Lady of Fatima

The Lady of Fatima

The proper name Fatima means “the shining one” and is the name of Mohammed’s favorite daughter, Fatima Zahra. In some Muslim circles, Fatima Zahra is in some ways considered a Muslim counterpart to Mary the Mother of our Lord, she being the ideal model for all women. Mary is revered for her purity and for her motherhood of a Muslim martyr.

In the Catholic Catechism page 242-243, we read, “Mary the model of the church: There is a close relationship between Mary’s spiritual motherhood and the motherhood of the Church. She is the pattern for all whose task in the Church is to assist in Jesus saving work. Every Pope, bishop, priest, deacon, religious, and lay person can look to Mary as the exemplar of fidelity to his or her special vocation of mediating salvation.”

It is claimed that Mary the mother of our Lord chose to appear in 1917 in Fatima, a town in Portugal dubbed such for the name sake of Fatima Zahra who once a Muslim herself had converted to Christianity; and that the sign given to confirm her appearance to Catholics was a miracle involving the sun. In his book on the Blessed Virgin entitled The World’s First Love, Fulton Sheen speculated that just “as Judith, Esther, and other heroic women of the Old Testament were pre-Christian types of Mary, Fatima Zahra may well have been a post-Christian type of Mary.”

In these end days will Catholicism and the Muslims religion come to some sort of compromise concerning the Father in heaven and Allah? Will there be one single issue that could possibly bring the two together, giving the appearance of co-equality between the two giants of the religious world, and the God they worship?  

In 1916, and on three separate occasions, three young children, Lucia Santos and her two cousins claimed to have witnessed apparitions of an angel in the region of Ourem Portugal. These sightings continued until 5/13/1917 when, while tending sheep they claimed to have witnessed the apparition of what they claimed to be the Virgin Mary.

Will Mary play an important role in the years ahead as the Muslim and Christian world appear to be on a collision course? Perhaps as Catholic Bishop Sheen notes, “she will be the bridge that connects two vastly different cultures, the common mother who keeps her children talking.” Right now this connection does not appear to be a hot topic for discussion by the Vatican. So the question, “Does the Lady of Fatima, and Mohamad’s daughter Fatima have any future role in Vatican-Muslim dialogue today or perhaps in the near future?

The Muslims hold Mary in high regard and have a great deal of respect for her, yet it stops short of the Catholic churches devotion to her.

So the question, why did the mother of our Lord in this 20th Century choose to reveal herself in the insignificant little village of Fatima, to three young children, and in all future generations be called “Our Lady of Fatima?” The proper name Fatima and the place Fatima Portugal have this strange connection between the Muslims and Catholic faiths?

Consider the following; the daughter of Mohammed was called Fatima Zahra. She was born in 615 and died in 632 A.D. Not so very long ago, the Moslem’s occupied Portugal but were to eventually be driven out. The last Moslem chief had a beautiful daughter called by the same name as Mohammed’s daughter Fatima. In the very same town lived a young Catholic man who would fall in love with Fatima, and because of him she stayed behind when the Moslems left. Now because of her love for the man, she would come to embrace the Catholic faith, and her husband because of his love for her would change the name of the town where he lived to Fatima.

Thus the very place where Mary is said to have appeared in 1917 appears to hold an historical connection to Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed and the daughter of a Muslim chieftain. So the question, Was it the Lord who in 1917 sent this image to the children in Portugal, or was this designed by fallen spirits to deceive?

Christian’s are warned in 1 John 4:1, “Believe not every spirit, but try (test) the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”  

Mary is for the Moslems the true Sayyida, or Lady. The only serious rival to her in their creed would be Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed himself. But after the death of Fatima, Mohammed wrote: Thou shalt be the most blessed of women in Paradise, after Mary. In a variant of the text Fatima is made to say; I surpass all the women, except Mary.”

So can this be the one thing that will one day unite the Catholic religion with the Muslim religion?  Can, or will some form of dialog be established because of their agreement concerning Mary and Mohammed’s daughter Fatima in Fatima Portugal?

The apparitions at Fatima ended in October of 1917, and in November of the same year the Balfour Declaration was issued. This set into motion a series of events which enabled the Jews to reconstitute their political society and legitimately bear arms. The image of Mary is claimed to have returned to a Sister Lucia in July 1929 to ask for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. Soon after in October of 1929 the stock market crashed affecting America, Europe and other parts of the world, and this was to be followed by mass unemployment, an event that brought the Nazi Party out of the sewer from which it grew, taking to itself enough electoral gains in Germany to get Adolf Hitler elected as Chancellor in 1933.

So one can ask, were these events connected in any way, and will these events trigger future events plunging the world into its darkest hours ever?

Phil LaSpino   www.seekfirstwisdom.com