# For Catholics: Our Lady of Guadalupe



## Galadriel (Aug 26, 2012)

Many of us are familiar with this popular image of the Virgin Mary, "Our Lady of Guadalupe." Equally as interesting is the story behind it.


*Human life is and has always been at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness. The struggle between the "culture of life" and the "culture of death".* *Only Satan can delight in the  death of the living: for death came into the world as a result of the  devil's envy (cf. Wis 2:24). He who is "a murderer from the beginning",  is also "a liar and the father of lies" (Jn 8:44). By deceiving man he  leads him to projects of sin and death, even in many ocassions making  them appear as goals and fruits of life.* 
*Since the beginning of human  history one of the many devil's deceptions has been the instigation of  ritual killings of men, women and children in human sacrifices offered  to different pagan 'gods' and 'godesses' (devils). Being the ones of  innocent children the most deplorable of all. * 
*We read in the Book of  Leviticus how the Lord tells Moses about the serious crime of offering  children to be immolated to Molech, referring to the Canaanite custom of  sacrificing children to the god Molech. The little victims were first  slain and then cremated.* (Leviticus 20,1-5 and 18,21). 





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*In the Americas, five centuries  ago, cruel human sacrificing rituals were performed on a scale never  approached, even remotely, by another peoples. Never before or after in  human history a more open, long running, ritualized and  institutionalized public showcase of the Culture of Death has been  manifested.* *No one will ever know how many  were killed this way. Estimates start from 20,000 to 50,000 a year in  several sources. Recently, Woodrow Borah, possibly the leading authority  on the demography of Mexico at the time of the conquest, has revised  the estimated number of persons sacrificed in central Mexico in the  fifteenth century to 250,000 per year.* 





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Many methods were used. The  victims had their hearts cut out or were decapitated, shot full of  arrows, clawed, sliced to death, stoned, crushed, skinned, buried alive  or tossed from the tops of temples.* *Perhaps the most popular of the  public rituals was taking the victims to the tops of the Aztec pyramids  where they were laid on top of a flat stone. There, the priests cut  open thir chests and their hearts were ripped out. The bodies were then  thrown down the steps of the pyramid.* 

*The two chief gods of the Aztec  pantheon to which most of the sacrifices were made were Huitzilopochtli  and Tezcatlipoca. Their priests painted their bodies black; their  never-cut hair was all caked and matted with dried blood. They filed  their teeth to sharp points. * 
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The climax of these ritual  killings came in 1487 for the dedication of the new and richly decorated  with serpents temple of Huitzilopochtli, in Tenochtitlan (now Mexico  City), when in a single ceremony that lasted four days and four nights,  with the constant beating of giant drums made of snakeskin, the Aztec  ruler and demon worshiper Tlacaellel presided the sacrifice of more than  80,000 men.* *Children were said to be frequent victims, in part because they were considered pure and unspoiled.* 


*Our Lady of Guadalupe, Coatlaxopeuh, crushed this serpent in 1531.*


An Aztec Indian who had converted to Christianity, Juan Diego, on         one of his trips to the chapel was walking through the Tepayac hill         country in central Mexico. Near Tepayac Hill he encountered a beautiful         woman surrounded by a ball of light as bright as the sun. Speaking in         his native tongue, the beautiful lady identified herself:


"My dear little son, I love you. I desire you to know who I am.         I am the ever-virgin Mary, Mother of the true God who gives life and maintains         its existence. He created all things. He is in all places. He is Lord         of Heaven and Earth. I desire a church in this place where your people         may experience my compassion. All those who sincerely ask my help in their         work and in their sorrows will know my Mother's Heart in this place. Here         I will see their tears; I will console them and they will be at peace.         So run now to Tenochtitlan and tell the Bishop all that you have seen         and heard." 

        Juan, age 57, and who had never been to Tenochtitlan, nonetheless immediately         responded to Mary's request. He went to the palace of the Bishop-elect         Fray Juan de Zumarraga and requested to meet immediately with the bishop.         The bishop's servants, who were suspicious of the rural peasant, kept         him waiting for hours. The bishop-elect told Juan that he would consider         the request of the Lady and told him he could visit him again if he so         desired. 


