Custodians Traveled Millions of Miles...
...with Our Lady of Fatima
By Rex Teodosio
Since 1985, I’ve been helping out with the Fatima apostolate. Back then, as a high school sophomore, I helped out with simple things like passing out invitations to the presentation about Our Lady’s message at Fatima outside churches and in street corners. At times, I even got to operate the slide projector for the audiovisual presentation. Already then you can’t help but notice the interest in this message.
Twenty-five years later, by the grace and mercy of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I’m still involved with this apostolate. Today, I’m blessed to be a full-time Custodian of a Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of Fatima traveling to various parts of the country, spreading her message to as many people as possible. There have been as many as 18 full-time custodians in a calendar year and about as many Fatima Custodian Auxilaries. Over the past decades, I’ve seen this apostolate grow steadily but only recently did I really find out by how much.
Last December, at the year-end meeting of the Custodians of America Needs Fatima, we saw an impressive tally of the number of visits and the amount of travel we have done. In 2009, we visited 2,726 homes giving presentations to over 33,300 attendees (not counting children). The numbers are even more impressive: tallying the past 10 years we have visited over 46,000 homes and over 565,000 attendees (again not counting children). Each of our team vans logs in an estimated average of 20,000 miles a year. In the past 10 years, ten Fatima Custodians traveled an estimated 2,000,000 miles. That is equivalent to 80 trips around the earth’s equator and almost four round trips to the moon at its apogee.
It’s pretty impressive and it’s easy to get lost in the large numbers. However, for me, what has always impressed me more is the amount of graces and blessings people have received.
Recently, in a Fatima presentation, the family matriarch expressed how elated she was. This dignified great-grandmother has had a full life and had attended many functions. Yet, the visit with Our Lady of Fatima impressed her so much, she ranked it as the “happiest and most blessed event in her
whole life.”
Reactions such as hers are common across the country. How many times have Custodians seen this repeated time and again? How many times has the host family expressed how honored they were to receive the Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of Fatima into their home? How frequently do people declare how glad they were to have come despite earlier fears of how boring they thought the presentation would be? How many show so much gratitude for being inspired, many times with tears in their eyes? How many graces received, blessings felt and miracles worked?
For this aspect of the apostolate, there are no impressive numbers. There is only a grace-strewn path left by our heavenly Queen and Mother. For me, this is the big picture. The numbers are quite impressive, but the amount of graces received by people is unquantifiable.
Our vehicles may have completed the equivalent of four trips to the moon and back. But Our Lady’s graces and blessings to those who receive her have certainly brought heaven that much closer.
From Crusade Magazine: May / June 2010
Header Image: In 2009, the Fatima Home Presentations were attended by 33,300 people (not including children). Pictured is Fatima Custodian Mr. Fernando Santos at a home visit in Delaware.
