All I need to do is to turn back to Him – He is there…
On 13th August 1917, three very young children were arrested and thrown in gaol.
The children were uneducated, and their families were also uneducated. They children spent their days shepherding sheep in the surrounding countryside.
When they were arrested their families were no informed. Instead, Government officials came and collected the three young children, threatened them with all sorts of punishments and then had them locked away in gaol.
And the children would not give in and the children would not speak. And the children went into that gaol – where they were told they would be oiled alive in boiling oil. And instead of despairing in that place with those hardened criminals, those children knelt down – with those criminals inside that goal – and prayed the rosary to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Those children were – of course – the three shepherd children from Fatima to whom the Blessed Virgin appeared on the thirteenth day of each month.
They had been arrested by the atheist government officials and the officials were demanding that they reveal the Secret of Fatima to them. And the children – infused with the Grace of the Holy Spirit, chose to risk their freedom and their life rather than to surrender the secrets of the Blessed Virgin before she had asked them to.
The children were aged, ten, nine and seven years old. And those little children had the hearts of warriors and were able to stand up in front of a bunch of soldiers and a bunch of thugs and say, “NO…”
And I have been thinking about that day in August – which would have been summer in Fatima, just as it is still summer here in Sydney. And I have been thinking about the bravery of those children in that gaol cell.
I have been imagining the heat and the smells. I have been thinking about how worried they must have been at the idea that they would not see their mother or father again – as they were surely threatened with that. I have been thinking about how scared they would have felt at being about to die, and to die a death by boiling oil. And I have been thinking about how brave they would have been to say NO and to accept the consequences of that.
And there is a pure bravery in those words and actions of those three little children that speaks to me in the depths of my soul today. Because I know that there is no way that I could possibly have that bravery today. And that shows me that the Holy Spirit came into those children and made them strong. And what that really means is that He comes into me as well.
All I need to do is to look at Him. There He is – inside my soul – and I firmly turn my eyes away from Him like a little child. And in turning away from Him I forget that all the power of the universe is inside me – contained firmly in my soul. All I need to do is to turn back to Him – He is there…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.