By Rick Salbato
GUADALUPE
The town, which is
now Mexico City, was an island in the center of a lake with three land bridges
leading to it. What Cortez saw when he arrived there was a beautiful city with
a stone pyramid in the middle of it. It was the temple where they held their
religious ceremonies. The Aztecs were afraid of nature, and out of nature they
made their gods. They were afraid of the sun, the moon, the stars, the rain,
the wind, fire, and so on, and they made these their personalized gods and
goddesses. They built idols of these, and they worshipped them in the pyramid
temples. They offered human sacrifices to these gods. They regarded themselves
as "The People of the Sun", since the sun was their primary god. For
fear that the sun might not rise again, they offered human sacrifices to the
sun god. Victims of these sacrifices were often prisoners, slaves, children, or
unwanted babies.
While still alive,
a black-robed, long-haired priest tore out their heart and held it in his hand
offering it to his sun god as he watched the heartless victim die. In some
rituals they mutilated and ate their victims alive. They would kill thousands
of humans on any one of their feast days. On the inauguration day of their
temple pyramid in 1487 they killed over 20,000 people on their altars in one
day.
The mightiest of
their gods was the feathered or stoned serpent to whom many thousands were
sacrificed every year. Another of their gods was the mother god, whose temple
stood on a small hill that would later become Guadalupe. Her head was a
combination of snakes heads and her clothes a mass of living serpents.
When Cortez
arrived, the ruler of the Aztecs was Montezuma the Second. Somehow God had gone
before Cortez, because their mystics were predicting to Montezuma his own
overthrow. His sister had dreamed of the ships with the black cross on their
sails, and of the soldiers with the black crosses on their armor. A prophet
from their past had predicted that a man with white skin and a white beard
would bring them knowledge of the true God.
The Spaniards did
not even have 400 soldiers, and the Aztecs had thousands, but Montezuma was
afraid because of what his prophets had told him and decided to negotiate with
Cortez. On November 8, 1519, Cortez met Montezuma and marched right into the
center of the city. While Cortez negotiated with Montezuma, his remaining
soldiers, who were waiting at the ships, mutinied. Cortez had to leave the city
to put down the rebels. While he was gone, Montezuma attacked the remaining
soldiers in the city, and 300 of Cortez’s 400 men were killed. Some of the men
were sacrificed alive to the snake god.
In spite of his
small force of men, Cortez attacked the city, killed Montezuma and overtook the
Aztecs. This was how the Spaniards took over the Aztecs. They put into place
something called, "First Alliance", and they put in charge ruthless
people who treated the Aztecs like second-rate citizens, even as animals.
King Charles the
Fifth, back in Spain, heard about this and wanted to correct this abuse, so he
appointed a bishop to take charge of the new world.
Bishop Zumeragua
arrived in the New World in 1528 as the first bishop of the New World. He tried
very hard to stop the abuses and overcome the hatred between the Aztecs and the
Spaniards. He brought fruit trees, and agriculture experts, and printing
presses with him. He built schools. He built the College of the Holy Cross,
which would become the largest college in the world.
The Bishop,
however, had a lot of problems with the Spanish soldiers. In fact, they even
attacked him and his monks. The hatred grew so bad between the Spaniards and
the Aztec Indians that the Bishop felt there would be an uprising. He smuggled
out a message in a hollowed out cross to King Charles. King Charles appointed
another Bishop (Don Sebastian Rameres) to be the head of the government in
America and to do away with the "First Alliance".
Before Bishop
Rameres arrived, the situation got so bad that an uprising was imminent. Most
historians agree that if the Aztecs had rebelled at that time they would have been
exterminated by the Spaniards, and all history would have been different.
However, Bishop Zumeragua began to pray to Our Lady.
He asked Our Lady
to send him some Castilian Roses, as a sign that his desperate prayers had been
heard. In the Sixteenth Century there were no Castilian Roses in all the
Americas.
In 40 AD the Virgin
Mary went to Ephesus with John, the Apostle, to destroy the goddess Diana. And
now 1500 years later on a hill that was formerly the temple to the goddess of
the snake, Our Lady appeared to an Indian, one of the few Christians who
existed at the time, Juan Diego.
