion, so much anger and hatred. Our Lord wants to reveal so much to us. Our Blessed Mother wants to reveal her Son to us in beautiful ways but I just pray that our hearts are open this Lenten season— our hearts are open to just let the Lord into our lives, let’s bring love during this time so that we can have the love that Our Lord shares with us and we share with others. How do we see the face of Christ in everybody that we meet, so that more importantly they might see Christ through us. Because who knows, on their journey we might be the only Christ-like figure that that person’s ever seen.