Another Issue of Cornelia's Fatima Newsletter: The Angel of Portugal Speaks! 1916.

The second Apparition [of the Angel] must have been at the height of summer, when the heat of the day was so intense that we had to take the sheep home before noon and only let them out again in the early evening.
One day, we were playing on the stone slabs of the well down at the bottom of the garden belonging to my parents, which we called the Arneiro. Suddenly, we saw beside us the same figure, or rather Angel, as it seemed to me.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “Pray, pray very much! The most holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary have designs of mercy on you. Offer prayers and sacrifices constantly to the Most High.”

“How are we to make sacrifices?” I asked.
“Make of everything you can a sacrifice, and offer it to God as an act of reparation for the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of sinners. You will thus draw down peace upon your country. I am its Angel Guardian, the Angel of Portugal. Above all, accept and bear with submission, the suffering which the Lord will send you.”
These words were indelibly impressed upon our minds. They were like a light which made us understand who God is, how He loves us and desires to be loved, the value of sacrifice, how pleasing it is to Him and how, on account of it, He grants the grace of conversion to sinners.

It was for this reason that we began, from then on, to offer to the Lord all that mortified us, without, however, seeking out other forms of mortification and penance, except that we remained for hours on end with our foreheads touching the ground, repeating the prayer the Angel had taught us.
At the second Apparition, down by the well, Francisco waited a few moments after it was over, then asked:
“You spoke to the Angel. What did he say to you?”
“Didn’t you hear?”
“No. I could see that he was talking to you. I heard what you said to him, but what he said to you, I don’t know.”
As the supernatural atmosphere in which the Angel left us had not yet entirely disappeared, I told him to ask Jacinta or myself the next day.
“Jacinta, you tell me what the Angel said.”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow. Today I can’t talk about it.”
Next day, as soon as he came up to me, he asked me:
“Did you sleep last night? I kept thinking about the Angel, and what he could have said.”
I then told him all that the Angel had said at the first and second Apparitions. But it seemed that he had not received an understanding of all that the words meant, for he asked:
“Who is the Most High? What is the meaning of: ‘The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are attentive to the voice of your supplications’?...”
Having received an answer, he remained deep

in thought for a while, and then broke in with another question. But my mind was not yet free, so I told him to wait until the next day, because at that moment I was unable to speak. He waited quite contentedly, but he did not let slip the very next opportunity of putting more questions. This made Jacinta say to him:
“Listen! We shouldn’t talk much about these things.”
When we spoke about the Angel, I don’t know what it was we felt.
“I don’t know how I feel,” Jacinta said. “I can no longer talk, or sing, or play. I haven’t strength enough for anything.” “Neither have I,” replied Francisco, “But what of it? The Angel is more beautiful than all this. Let’s think about him.”

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[When trouble afflicted Lucia’s home,] I remembered the Angel’s words: “Above all, accept submissively the sacrifices that the Lord will send you.”
At such times, I used to withdraw to a solitary place, so as not to add to my mother’s suffering, by letting her see my own. This place, usually, was our well. There, on my knees, leaning over the edge of the stone slabs that covered the well, my tears mingled with the water below and I offered my suffering to God.
Sometimes, Jacinta and Francisco would come and find me like this, in bitter grief. As my voice was choked with sobs and I couldn’t say a word, they shared my suffering to such a degree that they also wept copious tears.
Then Jacinta made our offering aloud: “My God, it is as an act of reparation, and for the conversion of sinners, that we offer You all these sufferings and sacrifices.”
The formula of the offering was not always exact, but the meaning was always the same.

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