Most people who have heard of Fatima have heard of a hillside and a sun. Fewer have heard of a corridor in Pontevedra, in December 1925, where the same Lady asked for something much smaller: five first Saturdays in a row, kept in a particular way, for a particular Heart.
The Child spoke first. Have compassion, He said, on the Heart of your Mother, covered with thorns, with no one to pull them out. Then came the list that leaflets flatten: confession, Communion, five decades, fifteen minutes of company with the mysteries, all offered in reparation. In 1930 Lúcia wrote down why the number is five — five offences, two of them as modern as a sneer taught to a child or an image treated as junk.
This little book puts the list back into a room. Reparation is not a bargain. Saturday is already Mary’s waiting-day. The quarter of an hour after the beads is the part almost nobody keeps, and it was part of the asking. You do not need to settle every argument about Fatima in order to sit still on a Saturday morning.
Read it if you have tried the five months and lost count. Read it if you have never tried because the conditions sounded fussy. The fuss, when you look at it, is only a way of making sure the Saturday is not empty.
A Silent Homilies booklet. Written to be read in one or two sittings.