"Juanito, my
son, where are you going?"
Juan Diego was
shocked at her beauty and could only mumble, "I am on my way to church to
hear Mass."
Our Lady smiled,
"Know for certain that I am the perfect and perpetual Virgin Mary,
Mother of the True God through Whom everything lives - the Lord of all
things, who is the master of heaven and earth. I ardently desire a temple to be
built here to me, where I will show and offer my love and compassion, my help,
my protection to the people. I am your merciful Mother, the Mother of all
who live united in this land and of all mankind, of all those who love me,
of all those who cry to me, of all those who have confidence in me. Here I will
hear their weeping and their sorrows, and will remedy and elevate their
sufferings and misfortunes.
"Therefore, in
order to realize my intentions, go to the house of the bishop of Mexico City,
and tell him that I send you and that it is my desire to have a temple built
here. Tell him all that you have seen and heard. Be assured that I will be very
grateful and will reward you for doing diligently what I have asked of you. Now
that you have heard my words, my son, go and do everything as best as you
can."
Juan bowed his head
reverently, "My Lady, I will do everything that you asked." And he
went down the mountain to see the Bishop.
He returned to Our
Lady the same day. The Bishop was kind but did not believe him.
"I beg You,
Noble Lady, entrust this matter to someone of importance, someone well known
and respected, so that your wish will be accomplished, for I am only a lowly
peasant, and You have sent me to a place where I have no standing. Forgive me
if I have disappointed you, for having failed at my mission."
The Virgin looked
tenderly on him and said,
"Listen to me, My son, and
understand that I have many servants who I could charge with the delivery of My
message, but it is altogether necessary that you should be the one to carry out
this mission. It is through your mediation and assistance that My wish should
be accomplished.
"I wish you to
go to the bishop again tomorrow. Tell him in My Name and make him fully
understand my disposition, that he should undertake the erection of a Church
for which I ask. And repeat to him that it is I, in person, the Ever Virgin
Mary, the Mother of God, who sends you."
Once again the
bishop pushed him out the door saying, "If the Lady could give me a sign
maybe then I could believe."
"What kind of
sign?" asked Juan.
"I leave it up
to Her," he said.
"Come again
tomorrow," Our Lady told Juan, when he had told Her what the bishop had
said, "and I will give you a sign for the bishop."
When Juan went home
he found his uncle sick and dying. Instead of going back to see Our Lady, he
tried to go around the mountain to get a priest for his dying uncle. She
intercepted him on the path at the foot of the mountain. "Where are you
going, my son?"
Juan told Our Lady
about his dying uncle and that he was going to get a priest to give him the
Last Rites. He promised to come back the next day to do as Our Lady had
requested.
"Listen,
and let it penetrate into your heart my dear little son. Do not be troubled or
weighted down with grief. Do not fear any illness, or vexation, anxiety, or pain.
Am I not here, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection?
Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of My Mantle, in the
crossings of My Arms? Is there anything else you need."
"Do not let
the illness of your uncle worry you, because he is not going to die of this
sickness. At this very moment he is cured."
Our lady told Juan
to go up to the top of the mountain and pick the flowers that he would see
there and to bring them down to Her. When he did, She placed them very
carefully in the front part of his tilma which he held in his hands. He then
ran to the bishop with the tilma folded over the flowers.
With much
difficulty he entered into the bishop’s chamber, and there he found himself in
front of two bishops and a priest. The new bishop, who would be the head of all
Mexico, had arrived. The priest was his interpreter.
Juan told his story
and threw down the tilma, and the Castilian Roses fell to the floor. The bishop
was speechless. These were the Castilian Roses that the bishop had prayed to
the Virgin for.
After some time, he
looked up at Juan, and at that instant an image of the Virgin Mary appeared on
the front of the tilma, Juan’s robe. It was done in pictograph form as the
Aztec Indians wrote in their language.