Juan was disappointed by the bishop's response and felt himself         unworthy to persuade someone as important as a bishop. He returned to         the hill where he had first met Mary and found her there waiting for him.         Imploring her to send someone else, she responded:


       "My little son, there are many I could send. But you are the one         I have chosen."

        She then told him to return the next day to the bishop and repeat the         request. On Sunday, after again waiting for hours, Juan met with the bishop         who, on re-hearing his story, asked him to ask the Lady to provide a sign         as a proof of who she was. Juan dutifully returned to the hill and told         Mary, who was again waiting for him there, of the bishop's request. Mary         responded:


       "My little son, am I not your Mother? Do not fear. The Bishop shall         have his sign. Come back to this place tomorrow. Only peace, my little         son."

        Unfortunately, Juan was not able to return to the hill the next day. His         uncle had become mortally ill and Juan stayed with him to care for him.         After two days, with his uncle near death, Juan left his side to find         a priest. Juan had to pass Tepayac Hill to get to the priest. As he was         passing, he found Mary waiting for him. She spoke:


       "Do not be distressed, my littlest son. Am I not here with you who         am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Your uncle         will not die at this time. There is no reason for you to engage a priest,         for his health is restored at this moment. He is quite well. Go to the         top of the hill and cut the flowers that are growing there. Bring them         then to me."

        While it was freezing on the hillside, Juan obeyed Mary's instructions         and went to the top of the hill where he found a full bloom of Castilian         roses. Removing his tilma, a poncho-like cape made of cactus fiber, he         cut the roses and carried them back to Mary. She rearranged the roses         and told him: 


"My little son, this is the sign I am sending to the Bishop. Tell         him that with this sign I request his greatest efforts to complete the         church I desire in this place. Show these flowers to no one else but the         Bishop. You are my trusted ambassador. This time the Bishop will believe         all you tell him."


         At the palace, Juan once again came before the bishop and several of his         advisors. He told the bishop his story and opened the tilma letting the         flowers fall out. But it wasn't the beautiful roses that caused the bishop         and his advisors to fall to their knees; for there, on the tilma, was         a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary precisely as Juan had described her.         The next day, after showing the Tilma at the Cathedral, Juan took the         bishop to the spot where he first met Mary. He then returned to his village         where he met his uncle who was completely cured. His uncle told him he         had met a young woman, surrounded by a soft light, who told him that she         had just sent his nephew to Tenochtitlan with a picture of herself. She         told his uncle:


         "Call me and call my image Santa Maria de Guadalupe".


*(continued below...)
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## Galadriel (Aug 26, 2012)

*Continued...*


It's believed that the word Guadalupe was actually a Spanish mis-translation of the local Aztec dialect. The word that Mary probably used was Coatlallope which means "one who treads on snakes" Within six years of this apparition, six million Aztecs had converted to Catholicism.

The tilma shows Mary as the God-bearer - she is pregnant with her Divine Son. Since the time the tilma was first impressed with a picture of the Mother of God, it has been subject to a variety of environmental hazards including smoke from fires and candles, water from floods and torrential downpours and, in 1921, a bomb which was planted by anti-clerical forces on an altar under it. There was also a cast-iron cross next to the tilma and when the bomb exploded, the cross was twisted out of shape, the marble altar rail was heavily damaged and the tilma was...untouched! Indeed, no one was injured in the Church despite the damage that occurred to a large part of the altar structure.


In 1977, the tilma was examined using infrared photography and digital enhancement techniques. Unlike any painting, the tilma shows no sketching or any sign of outline drawn to permit an artist to produce a painting. Further, the very method used to create the image is still unknown. The image is inexplicable in its longevity and method of production. It can be seen today in a large cathedral built to house up to ten thousand worshipers. It is, by far, the most popular religious pilgrimage site in the Western Hemisphere.


The lesson of Our Lady of Guadalupe is first that Mary, like at the wedding at Cana, points us in the direction of her Son, Jesus: "Do whatever He tells you." Jesus Christ is True God, and false religions and false gods cannot offer the fullness of truth and salvation. Second, this teaches us that the destruction of innocent human life is evil, and a grave sin.

