While Portugal welcomes the Holy Father in Fatima, we are highlighting an excerpt of an article of by Chiara Lubich published in the Roman Observatory, in 1984, on the occasion of the Family Jubilee. The Fatima event, Chiara affirmed, calls us to conversion and faithfulness to the Gospel, and also to the family. “[…] When the Pope [John Paul II − editor’s note] read the act of consecration of humanity to Mary, he began with these words: ‘The family is the heart of the Church. Today, from this heart ensues a particular prayer of consecration to the Heart of the Mother of Jesus.’  And so, from heart to Heart in this intense communion, that was created with the Eucharistic celebration, from the heart of the universal Father, arose almost a cry, filled with concern for the needs of humanity, the prayer of consecration to the Virgin Mary, asking her to take special care of the human family. The Pope was there, on kneeing in front of the white image of Our Lady of Fatima. In that moment the thought of many of us present went back to May 13 1981, the day of the assassination attempt. […] Now St. Peter’s Square was packed to the very brim. Next to him before Our Lady of Fatima, like a flower that blossomed from his suffering and blood, all the families of the Church were symbolically gathered like a sign of all the families of the world. At the moment of the world’s consecration to Mary, the Holy Father, as the supreme Pastor, could therefore count not only on the communion of all the Pastors of the Church, “constituting a body and a college”, but also on the full adhesion of the children of the Church, represented by many families of many countries. […]And in the prayer with which he concluded his homily – prayer which he composed for the 1980 Synod that had the family as its theme of study – he asked this grace: “May the love enhanced by the grace of the sacrament of marriage be stronger than any weakness and any crisis that our families sometimes experience.” All these important coincidences and expressions help us to gather the profound meaning of this consecration has to bring all Christian families to live – with the help and example of Mary – the luminous and fascinating plan of God on the family in all its expressions: marriage love, according to the divine plan, sign of Christ’s love for the Church up to the total gift of self; paternity and maternity, as the participation to the fertile love of the Creator; peace and harmony in overcoming all the tensions and difficulties as fruit of  an always alive and tireless charity intent on keeping the spiritual presence of Christ in the family and, with Him, the unity of thought and action; an openness of communion and service towards other families. […] The message of Fatima that calls everyone to conversion and faithfulness to the Gospel, becomes the answer of the consecration of the family, a commitment of renewal so that the face of the Church may shine more. In the Christian family the Church is the “family of God” a welcoming dwelling place for all the lost children who are called back to the house of the Father and invited to enter through the maternal heart of the Mother of Jesus.

Chiara Lubich

(Osservatore Romano 25.03.1984)