Inside the Light

Understanding the Message of Fatima

Angela de Fatima Coelho

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781505116076
• eBook ISBN: 9781505116090
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

There may be no person on the globe who knows more about the story of Fatima than Sr. Angela de Fatima Coelho. As a little girl growing up in Portugal, she used to pray at the tombs of Jacinta and Francisco Marto. Many years later as a sister of the Alianca de Santa Maria, she would become the postulator for their cause of canonization. This journey would lead her to visit with Sr. Lucia several times and eventually become the vice postulator for her cause as well.

Sr. Angela brings this unique and privileged perspective to the story of Fatima, going beyond a chronicle of the events to the theological meaning of the Fatima message, as well as taking a deeper look at the lives and spiritualities of each of the three seers. Relying on her extensive research as a postulator advice postulator for their causes and on her own personal story touched early by suffering only to be healed by the embrace of Our Lady of Fatima, she helps readers discover the relevancy of this message for our post-modern world.

For many years, Sr. Angela has traveled the world and spoken to thousands of people. Now, for the first time in print, she gives her profound testimony about Fatima. Her hope is that she may take each of us inside the light—the light that is God—that washed over the three shepherd children on that miraculous spring day in 1917.

CHAPTER 1

A Life Shaped by Fatima

Growing Up in Portugal

This book is not about me. It is about Our Lady and those three precious children she visited throughout the course of 1917.

However, I feel it is necessary to give you a little background about myself and my apostolate so that you can better understand the perspective from which I tell this story. After all, when you grow up in Portugal, Fatima shapes your life in unique ways.

Jesus and Mary were a constant presence in my family’s house. You might say they were living members of the family. My father, Manuel, and my mother, Maria do Céu, were married in 1968 in Porto.

After the wedding celebration, they went to Fatima. In the Chapel of the Apparitions, they prayed their first Rosary as a family and dedicated their wedding to Our Lady of Fatima. They were a Catholic couple who practiced their faith in a natural way. With much simplicity, they united what they believed in to what they lived.

They had a family business in the clothing industry. Their love for God, for Our Lady, for family, and for hard, honest work were their trademarks, and they passed this on to all their children. Our parents were charitable and keenly aware of the importance of sharing what they had with the poor and needy. This helped us to imitate their generosity and to understand that giving is a source of joy.

My father constructed a small “chapel” in our house where we gathered at the end of the day to pray the Rosary as a family. I remember the stained-glass with the face of Jesus, the beautiful crucifix, and, of course, Our Lady of Fatima’s statue, which rested to the left of the small altar. My father liked to kneel down before the Virgin of the Rosary’s statue. That was his place, in the family and in life: at the feet of Our Lady, his hands clutching his rosary, her rosary.

I have many memories of that time with my family. I do not know if, at that time, those of us who were the youngest actually prayed much. As soon as the prayers started, we would go to our grandmother’s lap or to one of our two aunts who lived with us. I believe that we fell asleep before getting to the second mystery, but as if by magic, we woke up at the Hail Holy Queen.

On April 1, 1978, my father and mother, with all members of the family (four children, two aunts, a cousin, and our grandmother), consecrated the family at the end of a Holy Mass, as well as our properties and time, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This was in accordance to the spirit of the message of Fatima and of the apparition of the Holy Trinity and of Our Lady to Lucia in Tui, which took place on June 13, 1929.

In my childish spirituality, I was absolutely sure that this consecration would put our whole family under the special protection of Mary and that no harm would come to any of us.

A Time of Suffering

Two years later, on January 5, 1980, my sister, Maria Goretti, not even three years old, suffered a domestic accident and died the next day. I cannot describe the sadness in my parents’ eyes, and I shall never forget her small, lifeless body. I was eight years old and this was my first contact with death.

Although I was not able to express what I was feeling, I know that it was the first time I started to doubt the “absolute” protection of God and Our Lady and about what it might mean to be under their care. At Christmas that year, my parents told us that my mother was pregnant. The joy of a new life helped to mitigate the loss of my little sister, but obviously, her death still hung over all of us like a storm cloud.

The following year, on February 14, 1981, my parents travelled on business to Spain. On that fateful day, my father lost his life in a terrible road accident. My mother, who returned home a widow and pregnant with my youngest sister, was never the same. The anguish, the helplessness, the doubts and fear for the future darkened her eyes and took away her joy. She was alone, still young—forty-four years old—with five children and a business with more than sixty employees. In a little more than a year, she had lost a daughter and her husband.

For the next five years, blackness covered our home and our spirits—in the clothes, in the darkness of our eyes, in the conversations, in the silences, in the absence of joy when playing, and even in praying, which we continued to do.

In order to not increase my mother’s pain, I kept my deep doubts concerning faith to myself, which became the ever-present backdrop of my spiritual life. After all, what good had come from my family’s consecration to Our Lady? Shouldn’t this consecration have put us under Jesus’s special protection? It seemed that our life had been idyllic until then. Only after the consecration did the deaths and losses begin. Fear surrounded my future and I struggled with insecurities and a deep sadness.

