The apparition of Our Lady plunged us once more into the atmosphere of the supernatural, but this time more gently. Instead of that annihilation, in the Divine Presence, which exhausted us even physically, it left us filled with peace and expansive joy, which did not prevent us from speaking afterwards of what had happened. However, with regard to the light communicated to us when Our Lady opened her hands, and everything connected with this light, we experienced a kind of interior impulse that compelled us to keep silent.
Afterwards, we told Francisco all that Our Lady had said. He was overjoyed and expressed the happiness he felt when he heard of the promise that he would go to Heaven. Crossing his hands on his breast, he exclaimed: “Oh, my dear Our Lady! I’ll say as many Rosaries as You want!” And from then on he made a habit of moving away from us, as though going for a walk. When we called him and asked him what he was doing, he raised his hand and showed me his Rosary. If we told him to come and play, and say the Rosary with us afterwards, he replied: “I’ll pray then as well. Don’t you remember that Our Lady said: ‘I must pray many Rosaries’?” He said to me, on one occasion: “I loved seeing the Angel, but I loved still more seeing Our Lady. What I loved most of all was to see Our Lord in that light from Our Lady which penetrated our hearts. I love God so much! But He is very sad because of so many sins! We must never commit any sins again.”
I have already said in the second account about Jacinta, how he was the one who gave me the news that she had broken our agreement not to say anything. As he shared my opinion that the matter should be kept secret, he added sadly, “As for me, when my mother asked me if it were true, I had to say that it was, so as not to tell a lie.” From time to time he said: “Our Lady told us that we would have to suffer, but I don’t mind. I’ll suffer all that she wishes! What I want is to go to Heaven!”
One day, when I showed how unhappy I was over the persecution now beginning both in my family and outside, Francisco tried to encourage me with these words. “Never mind! Didn’t Our Lady say that we would have much to suffer, to make reparation to Our Lord and to her own Immaculate Heart for all the sins by which they are offended? They are so sad! If we can console them with these sufferings how happy we shall be!”
When we arrived at our pasturage a few days after Our Lady’s first apparition, he climbed up to the top of a steep rock and called to us: “Don’t come up here. Let me stay up here alone.”
“All right,” and off I went chasing butterflies with Jacinta. We no sooner caught them than we made another sacrifice of letting them fly away, and we never gave another thought to Francisco. When lunch time came we missed him and went to call him: “Francisco, don’t you want to come for your lunch?”
“No, you eat.”
“And to pray the Rosary?”
“That, yes, later on. Call me again later.”
When I went to call him again, he said to me: “You come up here and pray with me.” We climbed up to the peak, where the three of us could scarcely find room to kneel down, and I asked him: “But what have you been doing all this time?”
“I am thinking about God, who is so sad because of so many sins! If only I could give Him joy!” One day, we began to sing in happy chorus about the serra:
CHORUS
Ah! tra la la la
Tra la la la
La la la!
In this life everything sings.
And who sings better than I?
The shepherdess of the serra,
Or the maid a-washing in the stream.
There’s the merry chirp of the goldfinch
That comes to awaken me
As soon as the sun arises,
The brambles come alive with his song.
The screech owl cries at night
Seeking to frighten me,
The girl in the moonlight sings
As she gaily shucks the corn.
The nightingale in the meadow
Spends the whole day long in song,
The turtle dove sings in the wood,
Even the cart squeaks out a song!
The serra is a rock-strewn garden
Smiling happily all the day long,
Sparkling with gleaming dew drops
That glisten on the mountain side!
We sang it right through once, and were about to repeat it, when Francisco interrupted us: “Let’s not sing anymore. Since we saw the Angel and Our Lady, singing doesn’t appeal to me any longer.”