Today we too find ourselves in the midst of an even more enormous and dramatic conflict between good and evil, death and life, the "culture of death" and the "culture of life".


Our Lady protecting the children from the snares of the devil. John Paul II stated at Denver, on the occasion of the Eighth World Youth Day, "with time the threats against life have not grown weaker. They are taking on vast proportions. They are not only threats coming from the outside, from the forces of nature or the 'Cains who kill the Abels'; no, they are scientifically and systematically programmed threats. The twentieth century will have been an era of massive attacks on life, an endless series of wars and a continual taking of innocent human life. False prophets and false teachers have had the greatest success". 

In our days millions of unborn children are killed every year around the globe, in procedures that in some places are not only legal but also officially supported and financed. In many cases the procedures follow the same rules as the sacrifices to the ancient god Molech: the slain and then cremation of the little children.
Just in the United States of America, right next to the land where Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared, more than a million children are killed every year. 32 million abortions were executed in the country just during the first 20 years after abortion was legalized in 1973.

These killings, which dwarf the numbers of the sacrifices of the Aztecs, are not longer executed under the sun in open air, on the top of a pyramid for all the people in town to see and hear, but hidden from anybody except the few personnel of the abortion providers, in facilities that can be found in many cases in shopping centers.

Like during the Aztec times, a variety of methods are used to kill. Like by vacuum aspirations or MVA; dilation and suctions curettage or D&C; saline amniocentesis, or salt poisoning abortions; D&E; "brain suction" or "D&X" methods, etc.


By the D&E method, a pliers-like instrument is used because the baby’s bones are calcified, as is the skull. The practicionist inserts the instrument up into the uterus, seizes a leg or other part of the baby's body, and, with a twisting motion tears it from the body and takes it out of the uterus. This is repeated until all body parts are removed. The spine must be snapped, and the skull crushed to remove them. The nurse’s job is to reassemble the body parts, to be sure that all are removed. In the "D&X" method, used during the 2nd or 3rd trimester of pregnancy, the baby's legs are located and grasped with forceps.


Then the legs are pulled and the baby is delivered up to the head. With the head still intact in the vagina (the head at this stage is too large to pass through the cervix), the practitioner then inserts blunt surgical scissors into the base of the fetal skull and spreads the tips apart. A suction catheter is then inserted into the skull and the brain is sucked out. The skull collapses until the baby’s head can pass through the cervix. The little bodies of the victims are then thrown in dumpsters, incinerated, or sent to be used for research which, under the pretext of scientific or medical progress, in fact reduces human life to the level of simple "biological material" to be freely disposed of.


May the Woman clothed with the sun, in the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Protectress of the Unborn, with her message of Love and Compassion crush the serpent again.


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## Belle Du Jour (Aug 26, 2012)

When I was in RCIA, this was the first Marian apparition that I learned about and found it fascinating.  Regarding abortion, the parallel between our culture and the Aztec culture is alarming and I wonder if people in the future will look back at us with horror like we look at the Aztec Indians?  Our Lady of Guadaloupe, pray for us!


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## auparavant (Aug 27, 2012)

Human sacrifice, yes, it happened but the Spaniards largely played it up much bigger than it actually was in society to justify their manifest destiny over a supposedly "savage" people.  I get this from our Native history and accounts.  What has been written about the Mexica (Aztec) is largely manipulated and adulterated from fact.


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## Galadriel (Aug 28, 2012)

auparavant said:


> Human sacrifice, yes, it happened but the Spaniards largely played it up much bigger than it actually was in society to justify their manifest destiny over a supposedly "savage" people.  I get this from our Native history and accounts.  What has been written about the Mexica (Aztec) is largely manipulated and adulterated from fact.



I was discussing with my BFF (who was born and raised in Jalisco, Mexico) and she explained also that before Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Natives who converted were treated badly. I think that it must've struck Juan Diego as particularly significant that Our Lady's image has that deep olive tone to her skin, and I believe the colors in her mantle, etc. had significance as well for the Natives.


