Servant of God Sister Lúcia of Fatima had much to say and teach, beginning with her constant instruction and life lessons on the necessity of praying the Rosary, making the Five First Saturdays devotion, adoring and receiving the Holy Eucharist, reparation and more.

Little realized is that she also shared major insights with important Fatima-grounded guidance in her books and some letters. As worries about today’s times multiply, she would say now what she did then to the troubled society she already saw on the horizon.

On this 106th anniversary of our Blessed Mother’s first appearance to the three children at Fatima, let’s look at 13 of Sister Lúcia’s many insights, counsels, advice and warnings.

1. On Another 13th — April 13, 1971 — Sister Lúcia went right to the point writing her nephew, Father Jose dos Santos Valinhor, a Salesian superior in Portugal:

“It is indeed sad that so many are allowing themselves to be dominated by the diabolical wave that is enveloping the world and they are so blind that they cannot see the error! The principal error is that they have abandoned prayer, and thus they have gone away from God and without God everything is lacking in them. ‘Without me, you can do nothing’ (John 15:5).

“What I recommend to you above all else is that you get close to the Tabernacle and pray. In this you will find the light, the strength and the grace that you need to sustain you and that you can pass on to others. Guide them with humility, with gentleness and … at the same time, guide with firmness … always with serenity, justice and charity.

“Follow this road and you will see that before the Tabernacle you will find more science, more light, more strength, more Grace and virtue than you could achieve by reading many books or by great studies. Never think as lost the time you spend in prayer. You will see that in prayer God will communicate to you the light, and the grace that you need to do all that he requires of you.”

2. “Truth does not cease to exist simply because unbelievers deny it! What was true yesterday remains true today and will still be true tomorrow, because ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.’”

3. “In times such as the present, when the family often seems misunderstood in the form in which it was established by God, and is assailed by doctrines that are erroneous and contrary to the purposes for which the Divine Creator instituted it, surely God wished to address to us a reminder of the purpose for which He established the family in the world.

“God entrusted to the family the sacred mission of cooperating with Him in the work of creation. This decision to associate His poor creatures with His creative work is a great demonstration of the fatherly goodness of God. It is as if He were making them share in His creative power; making use of His children in order to bring forth new lives, which will flower on earth but be destined for Heaven.”

4. “Jesus also said: ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves’ (Matthew 7:15). These false prophets are all those people surrounding us, trying to induce us to follow the wide road, to give free rein to our evil tendencies, caprices, vices and disordered passions, all of which are contrary to God’s Law. They are the bad company that turns us aside from the right path of truth, justice and charity. They are all those false prophets who deny the truths revealed by God, endeavoring to introduce new and erroneous doctrines in support of the disordered lives that they themselves wish to lead.

“The Lord gives us a rule by which to identify such people: ‘You will know them by their fruits. (...) Every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit (..) Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits’ (Matthew 7:16-20).

“These warnings must put us on our guard against ourselves and the maxims of the world around us. How many times does one hear people say: ‘I do such and such because everybody else does it?’ ‘I dress like this because it is the fashion and everyone is dressed like this’ ‘I live like this because that’s how people live nowadays.’ Are we to allow ourselves to be condemned just because other people live like that? ‘Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire.’

“God tells us that He does not wish the death of the sinner but rather he be converted and live (Ezekiel 18:23). However, we should note the condition: that he be converted.”

5. “The only important thing for us is to do the will of God, be where he wants us to be, and to do what he expects of us, always with the spirit of humility, conscious of the fact that of ourselves we are nothing and that it is God who works through us and makes use of us to accomplish his work.”

6. “Let time be lacking to us for everything else but never for prayer and you will experience the fact that after prayer you will accomplish a lot in a short period of time.”

7. “In carrying out our everyday tasks, we must endeavor to be aware of God’s presence: call to mind that God and our Angel Guardian are close to us, see what we are doing, and in what frame of mind we are doing it. Hence, we must sanctify our work, our rest, our meals, our wholesome entertainments, as if they were an ongoing prayer.

