Portugal Diary
Volume XIX, Number 5 – June 4, 2015
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
I have been under the weather for weeks but I'm finally recovered. I much prefer if you consider the relatively long gap since my last message as CatholiCity giving you a vacation...from me. Hope you enjoyed it! I've been praying for you every day at Mass. In fact, I just offered Holy Communion for you and your loved ones a couple of hours ago.
Today's message will mostly consist of a (surefire surprising) recap of my pilgrimage to Fatima on your behalf, but first I want to emphasize an invitation I often add to the end of the CatholiCity Message: I encourage you to reply to this email. What is happening in your life? What is on your mind? (Due to the large volume of your replies, it probably will take me a while to get back to you.)
Portugal Pain
As you recall, I redeemed a couple decades worth of airline miles to take my eighth-grade son with me for an international rugby tournament in Portugal to watch my eleventh-grade son's high school squad. I invited you to submit petitions for my pilgrimage to Fatima, which we printed and secured in a sealed package (including thousands I received electronically and printed out after I arrived in Lisbon).
The rugby tourney ended on very hot Palm Sunday afternoon, so Clete and I zoomed off in my stick-shift rental car for Fatima, which is almost two hours north (at American speed). Worried about arriving on time for Mass, I drove, um, enthusiastically (a European tradition) and arrived in the early evening. My son and I were definitely worse for the wear after the interminable transatlantic flight, bad food, jet lag, cardboard hotel beds in our cheap hotel, long days in the sun at the tournament, and lots of very stressful navigating on insanely-designed roads.
Toss in a severely nasty case of the Portuguese version of Montezuma's revenge for me and my son, and we were in pretty rough shape by the time we parked at the huge complex of the Fatima Shrine.
As far as I was concerned, these minor discomforts were definitely a plus, as I will explain.
Thirty-Three Years Since When
Fatima had changed dramatically since I made my way there alone thirty-three years ago as a college kid. Back then, there were only a few pilgrims, the famous gothic Sanctuary church, a partially paved-over field (to prevent it from turning to mud on rainy days), the beautiful (and relatively small) statue of Our Lady of Fatima framed by a few trees and rose bushes, all set alongside a little town dotted with a handful of perfunctory cheap hotels and kitschy souvenir shops. The vast field where Mary appeared several times, or Cova da Iria, is shaped like a gigantic ladle, comprising enough land to hold two dozen football (or rugby, hey hey) fields.
While walking through this great open space it is not difficult to imagine over 100,000 pilgrims (enough people to fill Yankee Stadium twice) in October 1917 trudging about in ankle deep mud, completely drenched after days of rain, anticipating a vague "miracle" promised by Our Lady in an earlier appearance. What is difficult to imagine is the actual Miracle of the Sun that did occur, whereby our solar system's star plunged in a harrowing "power dive" toward tens of thousands of shrieking, confused pilgrims and transfixed child visionaries.
What many people still do not know about this singularly strange and truly awesome event is that every blade of remaining grass and each single grain of dirt in the entire enormous valley, along with every scrap of cloth and every hair on every head of every pilgrim was left utterly bone dry when the sun snapped back into its place in the sky. Not a drop of moisture remained for miles around. Even atheist reporters, sent to mock the "phony" apparitions, were dumbfounded. Decades later, scientists estimated it would require the power of an atomic bomb to vaporize that much water. How this hyper-drying occurred instantaneously without any sensation of heat for the pilgrims remains a stupendous public miracle.
On Palm Sunday 2015 there were thousands of visitors (and sadly, a great portion of them were behaving more like tourists than religious pilgrims). My son Clete and I beheld what was obviously many millions of dollars worth of improvements, including acres covered by millions of tasteful, tiny white- and grey-patterned granite stones. At the bottom of the valley, a spanking new Holy Trinity Church and museum/pilgrim center capable of seating many thousands had been erected exactly opposite the Sanctuary church on the top of the hill a half mile away.
Our Five Goals for You
Alas, the older church was closed for renovations, so Clete and I received Palm Sunday Holy Communion for your intentions in the modern church (the fourth largest in the world), which looks just like a computer on/off button on the outside and Radio City Music Hall on the inside. Behind the altar, it featured an enormously wide and tall, super-bright, panoramic mosaic of golden tiles depicting an earthly and heavenly account of the great Miracle.
