Looking at a religious pamphlet with a strange image of hell startled me.
Of course at twelve years old, perhaps any piece of artwork by Salvador Dali might have startled me. But my mother gave me the pamphlet to read about Our Lady of Fatima from the Blue Army Center. The pamphlet talked about a subject not many would talk about, the reality that people go to hell. Not only that, but the good news that God wanted to save them from hell. He wanted people to reform, repent and to work for the salvation of others. Through praying the rosary (and by making the five first Saturdays) we would help convert souls, stop Communism from spreading, and even stop wars.
We need Mary's message of reparation because through it many people would come to repent for the ways they disobeyed God's Commandments.
What has this to do with the famous artist Salvador Dali? How did a world famous professed atheist find his way to paint the most religious and Catholic event of the 20th century—Mary's visitation to three shepherd children? It started with John Haffert, the co-founder of the Blue Army, using his life savings to commission a painting of the Fatima vision of hell from Salvador Dali. The story is well-told in Soul Magazine, but I will recap it briefly. Dali's mother was a devout Catholic and his father was a Communist atheist. Hailing from Spain, Dali used Surrealism in his famous works. John Haffert felt that Dali could capture the revelation's imagery of the seers' experience better than any other artist. Over dinner they discussed the commission while Dali ordered escargot and proceeded to eat them using a snail fork. (Hence the imagery of a tortured soul being probed by escargot forks rather than pitchforks in his painting.)
What is remarkable is that Dali struggled with the image of hell until he ended up meeting Sister Lucia while traveling to Fatima, Portugal. He went to the very spot that Sister Lucia had the vision. Sister Lucia was able to meet with Dali, even though she was a cloistered nun, and they had a profound conversation. Over the course of creating the painting, Salvador converted back to Catholicism.
The imagery that Dali painted had a more profound effect on me than reading about Our Lady of Fatima and the vision of hell. It was those long spears poking a hidden and transparent soul that moved me. Dali masterfully revealed in his hellfire a visible arm then a distorted and ripped apart soul. The image of Mary in the corner, with the comfortable and familiar blue mantle wrapped around her conveyed such sympathy in my mind. It was thought-provoking. The Blue Army (World Apostolate of Fatima, Washington, NJ) speaker who visited our church gave out those reprints of the painting which was a tool to spread the message. And what this painting did was to move me to fear hell and pity those who went there.
When the painting was revealed, it at first shocked Haffert, but then he came to realize it would reach people.
Sister Lucia said about the painting, “Hell is spiritual and not physical, and it is impossible for anyone to make an image of hell. The painting comes as close as humanly possible to representing hell.”
The painting's tortured sinner in the throes of hell was Dali's own soul. The personal and profound self-awareness in Dali's work made the reality of Our Lady of Fatima's message immediate and urgent.
As for this Fatima kid, the prayer card with the image of hell profoundly impacted me. God in His wisdom allows things to happen, and I believe John Haffert and Salvador Dali were Mary's chosen instruments to further her message at Fatima.
Source: https://www.bluearmy.com/fatima-vision-of-hell-helped-salvador-dali-return-to-god/
