The CatholiCity Message
Volume XIX, Number 4 – March 23, 2015
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
The following is one way to explain why I am flying to Portugal in two days, and why I would like you to share your intentions and most ardent desires with us so I can print them out and personally lay them at the feet of Our Lady of Fatima next week.
Many years ago I told you how my grandfather, Bill Macfarlane, born in Scotland as an only child abandoned as a baby by his own father, came to America for a three weeks in 1919 as a high school graduation gift to visit his two uncles, who worked for the Sweet Ore Pants Company. Both uncles died suddenly while Bill was on the sea journey, so he found himself having a beer in a New York tavern, alone, with his return ticket in his vest pocket. He overheard a few guys talking about soccer, struck up a conversation, and was invited to practice with their team, which was comprised of employees of the phone company.
He was such an outstanding player that he was given a job with Ma Bell so he could be on the team that summer and thus postponed his return—for nearly sixty years. It was the first and only job he ever had. He eventually married a devout Catholic redhead. They had three children, including one son, William, my father, who they nicknamed Bud. Bill, a Presbyterian who never converted to Catholicism, attended Mass with my holy Grandma Anne and died wearing a scapular. Like Bill, my father was also a gifted athlete and my mother came from a family of talented athletes. They have eleven children, and most of us were naturally adept at sports (I was captain of the football, baseball, and basketball teams, and my brother Joey and two sisters Cathy and Geraldine, were even better). My brother and I have five Macfarlane sons between us, all fine athletes.
In 1980, President Reagan was elected and deregulated the airline industry. A new airline called Peoples Express was soon offering ridiculously low fares, prompting my mother and father one Saturday morning to fly to Buffalo, New York, on a lark for $19 each. At the motel my father spied a brochure for a local Fatima shrine where he purchased a book on Our Lady of Fatima by William Thomas Walsh—primarily because he knew nothing about the subject. He read straight through the night, then woke up my mother, "This book has changed my life," he told her. "I am going to learn everything there is to know about the messages of Our Lady to the world."
Not long thereafter, a talented speaker, he was giving talks on the subject nationwide and sharing his research with me when I went to the University of Notre Dame. In early 1983, while studying at ND's program in England, I made a difficult winter pilgrimage to Fatima, Portugal, alone, where I asked Mary with complete sincerity what she wanted me to do with my life. Before the end of that year, I consecrated my life to the Immaculate Mary as a member of Militia Immaculata, which was founded by St. Maximilian Kolbe in 1917, then a seminarian, the same year Our Lady was appearing to three little children in Portugal.
When my grandfather lugged his suitcase onto that ship in Glasgow in 1919, he did not and could not have imagined, in his wildest dreams, that he was effectively restoring his "line" of Macfarlanes to the Catholic Church, or that his unborn son would be inspired by Our Lady of Fatima via Reagan era airline price wars, or his son's son, would be tapped by Immaculate Mary to spread her message of warning and hope to tens of millions of people through you and CatholiCity.com. All these unlikely events (including your reading this Message today) apparently depended upon Bill's exceptional athleticism (and love for a stout pint of beer).
And yet, because Bill was a gifted athlete, he would not have been surprised to learn that his great grandsons—my four sons, all born years after he passed away—turned out to be outstanding rugby players. In fact, my sons have won four state championships in rugby between them over the past few years.
My third oldest, Xavier Aquinas (no pressure with that name), is starting for the St. Edward High School varsity "side" (as it is called), which has been invited to an international rugby tournament to represent the United States...in Lisbon, Portugal, this coming weekend. I could never dream of affording to go myself, but at practically the last minute, I figured out how to cash in roughly twenty-five year's worth of accumulated airline miles to get free tickets for myself and my youngest son Clete. Still, I want to make certain you know:
The main reason I am going is to make a return pilgrimage to Fatima on your behalf.
Which is why we've set up a special page on CatholiCity where you can share your intentions, your dreams, and your most ardent desires, which I will print out, seal, and carry by hand from Ohio all the way to Portugal, where I will have them blessed by a priest, lay them at the feet of the famous statue of Our Lady of Fatima, on the very dirt and in the exact spot where she first appeared to Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco exactly 98 years ago. My sons and I will pray a Rosary for your intentions at that very spot and offer Holy Communion for you and your loved ones at the Sanctuary Church of Fatima.
How to Submit Your Petition
Please, every person reading my words today should use the link below. Your intentions will remain completely private and no digital record will be retained after printout. No one will read them. I will pray for you with all my heart, I promise. Please, I urge you, pray for me and my family this week. Our flight departs on Thursday, so you must submit your intentions before 4:00 pm Eastern this Friday, March 27th.
I sense in the deepest, purest depths in my soul this pilgrimage will be a pivotal moment in your life; that it is part of a plan by God set into motion long ago, not unlike how my grandfather's first step onto American soil in 1919 was a distant ramification of Catholic saints converting fearsome Scottish clans in the early centuries. I believe, as happened to Bill Macfarlane, that our great grandchildren, many of whom have not yet been born, will be affected positively in the great eternal plan of the Father for salvation.
So this is our pilgrimage, unforeseen before 2015 began, and therefore mysteriously subject to the oddly consoling predilections of Providence. In the long run—that is, until the return of Jesus, the only "long run" that matters—the destinies of tens of millions of souls are at stake. After all, that is precisely what happened when three little kids in Portugal, an idealistic young Pole with a vocation, and a lonely, fatherless teenager from Scotland opened their eyes one morning and lived out their baptisms a century ago.
In light of this extended special message, I will not have the usual quotations and other items. I'll be back with an update on our pilgrimage in early April, just before Easter. Thank you for being a part of our work and thank you for letting us be a part of your Lent 2015. Let us, tens of thousands of us together, end with a prayer in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...
Dear Lord, I do not know what will happen to me today. I only know that nothing will happen that was not foreseen by You and directed to my greater good from all eternity. I adore Your holy and unfathomable plans and submit to them with all my heart for love of You, the Pope, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Amen.
And amen.
With Christ Crucified,
Bud Macfarlane
