Today was a day packed with miracles and amazing beauty. We began our day with an hour long bus ride from Lisbon to the city of Santarem where one of the oldest Eucharistic miracles took place in the year 1247 . A very unhappy woman named Maria came to church that day after visiting a sorcerer who had asked her to bring a consecrated host to her and she would help her in a situation in which she thought her husband was unfaithful to her. She received the host on her tongue and then took it from her tongue and placed it into a hankerchief and carried it home. It began bleeding profusely. She placed it into a chest at home. When her husband came home, she could not sleep and the weight of guilt on her had her confess what she had done to her husband. A bright light emanated from the chest where the host was kept. They prayed and reconciled with each other and the next day she returned the host to the church and it become an object of veneration in the church to this day. Hundreds of years later scientific tests have been done on the host and it has concluded it is flesh from the heart with the same blood type - AB positive from the same quadrant of the heart as other Eucharistic miracles samples.
All of our pilgrims had the opportunity to climb up to the Euchraristic elements - still encased in a monstrance behind and above the main altar. No photographs were allowed but I’ve taken a photograph of a postcard the church gave me and you can see it from there. Amazing. St. Carlo Acutis visited this Church of St. Stephen when he was creating his website of the Eucharistic miracles.
Our next step was in Fatima itself. We walked a 2 mile stations of the cross. These stations were completed by Hungarian Catholics in thanksgiving for their freedom in 1962. 3 of the stations were actually donated by Cleveland Hungarians. The weather was picture perfect - sunny with a cool, gentle breeze and I was privileged to lead the stations of Fatima as we prayed and sang a verse of “Were you There” at each of the 14 stations.
After dinner we walked over to the site of the miracle of the sun, the chapel where the major apparition of Mary to the 3 children took place. This is where the Fatima statue is kept and where the rosary was prayed in many different languages. It was here that the major procession began and where many of our pigrims were able to take part in a very special evening. Steve Hopp, our tallest pilgrim, had the honor of carrying the cross for a procession of about 3,000 pilgrims who processed through the square with the statue of our Lady of Fatima singing Ave, Ave, Ave Maria and praying while walking with one another in a 25 minute walk. It was truly breathtaking to see the thousands of pilgrims, all holding candles, praying, singing, helping each other to walk the journey of faith together. There we were - people from around the world - one faith, one people baptized in Christ - together in prayer, in love, in a common bond to pray for peace in our world, to pray for those who have no one to pray for them, to pray for conversion. We live in such an anxious time when peace is needed more than ever. We have been entrusted by the Blessed Mother - just as Jacinta, Lucia and Francisco were over 100 years ago with the same message - to pray for the conversion of souls and to pray for peace - Ave Maria, pray for us.
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