Clete and I had five goals that evening:
- to offer Communion for your intentions
- to have the print-out of your intentions blessed by a priest
- to pray a full Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet for your intentions
- to physically and mentally suffer for your intentions
- and to find a way to memorialize your intentions in Fatima.
After Mass we set off to find a priest. After wandering around for half an hour, we knocked on several doors in a long corridor filled with small "pilgrimage chapels" in the modern complex until we found a sacristy, wherein a tiny, ancient Portuguese priest blessed your intentions with great formality and a gigantic smile. "That was almost too easy," I told my son Clete.
We, the Broken-Hearted and Hopeful
You see, I wanted some real pain. The logistical challenges, the relatively minor discomforts of travel, and gastrointestinal difficulties were not nearly enough. I had not read any of your intentions, of course, but I knew what most of them surely must have been: conversion for fallen away relatives, help with destructive addictions, financial woes, dire illnesses, relationship problems, your most ardent desires for your children and grandchildren, your hopes and dreams, and whatever else resides your heart, great or small, for the people you love. I have the same intentions for the people I love. To be a faithful Catholic in our weird culture-of-death age is the be simultaneously broken-hearted and filled with a divinely reasonable gift of hope, and this paradox manifests strongly whenever we ask God for help with situations over which we may have little human or practical influence.
So, I promise you, we were not there to see the sights. I had been fasting all day—not really difficult considering the bug in my system. As an old nun once wrote to me about the work of the Mary Foundation: "the grace that saves souls never comes cheap." Clete and I were there for you, with no secondary agenda other than to complete a job with supernatural ramifications for your lives.
Kneel-Walking the Marble Path
At this point Clete and decided together: we would get down on our knees and inch down the long marble path which spans a third of the valley toward the open chapel protecting the statue of Our Lady of Fatima. I lowered my two-hundred-and-fifty pound frame onto my knees and began a kneel-walk next to my son, Rosary beads in hand.
We began to pray out loud.
We had been in Fatima for almost two hours, and although there were hundreds of people milling about in this section of the valley, no one else had attempted this traditional form of reparation.
Intense pain started within minutes, and my knees, long-ago shorn of ACLs from a lifetime filled with an endless variety of sports, were screaming protest before the end of the second decade and less than thirty yards from the start. I quickly learned it is physically impossible to speed up while "walking" on one's knees. (Try going ten feet in your home right now to get the gist of it.) I've always been a big guy—I would be relatively svelte at 225—and I quickly began to regret every extra slice of pizza, donut, and Dorito. Before the end of the tenth decade, the skin over my left patella bone had lost a few layers the size of a silver dollar.
It is difficult to convey how peaceful and happy I became about this impromptu suffering. I let my son know this; anything to help the granting of your petitions was worth it. I was so proud of Clete, who ignored the understandable embarrassment of becoming a public spectacle to please his father. He is only fourteen and just beginning to grow into his gangly body.
Without leaving my knees, the pain forced me to pause a few times and lean on him—I'm sure it was a strange vision in a place filled with beautiful structures: a large man leaning on his thin son along the long, thin white line of a marble path in that expansive valley. At the thirty-five minute mark we paused after the fourteenth decade and began the Divine Mercy Chaplet; we were roughly two-thirds on the way to the chapel.
"For the sake of His sorrowful passion," we croaked, "have mercy on us and on the whole world."
Nearly an hour gone by: Chaplet complete, thighs and hips numb, back muscles twitching, the pain throbbing with every heartbeat; yet I was regretting it would come to an end. I admit I was concerned about was permanently damaging my legs; I trusted Mary to not let that happen. With fewer than fifteen yards to go, three elderly gentlemen stopped to take photos of us; one was wearing a Boston Red Sox jacket. As a die-hard fan who prayed for them to win a World Series during countless Rosaries since childhood, I took it as an encouraging sign. 'turned out the men were from Ireland; they shook our hands and cheered us on. Clete and I slowly completed last several yards, three-inch strides at a time, then gingerly rose to our feet.
We shuffle/limped into the chapel, which is completely open to the outdoors on one side, Clete pulling the thick envelope containing your intentions from his backpack. We joined a hundred pilgrims who were just beginning to pray a Rosary in Polish. We made our way to the front railing and completed the fifteenth decade of the Rosary for you, all the while under the gaze of Our Lady of Fatima.