The two bishops,
the priest, and Juan stood in a daze for a long time. Finally the Bishop
removed the Tilma reverently and hugged Juan, asking his forgiveness. News
spread throughout Mexico all night of the miracle. The next day, Juan and the
Bishops led a procession to the site of the future Church. The Indians were so
excited that they jumped up and down and sang songs to Our Lady. "Our Lady
is one of us" they shouted. They shot arrows into the air in celebration.
One of these arrows came down and killed one of the Indians.
The bishop knew
that Our Lady would not allow this sadness on this day, so he placed the Tilma
on the dead man, and he came back to life perfectly healed. The bishop ordered
a chapel to be built immediately until a Cathedral could be built. After the
celebrations, Juan finally returned to his dying uncle. It had been almost two
days since he left him.
Juan found his
uncle perfectly cured as he knew he would be, but he did not expect the story
his uncle told. The Virgin appeared to his uncle at exactly the same time She
was appearing to Juan, cured him, told him the story, and told him Her name.
The name She actually gave was an Aztec Indian word which means, "The
Woman Who Crushes the Head of the Serpent". But the Spaniards
misunderstood the name and took it for "Our Lady of Guadalupe" which
is a famous shrine in Spain where there is a statue of Our Lady that was owned
by Leo the Great in the Fifth Century.
Indians from all
over the Americas in the millions came to see the picture, and miracles
occurred everyday. What did the Indians see? They saw an Indian Lady on that
Tilma blocking out their sun god, standing on their moon and snake gods, and
praying to a God more powerful than Her.
For the first time,
Indians and Spaniards hugged each other. Conversions to the faith happened so
fast that some priests baptized more than 6000 people in a single day. At one
convent alone, two priests baptized 14,200 Indians in five days. Indian women
replaced their mini-skirts with clothes similar to Our Lady. Ten million
Indians were baptized in one year.
The bishop, who
prayed for Our Lady’s help; Cortez, who stopped the slaughter of infant babies;
and Juan Diego, who saw Our Lady; all died in the same year.
In the same year
that Martin Luther took two million people out of the Kingdom of God on Earth,
Our Lady brought ten million in. In fact, the fifty-year span from 1531 to 1581
was the fastest growth of the Catholic Church in the entire 2000-year history
of the Church.
God will not be
mocked.
When Christianity
centered around the East, wealth and prosperity followed, but when they began
to accept the heresies of the Gnostics, the Arians, and the Nestorians, God
moved His Kingdom into Germany, Spain, England and Russia. He then sent
Mohammed, and the once paradise of the world became a desert of poverty and
war.
God will not be
mocked.
When Christianity
began to apostatize in Europe, God moved His Kingdom to the Americas, with the
help of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Wealth followed and Mexico became the wealthiest
Country in the world with the best schools, the best hospitals, and the best
standard of living.
God will not be
mocked.
When the Mexican
Government became Masonic in 1917, and tried to wipe out all Christianity by
killing priests and nuns, confiscating all the schools and hospitals, God moved
His Kingdom to Northern America, and the wealth followed.
God will not be
mocked.
As Christianity in
North America begins to lose the faith, Africa, England, Korea, Japan, and all
the far east is coming alive. In Africa so many people are converting to the
faith that there is a three-year wait to get into the seminaries, and they have
some of the largest seminaries in the world. Africa just built the largest
Catholic Church in the world, even larger than Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
In Korea the Church is doubling in size every year. In the rest of the Far East
conversions are at an all-time high. All the while in Pagan America old-line
Catholics, who failed to even read their Bibles, leave the Kingdom in droves.
God is not
mocked.
Protestants and
Protestant ministers are coming into the Kingdom at an astounding rate, and
they are making the Church come alive again.
God is not
mocked.
Am I a
"Born-Again Christian"? Yes! When I was baptized I became "born
again". Does that mean I am saved? No! Read 1 Cor. 9-27 or Phil 3:11 and
you will see that Paul did not believe "once saved - always saved".
Study your Bible and you will see that the Bible is the story of the Catholic
Church and the Catholic Church is the story of the Bible.
The Word is a two-edged sWord. It’s
time to pick up your sWord and defend Our Lady.
Rick Salbato
Knight of Our Lady [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/07/might-gods-answer-to-francis-new-luther.html]