On October 13th, 1917, when Our Lady disappeared after giving her last message to the children, Lucia shouted: “Look at the sun.”
Seventy thousand people, for ten minutes in a row, saw the sun spinning around itself three times, throwing rays with shades of yellow, blue, green, red; people took the colors of the sun. This prodigy was observed from afar. At one point, it seemed that the sun was detaching itself from the sky and falling on the earth. The entire terrified crowd began to scream; many confessed their sins aloud, making acts of faith and asking for forgiveness.
That strange miracle dried, in a matter of minutes, the soaked clothes of the crowd. But Lucia did not want them to look at a dancing sun, something that on the other hand she did not see, but a flow of visions.
Lucia, along with her two companions, saw Saint Joseph with the Child and Our Lady dressed in white, with a blue cloak next to the sun. Saint Joseph with the Child seemed to bless the World, with the gestures they made with their hands in the shape of a cross.
She herself tells us: “shortly after this apparition vanished, I saw Our Lord and Our Lady who made me think that it was Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lord seemed to bless the world in the same way as Saint Joseph. This apparition faded and it seemed to me that I still saw Our Lady in the form of Our Lady of Mount Carmel” (Narrative of the Apparitions of Fatima, Sixth Apparition).
How to interpret these facts?
On October 13th, the Lady finally said her name: “I am the Virgin of the Rosary.” The visions described make us witness a passing of the mysteries of the Rosary.
Lucia and her cousins see the first image in the centre of the sun, the Sacred Family, and that is when the oldest of the little shepherds shouts that “look at the sun”, understanding that everyone can see that. But no, when the crowd looks up at the sky, the sun emerges from the clouds with a very intense light that without blinding begins to dance before their eyes, changing tones.
People rejoice, they enjoy being admired. These are feelings related to the image of the Rosary that children see: the joyful mysteries contemplated in the Holy Family.
Later, the joy of the Rosary gives way to pain, to those mysteries of pain –the Virgin of Sorrows, Christ on the way to Calvary- and at the same time the crowd screams in fear with a sun that has stopped playing, dancing, and now, zigzagging, seems to rush against the earth. The fear was evident. The screams of terror will be picked up by the newspapers of the time, giving more drama to a story that surprised all of Portugal.
And finally, after the pain, the glory, represented by the return of the sun to its original position, to the relief of the crowds in parallel to the vision contemplated by the children of the triumph of Mary, crowned as Queen of Heaven and earth.
This can be interpreted as a sign of our times.
October 13th, under this prism, is discovered as a summary of the moral message of Fatima: because the Rosary is the only weapon given to the world to prevent its ruin. But at the same time as a clear reading of what is happening and how much will happen: because that falling star was a sign of self-demolition, a sign of an apostasy of incalculable consequences, because when faith disappears there is only room for the destruction of everything.
And when all seems lost, when it only remains to wait for the end with an annihilating sun, the promise of Mary will resonate again, now represented by the Virgin of Mount Carmel, crowned and triumphant. The sun will stop its destructive advance before a Virgin of Mount Carmel, crowned as Queen of heaven and earth.