Since I didn’t share my doubts and problems with anyone, no one was able to explain that the consecration to Our Lady does not confer magical protection from any pain or difficulty, give the assurance of perpetual happiness, or ensure a problem-free existence. I gave no one the opportunity to explain that such a dedication does not prevent us suffering but gives us the assurance of God’s and Our Lady’s special presence with us. The consecration assures that they will accompany us, suffer with us, and help us to bear our suffering.

I was too young to understand any of this. The image of an almighty God, a Father, always and only kind, who listens to our prayers, watching over our lives and protecting us, was ruined for me. I still believed in God but felt that he did not care about us.

Only many years later, when I was already a nun, was I able to start purifying the wrong image of God that I had built up as a result of the losses and emotional wounds I suffered as a child. Only many years later, reinterpreting my life in the light of the Fatima mystery, was I able to understand the deep meaning of the losses my family had suffered.

To avoid causing my mother any more pain, I hid the debris of my inner spiritual earthquake. I maintained the appearance of a religiosity through external rituals, going to Mass and praying the Rosary with the family at the end of each day, but inside it was only dryness and bitterness. It was a very dark time from which I likely would never have emerged if not for my mother’s unshakable faith.

Perhaps it was my mother’s faith and her maternal love that caused my relationship with Our Lady to remain relatively unaffected. I felt that God was “responsible” for the tragedies that had happened, or at least was responsible for not having protected us from them. Mary, on the other hand, I felt was not responsible. Feeling close to her made me also feel closer to my father, for I knew he was with her.

Today, I am aware that Our Lady was the instrument God used to keep me close to him, like a blanket that wrapped me up with him even though I was trying to wrestle myself away. It would take more than twenty years for my anger to pacify, allowing Jesus to return to my heart again, when I could say with St. Paul, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28).

The Alliance of Holy Mary

Our family eventually decided to move to Porto, Portugal’s second largest city, approximately sixty miles from the village where I had grown up. My mother moved us because we would have more educational opportunities in Porto and my mother, who had been a primary teacher years earlier, would be able to teach again. With my father gone, our family business had been shut down, so it was necessary for my mother to return to teaching to provide for our livelihood.

At this stage, my mother rekindled a relationship with her best friend from university, Maria Clara, who, with another woman named Maria Aurea, was starting a life of religious consecration. They were a small community of lay people who would later become known as the Alliance of Holy Mary.

Maria Aurea was a high school art teacher when she met Maria Clara, who was training to be an elementary school teacher. Women of unusual intelligence and strength of will, but with quite different origins and personalities, they sought to follow Christ faithfully. Finding in each other the same impulse of the Holy Spirit and a great shared love for Our Lady, they felt called to a life of prayer, consecration, and communion with God through the hands of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In 1966, forty-one-year-old Aurea and nineteen-year-old Clara left everything and embarked upon their life-long mission of spreading the message of Fatima.

At that time in Portugal, devotion to Our Lady of Fatima was alive in the hearts of the people. Many visited the shrine and prayed the Rosary daily in their homes. However, for the most part, devotion to Our Lady of Fatima was expressed only in fragmented devotional practices, without any link to the mysteries of Jesus Christ. There was a lack of knowledge of the Fatima message’s theological dimension. Furthermore, in this period, sometimes even called the “decade without Mary,”³ the Portuguese hierarchy tended to regard Fatima with suspicion and detachment, relegating it to the sphere of popular religion.

The founders of the Alliance of Holy Mary⁴ felt that the message of Fatima, having been a gift granted by God to the Church and to the world, was being neglected. They felt it was their responsibility, as well as that of the Portuguese people, to make the message more widely known and, perhaps just as important, better understood. They intensified the apostolic work of spreading the practice of praying the Rosary, as well as the requests from Our Lady for reparation and consecration. From this renewed mission sprouted lay movements linked to the congregation: the National Rosary Crusade and Luminaries of Holy Mary,⁵ to name a few.

Under the banner of “prayer and contemplation,” consecrated in poverty, chastity, obedience, and unity, each congregation member sought to grow in holiness through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Their charism, therefore, drank from the fountain of the message of Fatima.

The Alliance movement was approved as an Association of the Faithful in the Archdiocese of Braga on November 28, 1985. The statute of Religious Congregation, with respective canonical institution, was achieved on June 13, 2002, and approved by the archbishop of Braga. Presently, its members are spread out in five Portuguese dioceses across six communities.

This was the community that would slowly begin to change my life. My encounters with them began in a small apartment in Porto where they had lived since the mid- seventies. Every first Saturday of the month, in accordance with the request Our Lord and Our Lady made to Sister Lucia (on December 10, 1925 in Pontevedra), Maria Aurea and Maria Clara organized a meeting in their home where they gathered families and friends, guiding them in the First Saturdays’ program.

