31 january, 2014
The Shrine of Fatima is proposing once again this year to its pilgrims and visitors a program of prayer and reflection materialized in a predefined course through several places of the Shrine. The Pilgrim’s Itinerary recalls the apparition and message of July 13, 1917. The course is traveled on foot, but the intention is that the walk be an occasion for meditation.
Designed by Fr. Emanuel Matos Silva, this pastoral proposal begins next to the Rectory, in the direction of the Little Chapel, and then veers towards the Basilica of Most Holy Trinity, where it ends. The course can be made individually or in a group.
Fr. Emanuel Silva explains: «What truly matters is the message of the Heavenly Mother at Fatima and also the pilgrims and, through them, the entire mankind. Structures, texts, celebrations, different services, encounters, all these, in their time and in their way, are simply instruments».
To this priest, the itinerary the Shrine offers to the pilgrims «is one of those instruments that serves, basically, to help each Christian to ‘see better’ the apparitions of Fatima and to walk along its mystery of the revelation of God’s mercy in the midst of the world’s and history’s dramas».
Having as main guides Jesus, Mary and the Little Shepherds, the course proposes an individual test to one’s capacity to love gratuitously and concludes with an invitation to a life converted to the love of God and guided by love and peace.
Fr. Silva goes on to say that «traveling through the Shrine, the ‘Pilgrim’s Itinerary’ walks through, above all, the human and theological experience of pilgrimage, of indigence, of trust in God and Our Lady, of love and gratitude».
The purpose of this pastoral initiative, along with other activities of formation and information which the Shrine has accomplished the last few years, is to promote an approximation of the contents of the Message of Fatima, in order to better prepare and live the Centennial of the Apparitions in 2017.
Practically, the leaflets conceived as maps for the itinerary were published in seven versions, one for each language, because the foreign pilgrims are also invited to make this course of prayer and meditation.
LeopolDina Simões
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