Soul-Deep Tears
Rosary complete, physically spent, elated and relieved, I closed my eyes and the unfamiliar sounds of Hail Marys in Polish faded from consciousness. I fell into a powerfully deep melancholy as silent sobs welled up from my gut and a torrent of tears escaped through my wrinkled-shut eyes. I became competely convinced—was utterly certain—that God was going to answer many of your prayers—with and without miracles, immediately and over the course of time, and often in surprising ways. Oddly, I also "felt" that other prayers would seemingly not be answered, for unknown reasons that now remind me of God chastising Job with a question: "Where were you at the foundations of the world?"
Much as I might try, a certain major characteristic of this experience cannot be put into words and remains, simply, a mystery. Here's a pic of my son a few minutes after we left the chapel.
Harbinger of Darkness
I cannot say that I have never experienced such deeply emotional, mystical sorrow combined with serene peace before, because something similar had happened to me decades before when I was a freshman at the University of Notre Dame. In the fall of 1980, during my first weeks there, I was befriended by a relatively young priest, a man in his forties. He was a kind man, very intelligent, and known for his liberal views. As it happened, he visited my dorm and presided over 10:00 pm Mass one evening. Afterwards, alone, we fell into a personal discussion in the hallway outside the chapel, which culminated in me asking him if he had any regrets about his choices in life, and in particular, about answering the call to be a priest. He paused, held my gaze for several moments, then whispered, "No. None."
After saying our good-byes, I climbed four flights of steps to my room where I was immediately overcome with an overwhelming sorrow. I literally collapsed to the floor, sobbing and shaking from the depths of my body. I'm not the crying type, so this was bizarrely odd experience. I was only seventeen. It was as if someone (or Someone) was crying through me, and allowing me to participate in this wordless sadness. After several minutes, the sobbing subsided and I felt a peaceful relief. This strange emotional episode seemed unconnected to anything in my life—was I going insane?
The next morning the campus was abuzz with horrible news: the priest had suddenly fallen into a coma almost immediately after leaving my dorm. He never regained consciousness and died two weeks later. I was almost certainly the last person with whom he had spoken in a serious vein. Of course, I made the connection and I have always wondered if the Holy Spirit, knowing the priest was marked for death, had "shared" His sorrow with me. Was the sorrow because he had not merited heaven? Or was it reparation to help him go to heaven? I never experienced the strange ultra-deep sorrow again.
Until Palm Sunday, 2015, next to my son on still-aching knees, with your most heartfelt intentions on the forefront of my mind and in the depths of my heart.
What Happened to Your Petitions
Our 2015 Fatima endeavor felt the like both the beginning of a great work for all CatholiCity Citizens and the culmination of the prayers offered by that young, idealistic college version of myself, and the coolest thing of all was that despite all my dull mistakes, and sins, and struggles in life, my Catholic ideals remain not only intact, but stronger than ever three decades later. My son Clete, who had not seen my tears, was embarrassed by my actions, and questioned whether our long, solitary kneeling Rosary trek was somehow for show—a way of getting attention. I was taken aback, but I understood.
He's still just a kid. I told him that I was long past caring how my actions appeared to others when souls were at stake. I told him that Christians should not seek "human respect." That the greater good in the Mystical Body of Christ sometimes requires Catholics to break conventions in order to keep commandments (although performing a public act of reparation at a Catholic religious shrine should not be considered the breaking of convention, even if it was on that day).
I explained we were acting solely for the sake of CatholiCity Citizens, based on decades of seeing Our Lady perform miracles in answer to our prayers, and what we had done would, over time, help millions of souls...that I had already experienced this lesson. Because at one moment in time, back when I was lonely, heartsick, and cold in Fatima in 1983, the Mary Foundation had not existed, that CatholiCity had not existed, that he had not existed.
We did nothing in Fatima in 2015 but get a simple job completed, and getting it done was all that had mattered to me—not how tourists or even other pilgrims viewed me. And because Clete is not still just a kid, but a developing man, he kept questioning me, out of curiosity, confusion, fatigue, and a sincere desire to learn what makes his Pops tick.
