Allusion Three: The Day the Sun Danced

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for: Fatima!

I’m not sure this counts as an allusion, and, if it does, it is certainly not clever. The Day the Sun Danced is a children’s animated movie about the miracle of Fatima and the apparitions of Our Lady to the three shepherd children. If you don’t know about it, I would suggested more research than this video, but I would also recommend getting in touch with your inner child by starting here.

The Captain and I grabbed a bus from Lisbon to Fatima our second morning in Portugal. We started the morning with breakfast at a local coffee shop, a routine that quickly became one of my favorite things about Portugal. The dreary, drippy day (that got worse, rather than better as we approached Fatima) made me grateful for the water resistant jacket that the Captain had purchased to keep his bride warm. We trudged through the drizzle from the bus stop to the shrine, eager to find the information center, which I hoped was heated.

We found neither information nor heat, but instead a vast, cold basilica with an auditorium feel and an overwhelmingly gold mosaic. We did not linger long. Our next step took us to an underground series of chapels, all of which were closed, except for an Adoration chapel in the same empty, gold style as the basilica. Jesus was there, which made it awesome, but I was struggling with disappointed hopes for Fatima when we left the chapel.

We at last found a map in an otherwise barren building, which pointed us toward “Informacioãos.” That tiny building provided information only in the form of an English version of the map we already held. So we used it to explore.

Probably the greatest surprise I had in all of Portugal were those first couple hours in Fatima. The whole shrine felt… smoothed over. The cold basilica sat at one side of a huge esplanade, a vast stretch of concrete, asphalt, and limestone that stretched to a mountain of stairs, leading up to a covered outdoor altar and an older basilica. We gave ourselves a chilly tour of that basilica, a stone church built in the 1950s, and the resting place of the children who saw Mary.

Next, we set our sights on two meals -- lunch and then Mass. In between the two, we stopped at the Chapel of Apparitions, a three-sided glass and wood structure built to protect the small white house erected not long after the apparitions. We were surrounded by a few other pilgrims -- hearty, desperate, or determined, to be here in the grey. Praying there, so near to Our Lady, her presence so real, my heart broke. I know people come from all over for all reasons, but the ones that were most palpable were those from burdened hearts, overflowing to their mother -- people bringing their deep sorrows from this valley of tears. I was rather depressed as we returned to the old basilica for Mass.

Every Mass we attended in Portugal was, unsurprisingly, in Portuguese. My lack of understanding led to contemplative Masses. I brought before Our Lady all the aching I had felt in the Chapel of Apparitions. She took the aches… and gave me back her love. Her love that had led her aching heart, on behalf of her Son’s aching heart, to these particular people in this particular land, with one particular message -- that stretched across the world to spread her love and her Son’s love to people beyond that land. To touch even my heart in this valley of tears.

After Mass, I was much better disposed to the Shrine. The Captain saw people coming out of a building -- and since we were having trouble determining what was locked and what was open, we swam upstream into the building. There, I negotiated with a nun who spoke four or five languages in the only one we had in common (Spanish) to obtain tickets for a tour of the “exhibition.” I had no idea what to expect -- it turns out there were rooms filled with votive offerings left and sent to Our Lady of Fatima, from popes and pilgrims. I wished I had something to leave her.

By now, it was getting dark and we still needed to find our hotel. So we bought a couple candles and lit them in intercession for all the intentions that had been sent with us to Fatima.

Day Two of Fatima brought us to the countryside, about a mile from the shrine. We took a cab, whose driver was named John Paul -- “John Paul III,” he joked. This day, the sun favored us. The chill of the air and the damp of the dew, under the cloudless sky, made the morning feel new and refreshing. Limestone paths lead us into groves of olive trees, speckled with holmoaks and rock. We found a statue of Our Lady, marking where she appeared once to the children of Fatima, as well as statues of the Angel of Peace and the children, where he taught them a prayer of reparation and gave them communion. Out here, the world was at peace and so quiet that I felt as if I would hear Mary’s voice if I stayed and listen long enough. We had the paths to ourselves, with only orange breasted birds for company.

The paths eventually lead us into the village of Aljustrel, where the children had lived. We found another site of an angelic apparition, where the Angel of Portugal warned the children that they were going to suffer greatly, and the houses where they grew up -- tiny, simple buildings that made them somehow more real as children than anything I had seen or read thus far.

By the time, other pilgrims had started to appear. As the world finished waking up, we reluctantly left the corner of the world where, once, the sun danced.