John Arnold: My pilgrimage to Fatima left me pondering mysteries of life

One of the most famous paintings by the Italian artist Caravaggio is ‘The Calling of Saint Matthew’.

Painted around the year 1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in Rome, the masterpiece still hangs there to this day. Like the Mona Lisa by Leonarda da Vinci, ‘The Calling’ has a certain mystery and mystique about it.

Just as no one knows if the female figure is smiling in mirth or in happiness, similar questions remain four centuries after it was completed.

Unusual, you may say, that in the middle of a sweltering heatwave artistic mysteries such as these might be on my mind!

Well, ye might think it’s warm or hot or boiling here in Ireland this week, but wait until I tell of my recent travels when 36C was the norm and we endured 40C on several days!

Last year, in the month of July, I visited Fatima in Portugal for the first time and recently I returned once more to a little village made famous in the years 1916 and 1917. Though Fatima has an indigenous population of only around 10,000, it was officially declared a city in 1997.

The ‘Story of Fatima’ really has its origins in the little rural village of Aljustrel and the nearby hilly, rocky district of Loca de Caleco. When I visited these areas last week, the white-washed, red-tiled buildings basked in glorious sunshine. Even at 9am when we were there, the sky was azure blue, not a cloud to be seen.

I was one of a pilgrimage group of around 30 led by Patsy Foley - most of us had been to this Marian Shrine location in Portugal before but for a few it was their first glimpse of all the places which brought Fatima to the notice of the world 110 years ago.

The people of Aljustrel and surrounding areas made a poor living by growing fruit and olives and herding sheep flocks.

We walked through the simple homes of the Marto and des Santos families - first cousins. From these simple abodes in 1916, Francesco and Jacinta Marto and their cousin Lucia des Santos walked with their sheep to rough, hilly pastures - they always ‘did their farm jobs’ very early in the morning before the sun was high - often at 5am. If they finished early, they sometimes went to the local school - school attendance in Portugal was not compulsory at that time.

They were simple, illiterate children who were taught basic Christian prayers in their own homes. With relations, they’d have attended Mass in the nearby parish church.

As with our visit last year, we had a simply wonderful guide. Elsa joined us when we landed at Faro Airport and journeyed with us by bus to Fatima. She was our constant guide there for four full days. Then she accompanied us down to Villa Moura on the Algarve and finally saw us all onto our plane from faro to Cork.

On the sweltering morning we visited the parish church where Francesco, Jacinta and Lucia received their first Communion, Elsa was with us to reveal the story of the 400- year-old building: A very simple church with some beautiful frescoes and murals.

To the left of the main altar is a ‘battered and worn’ statue - Our Lady of Joy. It’s carved from stone, very heavy. So much so that in anticipation of a marauders’ attack on the Church in the 1700s, the locals, when they were unable to move it to safety, built a ‘false wall’ to conceal the statue.

It was only in the 1970s when the church was being painted and refurbished that this wall was found, removed, and the ‘hidden’ statue was revealed again.

During 1916, on three different occasions - twice on the hillside and once at a well behind Lucia’s home - the three children saw strange sights - strange to their eyes.

Many year later, Lucia wrote extensively of these visions. An angel in the persona of a boy appeared before them. They were frightened but too riveted to the spot to run away, and the angel told them he was an Angel of Peace, the Angel of Portugal, and foretold that they would have another visitor.

Then, on May 13, 1917, a ‘Lady’ appeared to them.

Visiting all these apparition places in recent days, it occurred to me that the words of Linda Martin’s Eurovision winning Song Why Me? must have been on the children’s lips. They were bothered and bewildered and when they eventually told others they were mocked, scorned, and no-one believed them. Lucia wrote that her mother scolded her and ordered her to “stop telling lies”.

Our Lady asked the children to return to the same place on the 13th of each month - from May to October.

The messages given by Our Lady to the children were not easy listening. She asked them to pray, pray, pray, and ‘make sacrifices’ for the sins and wrongdoings of others. A tall order to give to three little children indeed - no wonder they might ask the lady, ‘why me?’

On the Saturday of our visit to Fatima, with an ever rising thermometer, we breakfasted at 7am and set off walking the short distance from our hotel to the start of the Hungarian Stations.

Fr O Donnell led us along the long and winding road that saw us follow in the children’s footsteps.

During World War II, many thousands of Hungarians sought and got refuge in neutral Portugal. In thanksgiving, and in the hope that Communism might fall in Hungary, Hungarian people from all over the world donated funds to construct these unique Stations of the Cross.

As we walked up the inclines in the early-morning heat, our prayer of the Rosary was nearly drowned out by the massive din from literally thousands of crickets with their repetitive tick-tick sound.

Apart from the individual Stations on the stone path, the countryside here has changed little since Francesca, Jacinta and Lucia tended their flocks.

They missed their ‘appointment’ with Our Lady on August 13 - having been imprisoned by the authorities in an attempt to force the children to renounce all they had said.

However, on her last visit - October 17, 1917 - the sun ‘danced’ on a miserably wet day in front of 70,000 onlookers.

Francesco died in his own bed in 1919. The following year little Jacinta died -in a hospital bed far from Fatima - as she had predicted.

They were both beatified by Pope John Paul and canonised by Pope Francis on May 13, 2017- exactly a century after the children’s first visit from Our Lady.

We visited their graves in the Basilica - where Lucia was also interred when she died in 2005. We had Evening Mass in our hotel each evening with Fr O Donnell.

In one homily, he mentioned ‘The Calling of Saint Matthew’. “Try and look at the painting some time,” he told us. In it, Jesus and Peter have arrived in the room where Matthew and other tax-collectors are gathered round a table counting the money. They seem to taken by surprise by the arrival of these two strangers.

In the painting, Jesus seems to be pointing at Matthew as if calling him to ‘join up’ with the other Apostles.

The bearded Matthew in turn has an outstretched finger which is pointing at himself as if asking ‘Me, why me?’

It’s a question the little children at Fatima were asked.

I suppose everyone of us at some point in our life is asked a question we’re not expecting, and we too are inclined to ask ‘Why me?’