It is sobering to remember that the visions of Fatima are not just the wishful thinking of three peasant children or the fanciful imaginations of ignorant children.
The visions have been approved by the Church, validated by five popes and given credence by millions.
Therefore we ought to take them seriously.
So on this Feast Day of Our Lady of Fatima I remind myself and you about the vision the children had of hell:
Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke, now falling back on every side like sparks in a huge fire, without weight or equilibrium, and amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear. The demons could be distinguished by their terrifying and repulsive likeness to frightful and unknown animals, all black and transparent. This vision lasted but an instant. How can we ever be grateful enough to our kind heavenly Mother, who had already prepared us by promising, in the first Apparition, to take us to heaven. Otherwise, I think we would have died of fear and terror.
The best sermon on hell consists, of course, of two words:
“Fear hell.”