My family started to attend these gatherings on the first Saturday of each month. Maria Clara prayed the Rosary with the children and teenagers and guided them in the fifteen minutes of meditation on the Gospel requested by Jesus and Our Lady. These meditations would be on one of the mysteries of the Rosary. All this was followed by confession and Mass, which we, in accord with Our Lady’s request, offered in reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

At that time, I certainly did not understand everything in the message of Fatima, especially the concept of making reparation. But I was always very happy to go, if for no other reason than the tea time at the end, when I ate more than my share of delicious refreshments. The sisters prepared everything with such care that, I confess, it was not so much love for Our Lady but the expectation of those home-baked cookies that ensured my monthly attendance at these events!

Month after month, year after year, we attended the meetings at the sisters’ house. I loved the joy they radiated. Their love for the Eucharist and for the message of Fatima was contagious, as was their diligence in spreading devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I was especially delighted when I perceived the effect that these spiritual meetings were having on my mother. Slowly, she regained her joy through time spent with these sisters and at their holy gatherings.

Gradually, I myself began to perceive a desire to “be like them.” Years earlier, when I was still a child and my mother was pregnant with one of my sisters, I had decided to be a doctor to “take the baby out of my mummy’s tummy.” Now, I wanted to be a nun!

Doctor and nun. This would be my life. I told this to my mother, who thought, “Ah, kids!”

The idea of becoming a nun, however, gradually disappeared, and at the age of eighteen, in 1989, I was admitted to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Porto. Even though I might have forgotten about being a nun, God seemed to have remembered.

Amidst many doubts and difficulties, it appeared that he wanted me for the religious life. His providence brought the sisters of the Alliance of Holy Mary back into my life some years later. When I was with them, I felt drawn to their charism and to becoming a nun. Helped by their guidance, I discerned that this was God’s will for me. I decided that I would become a member of the Alliance of Holy Mary, working to promote the message of Fatima.

I didn’t understand much about the spiritual life but trusted in Our Lady. After all, I had already learned that we do not understand everything right away. If we wait for perfect understanding each time we set out to satisfy the will of God, we will never do anything at all. Trust must come first, followed by understanding.

During my time in the Faculty of Medicine, I had many vocational crises. In fact, I had so many, I believe I became an expert in vocational crises!

Nonetheless, on July 16, 1995, one week after my last medicine exam, I joined the Alliance of Holy Mary. I had dreamt of entering on a date related to the message of Fatima, but I joined on the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Of course, this date would take on more meaning later because of my meetings with Sister Lucia in the Carmelite Convent. In retrospect, I began to understand that it was, in fact, the right day, my day, the one that the Lord had prepared for me.

It seems that many of the things that happen in our lives only begin to make sense many years later. In my own life, God has certainly shown me that we must be patient and not expect to understand everything immediately. We must give God the time he wants to help us understand. He delights in showing us how he takes care of us, leading us by the hand and keeping us under his mantle, in his fatherly heart.

Becoming Postulator

After the novitiate and the juniorate time, I was appointed mistress of novices. This meant I was in charge of the formation of the new vocations for our congregation. To better carry out this mission, my community asked me to study religious sciences (what you would call theology in the States). In 2008, I finished my degree in religious sciences at the Universidad de Comillas in Madrid. As soon as I finished, a new challenge presented itself.

I had become acquainted with Father Luis Kondor, the vice postulator⁶ of Blessed Francisco and Jacinta’s causes, having served as his doctor. His health was very poor, and I would often travel with him to Rome on account of his fading health. During these trips, we would discuss the lives and holiness of Blessed Francisco and Jacinta, the message of Fatima, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On one of these trips, I was fortunate enough to meet the postulator of the little shepherds’ cause, Father Paolo Molinari, SJ.

In June 2009, Father Kondor’s health began to decline sharply, and he died on October 28 of that year. At that time, D. António Marto, bishop of the Leiria-Fatima diocese, asked Father Molinari to let me be Father Kondor’s successor. Thus, on November 1, 2009, the Solemnity of All Saints, I became vice postulator for the causes of Blessed Francisco and Jacinta Marto.

This development confused me because I felt incapable. I thought only a pr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Fatima: A Review
• Introduction: Meeting Lucia
• Chapter 1: A Life Shaped by Fatima
• Chapter 2: School of Faith
• Chapter 3: A Light for the Post-Modern World
• Chapter 4: Fatima, the Trinity, and the Eucharist
• Chapter 5: The Eucharist: Believed, Celebrated, and Lived
• Chapter 6: The Secret
• Chapter 7: The Immaculate Heart of Mary
• Chapter 8: The Rosary
• Chapter 9: Understanding Reparation
• Chapter 10: Understanding Consecration
• Chapter 11: The Spirituality of Francisco
• Chapter 12: The Spirituality of Jacinta
• Chapter 13: Lucia: The One Left Behind
• Conclusion: A Mantle of Light
• Bibliography