It is easy, of course, and even natural, to look on the eager initial self-sacrifices of children with some suspicion. Very often they are enjoyed more than endured. Lenten denials, for instance, when first undertaken, will at times more than compensate the new penitent for his empty stomach by filling him with a pietistical glow and the excitement of self-drama. Such adventures are common and short-lived. But it seems unlikely that this could have been true with Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. They did it in secrecy and silence, and, most important, to the tune of no one’s applause.

For Lucia, in a comparative sense, this trial of appetite was slight. She had found, without seeking it, a valid martyrdom at home. Her mother’s reaction was almost fierce. The goblins of falsehood (for Maria Rosa was convinced Lucia was lying) attacked not only her conscience, but seemed clearly in her eyes to have imperilled her respectable standing in the village. Not content to fret in silence until the case was proved or disproved, Maria Rosa appears to have broadcast her distress with some noisy posturing.

“Why should such things happen to me at my time of life?” she asked. “I have always been so careful about my children telling the truth, and now my youngest has to lie in this terrible way!”

The household commotion was only beginning. Its warmth would increase. The only indifferent witness was Lucia’s father, Antonio Santos, who dismissed the whole affair as frantic nonsense dreamed up and sustained by women. Pressed for a more particular opinion, Antonio was even bluntly obscene, and succeeded in detaching himself from nearly all that ensued.

But for Maria Rosa such detachment was not possible. Having launched all the verbal attacks of which she was capable, and having seen them blunted to ineffectiveness by Lucia’s unshakeable insistence that the Lady from heaven was true, she took more practical steps, which Lucia herself has described.

One day, before I went out with the flock, she tried to force me to say I was lying. She tried pleading, threats, and even the broom handle. To all this she only received stubborn silence or confirmation of all that I had already said. She told me to go and get the sheep and to think well during the day that she had never allowed her children to tell lies, let alone lies like this! She said, too, that in the evening she would force me to go to those people to whom I had told the story and confess that I had lied and ask their pardon. I went to get the sheep, and that day my cousins were waiting for me. When they saw me crying they ran up and asked me what was the matter. I told them all that had happened and added:

“What am I to do? Mother says that I am to say that I am lying. How can l?” Then Francisco said to Jacinta: “You see, it was all your fault because you told!” My little cousin begged our forgiveness on her knees and said: “I did very wrong but I will never tell anything to anybody again!”

When Lucia’s mother at last realised that the threat of her broom and the power of her tongue were limited, she decided, and properly, that Father Ferreira, their parish priest, was better equipped than she to meet the devil in head-on collision. One morning, decisively, she accompanied Lucia to the presbytery.

“Now, when you get there,” she said, and she wasn’t fooling, “you get down on your knees and confess that you have lied and lied. Then you beg forgiveness, do you understand? You can explain it as you like to Father Ferreira, but unless we are done with this lie, and make the truth clear to all the people you have tried to deceive, I’ll shut you up in a dark room—do you hear?”

Lucia heard all right, and her fears were genuine. Father Ferreira was an enormous man physically, and though actually soft of voice and gentle within himself, his awesome reputation with Maria Rosa, who lived by his strictures absolutely, made him appear to Lucia as a mountain of authority, a final word, a Daniel with a sword held poised.

But even to the Reverend Father Ferreira, Lucia confessed no lie. The strange words of the beautiful Lady: “You will have much to suffer,” were for the first time etched in clarity. And so too was the grace of God, which stood beside her, bigger than the fear.

Continue to the Next Chapter: June