“Knowing that God is present, it is enough to call Him to mind and from time to time say a few words to Him; Whether of love — ’I love You, Lord,’ — of thanksgiving: ‘Thank You Lord for all Your benefits’ — or of petition: — ‘Lord help me to be faithful to you; forgive me my sins, my ingratitude, my coldness, my failure to understand, my backsliding’ — or of praise — ‘I bless you, Lord, for your greatness and your goodness, for your wisdom, for your power, for your mercy, for your justice, for your love.’ This intimate and familiar converse with God, transforms our work and our daily occupations into a true and abiding life of prayer, making us more pleasing to God and bringing down upon us extra special graces and blessings.”

8. “All we have to do is to follow this Word of Life with faith; to follow it with faith, and also with the simplicity of a child which, aware of its own helplessness, abandons itself in the arms of its Father, where it rests and sleeps securely, because it knows that its Father will carry it safely, protect it and lay it down to rest; and if it should happen to offend its Father by disobeying one of his commands, it knows its Father’s Heart and trusts in His love, and so runs to meet Him, confessing its fault, confident of His forgiveness, and with the same confidence as before, throws itself into his arms.

“In God’s eyes, we are all children. He is the Father of the great human family: He rocks us all in the cradle of His Providence, and leads us all in the ways of love. … Like children in their father’s arms, confident of his infinite mercy, we shall know that our confidence will not be misplaced.”

9. “The work of our redemption began at the moment when the Word descended from Heaven in order to assume a human body in the womb of Mary. From that moment, and for the next nine months, the Blood of Christ was the Blood of Mary, taken from Her Immaculate Heart; the Heart of Christ was beating in unison with the Heart of Mary.

“And we can think that the aspirations of the Heart of Mary were completely identified with the aspirations of the Heart of Christ.

“Mary’s ideal had become the same as Christ Himself, and the love in the Heart of Mary was the love in the Heart of Christ for the Father and for all human beings; to begin with, the entire work of redemption passed through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, through the bond of her close intimate union with the Divine Word … in view of all this and by God’s disposition, Mary became, with Christ, the co-Redemptrix of the human race.”

10. “Since we all need to pray, God asks of us, as a kind of daily installment, a prayer which is within our reach: the Rosary, which can be recited either in common or in private, either in Church in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament or at home, either when traveling or while walking quietly in the fields. A mother of a family can say the Rosary while she rocks her baby’s cradle or does the housework. Our day has 24 hours in it. It is not asking a great deal to set aside a quarter of an hour for the spiritual life, for our intimate and familiar converse with God. 

“I believe that after the liturgical prayer of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the praying of the Rosary, in view of the origin and the sublime nature of the prayers used in it, of the mysteries of the Redemption which we call and on which we meditate during each decade, is the most pleasing prayer we can offer to God and one which is most advantageous to our own souls. If such were not the case, Our Lady would not have asked for it so insistently.”

11. “All children trust in the heart of their mother, and we all know that we have in her place a special affection. The same applies to the Virgin Mary. Thus this message says: “My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.” Hence, the Heart of Mary is a refuge and the way to God for all his children.”

12. “Parents are the ones who must guide their children’s first steps to the altar of God, teaching them to raise their innocent hands and to pray helping them to discover how to find God on their way and to follow the echo of his voice. This is the most serious and important mission that has been entrusted to God to parents; and they must fulfill it so well that throughout their lives, the memory of their parents will always arouse in their children the memory of God and of His teaching.”

13. “A home must be like a garden, where fresh rosebuds are opening, bringing to the world the freshness of innocence, a pure and trusting outlook on life, and the smile of innocent happy children. Only thus does God take pleasure in his creative work, blessing it and turning his fatherly gaze upon it. Any other way of behaving is to divert the work of God from its end, to alter the plans of God, failing to fulfill and carry out the mission that God has entrusted to the married couple.

“Hence, in the Message of Fatima, God calls on us to turn our eyes to the Holy Family of Nazareth, into which He chose to be born, and to grow in grace and stature, in order to present to us a model to imitate, as our footsteps tread the path of our pilgrimage to Heaven.”