If there is anything we can learn from Venerable Sister Lucia, it is heroic patience and perseverance, which she embraced fully as each day unfolded – one to the next – until her death at age 97 on Feb. 13, 2005. As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of her holy passing, Lucia is a good reminder of how to become a saint through what she called “the long, hard road of martyrdom that has to do with daily living.”
Everyone who is born into the family of God through Baptism is called to this pathway to heaven. It is how God chips away at our stone surfaces to mold and shape the beautiful person inside that He sees, and that we are meant to become. We can’t see the results of all this chipping; we don’t even know that it is happening most of the time. But over time, we begin to embrace the process and let the artist take over. This alignment of our wills to God’s is mainly achieved through our daily trials and acceptance of our state in life.
“Putting up with any sacrifices that are asked of us in our day-to-day lives becomes a slow martyrdom which purifies us and raises us up to the level of the supernatural, through the encounter of our soul with God,” Lucia writes in her book “Calls” from the Message of Fatima. “In order to attain salvation, we all have to drink of the chalice of self-sacrifice, renouncing our own illicit desires, our evil inclinations, our exaggerated desire for comfort; while at the same time we must embrace whatever sacrifices life asks of us, whether material and physical, or moral, social and spiritual.” (pp 130-131)
Much of Lucia’s path in life was just like ours in that she had to face the normal, mundane difficulties of everyday life, seek God’s will in prayer and grow in holiness through constant battle against sin. She lived out faithfully and with joy her complete surrender to the Lord, accomplishing the mission given to her by simply showing up every day and saying yes to God.
The Carmelite Sisters who lived with her for nearly six decades got to witness Lucia’s holy path. They testified that she embraced the monotony of everyday life, always finding ways to renew her love for God by the generous and total gift of her whole being, powered by a solid and profound prayer life. She worked while praying and prayed while working, faithful to the common schedule of the community and accepting all duties assigned to her. With great care she lived in the spirit of obedience and never regretted nor was tempted to give up her ‘yes’ to Mary.
A True Longing for Heaven
One of her greatest sufferings was longing to be with Francisco and Jacinta in heaven. The nostalgia she felt for her two little cousins weighed heavily. Having experienced heaven in the light that Mary radiated during the apparitions, the union of her soul with the Holy Trinity in the Last Vision in Tuy, Spain, and the fire that burned in her heart for the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary sustained her, but never satisfied.
On her 39th birthday in 1946, after suffering much illness for several years that she thought was fatal, she tearfully accepted that her time on earth would be for some time longer. “After all I am still here,” she told her Mother Superior. And she would be for another 58 years.
In the mid-1980s, she felt again that her mission must be completed. Pope John Paul II had fulfilled the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart, which led to the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union. He promised to release the third part of the Secret, to advance the cause of Jacinta and Francisco’s beatification, and gave permission to publish “Calls”, her final letter to the world on the message of Fatima. Still, she had another 20 years to go.
Had she known in advance how long she would live, could she have mustered up the energy to keep going and fulfill the mission of establishing in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart? It’s doubtful. That is why we are not to be concerned about what tomorrow will bring, for today has enough worries of its own.
God gives us our “daily” bread and nothing more. We achieve our full purpose when we focus only on the present task before us. Lucia understood this immensely.
“Calls” from the Message of Fatima can be purchased online at our Fatima Gift Shop.
Barb Ernster is the National Coordinator/Communications Manager/Editor for the World Apostolate of Fatima USA.