Besides, I told him, the tiny percentage of the people who noticed us would not think about us thirty seconds after we passed from their view. The only people who still had in mind what we did were Jesus, His Father, Mary, the angels, the saints, our relatives in heaven, and CatholiCity Citizens. Our conversation turned to other things.
After this fruitful discussion, we were almost back to the car; Clete took a photo of the raspberry on my knee.
Extending the conversation, I told him how I had asked Mary to help me find my way in life in 1983, just a handful years older than he was now, and how now that I had returned, it was clear she had answered my prayers. He told me it hadn't occurred to him to ask Mary for that kind of Total Life Guidance.
"Can I go back to the chapel?" he asked.
Worn out, as the sun was setting, with sore knees, with a long drive still to come, we turned around and retraced our steps for a half mile back to the chapel. Your petition packet, forgotten during the father-son discussion, was still in the backpack.
While Clete asked Mary to guide his life in the chapel, I fished out your petitions and found a secret, permanent, dry final resting place for them just a few paces away from the statue of Our Lady of Fatima. Mission accomplished. There they will remain for many years to come, perhaps until the return of her Son.
Surprise Ending: Christ Crucified Lapel Pins Blessed at Fatima
At the same time the old priest blessed your written intentions, I also asked him to bless a packet containing the beautiful, haunting Christ Crucified lapel pins remaining from our 2013 annual appeal, which Clete carried in his backpack all the way down the marble path. Back in 2013 I decided to not let anyone know that my son, Buddy, was the artist. He shared that this particular painting was produced in miraculous fashion—he painted it in a matter of hours when normally a work of this type would take days. Bloody and realistic, I've always felt the mystical power of the image derives from the peaceful nature of the brow of Our Lord's face, achieved in a few brilliant brush strokes.
If you would like to have one of these 326 remaining Fatima-blessed pins, I would love to send you one for a donation in any amount ($1 or more) on a first come, first serve basis. (If we run out of lapel pins, I'll send you an 8x10 art-house print of the image touched to my relic of the True Cross). Make sure to type "Christ Crucified Pin" into the Comment box on the donation page:
LAPEL PIN NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Thanks. You guys are the best. Buddy is nineteen now, at a crossroads in life, and could use your daily prayers.
Quotations for Our Lady of Fatima
For more information, Wikipedia actually does a decent job with the Fatima apparitions. The best book on the subject is William Thomas Walsh's 1960 classic, "Our Lady of Fatima," easily found online, new or used. Here is a link to many of the words of Our Lady of Fatima during the apparitions and later to Lucy, one of the children who continued to receive messages from Mary:
Kitchen Sink and Group Prayer
I'll be back soon with my first-ever "Kitchen Sink" version of the CatholiCity Message, containing all the items on a list I've been keeping for years for a hodgepodge of things, including goofy stuff, which I've failed to work into the Message. I think you'll love it; I hope you don't hate it. Let us now pray, tens of thousands of us together, to Our Lady of Fatima, for all of our individual intentions, beginning in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for our dear country.
Our Lady of Fatima, sanctify our clergy.
Our Lady of Fatima, make our Catholics more fervent.
Our Lady of Fatima, guide and inspire those who govern us.
Our Lady of Fatima, cure the sick who confide in you.
Our Lady of Fatima, console the sorrowful who trust in you.
Our Lady of Fatima, help those who invoke your aid.
Our Lady of Fatima, deliver us from all dangers.
Our Lady of Fatima, help us to resist temptation.
Our Lady of Fatima, obtain for us all that we lovingly ask of you.
Our Lady of Fatima, help those who are dear to us.
Our Lady of Fatima, bring back to the right road our erring brothers.
Our Lady of Fatima, give us back our ancient fervor.
Our Lady of Fatima, obtain for us pardon of our manifold sins and offenses.
Our Lady of Fatima, bring all men to the feet of your Divine Child.
Our Lady of Fatima, obtain peace for the world.
O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death. O God of infinite goodness and mercy, fill our hearts with a great confidence in your dear Mother, whom we invoke under the title of Our Lady of the Rosary and our Lady of Fatima, and grant us by her powerful intercession all the graces, spiritual and temporal, which we need, through Christ our Lord, amen.
Thank you for being a part of our work and part of my life. Please pray for me.
With Saint Boniface,
Bud Macfarlane
