Fatima and the meaning of eschatological prophecy as a whole

When he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in 2000 the future Pope Benedict XVI, as head of the Church's authoritative Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote the Vatican's official commentary on the "secret of Fatima" whose third part had finally been disclosed after five-sixths of an entire century.

Arguably the key remark of the account of the most famous prophetic vision of the modern era is the following, near its conclusion:

The purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future. Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to mobilize the forces of change in the right direction.

If a believer takes nothing else away from Fatima, it should be this simple affirmation that his or her free will choices have the power to direct human history according to the will and plan of God. And without this founding principle, even the most zealous devotion to this Marian revelation will have missed the whole point.

After all, this is the essence of the Gospel itself: God did not need us in order to create us, but He most definitely needs us in order to save us. In the end, we must choose to give God the sovereignty over our destiny that leads to our salvation; conversely, none of us can go to Hell unless we really choose to go there.

Such is our attitude of faith in assessing not merely the secret of Fatima, but all eschatological prophecy and revelation, whether in modern times or going as far back as such Apocalyptic texts of sacred Scripture like those of Daniel, Ezekiel, and St. John.

To state it again, since it cannot be stressed enough: the whole purpose of end-time prophecy is to present the free human soul with the consequences of human decisions, so as to guide that soul to choose the path lighted by faith.