I was a cradle Catholic until I left the Church during college in the mid-1990s. In 2002, I married a Lutheran but then left the Lutheran church around 2017 in response to un-biblical changes. I then wandered from church to church for the next seven years, even as I continued to cling to Jesus and my faith. I thought I’d finally found a church home in a local nondenominational congregation shortly after my divorce in 2024.
But then Our Lady of Fatima called me home.
I love history and Jesus, so on the evening of December 2, 2024, sat down to relax to another Christian historical documentary. (Yup, I’m that nerd). When I started watching the movie Fatima, I never could have imagined the life-altering, awe-inspiring conversion that God had planned for me in the next 113 minutes.
Fatima is a city in Portugal. On May 13, 1917, the Virgin Mother appeared to three illiterate shepherd children between the ages of 7 and 10. Our Lady urged the children that they and all the faithful must pray the rosary daily for the salvation of souls. She instructed the children to share her message, and to come back every month until October when God Himself would provide a sign to prove her identity and her message.
Despite intense pressure from friends, family, the church, and government officials, the children remained faithful to their story and Our Lady’s instructions. The prosecution of little kids and their steadfastness only served to legitimize their story and encourage increasing numbers of pilgrims to Fatima every month in hopes of healing and seeing the Holy Mother.
By October, the date of the promised sign, the children were joined by over 70,000 pilgrims. Among them were skeptics who came to mock the faithful, including Avelino de Almeida, a reporter from a major Lisbon newspaper, O Século.
During approximately ten minutes, the sun cast different color hues upon the earth and bounced around the sky as though it had become unhinged. At one point, the terror-stricken crowd tried to flee as the sun seemed to plummet toward Earth before it finally returned to its place in the heavens.
Over 70,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun, including newspaper photographers who recorded the event, and Almeida, who returned to Lisbon and wrote a vivid report for all to read still today.
Toward the end of the movie, I found myself sitting on the floor with my mouth hanging open, however I still don’t remember how I got there. I don’t know how long I sat there internally grasping, wrestling, and pleading to reconcile three revelations.
- The Miracle of the Sun is a fact, a historically documented event.
- Since the Miracle of the Sun is fact, then so is the messenger who foretold the event, our Holy Mother of the Son of God.
- Because the Virgin Mother is real and validated by the only One who sets the sun and stars in the sky, then likewise is Our Lady’s message.
- The crux of the message was to pray the rosary for the salvation of souls. And there is only one Church I’ve ever known to pray the rosary, the Catholics.
Still in a daze, I got up off the floor and glanced out my window to see the lighted steeple whose bells had been calling me for months. In that moment I knew: It was time to go home.