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## Belle Du Jour (Aug 28, 2012)

Has Our lady ever appeared as a dark-skinned or black woman?  I vaguely recall in Rwanda the natives said she had darker skin but I wasn't sure.  She's appeared as an Asian woman at La Vang, right?  It just seems like she can change her appearance to match the culture she's appearing to.


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## Galadriel (Aug 28, 2012)

Belle Du Jour said:


> Has Our lady ever appeared as a dark-skinned or black woman?  I vaguely recall in Rwanda the natives said she had darker skin but I wasn't sure.  She's appeared as an Asian woman at La Vang, right?  It just seems like she can change her appearance to match the culture she's apeparing to.



There is a famous icon known as The Black Madonna in Poland .


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## Belle Du Jour (Aug 28, 2012)

Galadriel said:


> There is a famous icon known as The Black Madonna in Poland .



I've heard people say Our Lady of Czestochowa is dark because of oxidation or damage from smoke.    I swear sometimes white people try to erase black people from everything.  Like I've frequently read the African saints weren't black they were Arab/North African.


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## Galadriel (Aug 28, 2012)

Belle Du Jour said:


> I've heard people say Our Lady of Czestochowa is dark because of oxidation or damage from smoke.    I swear sometimes white people try to erase black people from everything.  Like I've frequently read the African saints weren't black they were Arab/North African.



Seriously! They did the same thing with Saint Augustine. He's black African. Artists in the Middle Ages started painting him with lighter skin because they thought the depictions of him with dark skin made him look like a "Moor."


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## Belle Du Jour (Aug 28, 2012)

Galadriel said:


> Seriously! They did the same thing with Saint Augustine. He's black African. Artists in the Middle Ages started painting him with lighter skin because they thought the depictions of him with dark skin made him look like a "Moor."



OK, I thought so.    I read people say all the time that he wasn't black.    Today is his feast day too


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## auparavant (Aug 28, 2012)

Yeah, there's a whole history of Black Madonnas and saints in the Church.  Black was an auspicious color then.


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## auparavant (Aug 28, 2012)

Galadriel said:


> I was discussing with my BFF (who was born and raised in Jalisco, Mexico) and she explained also that before Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Natives who converted were treated badly. I think that it must've struck Juan Diego as particularly significant that Our Lady's image has that deep olive tone to her skin, and I believe the colors in her mantle, etc. had significance as well for the Natives.



There is an entire discourse on the apparition and the symbolism.  It brought me to tears.  The image turned to the side and it's stars correspond to the pre-Columbian important towns in Meso-America.  There icon is replete with symbolism!  Let me find it....HOld up


Edit: 
http://www.olgaustin.org/symbolism.shtml

Also, that Jesus is similar to Quetzocotl to the Aztecs, who was the "white" g-d who promised to return some day.  But in the imagery, she crushes the head of the serpent.  The legend of Quetzocoatl who returns and the false g-d image is something I wish to study. I think there is a prefigurement for Christ in it.   I also think that symbolism of crushing the serpent head refers to false teachings etc.  Snakes didn't always have a bad image in ancient culture (Moses and the mounted image of healing of the snake etc.).  There's a church today where snakes with crosses on their heads come to venerate the Virgin Mary's icon in Greece.  I think it might confuse  and offend non-catholics, so out of respect,  I don't send it in.  You can pm me for it.  I'm surprised I'm opening up this much about Our Lady...I've had the same fears. ||

"Guadalupe" was the Nahuatl Aztec (Mexica) transliteration of "who crushes the serpent."    None of this is surprising to me.  There's an old Lakota story of a man who would change the world through a tree.  And also, there's the similarity of the Virgin Mary with Buffalo Calf Woman and the story of how the Lakota were taught to pray to G-d via the sacred bundle (pipe).


Interestingly enough, in the first link of the diagram of corresponding symbolism to the image, I see "ishal" in the bottom of her dress.  In Hebrew, that means, "flower of heaven."  Goosebumps!

Lastly, here's the Youtube on the symbolism but in Spanish.  I hope you all can translate it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xspNNVs2Rhk&feature=related


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=XN9CreMGLBc&NR=1



One in English:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mhfm1?v=xe4Ozm0oENk&feature=pyv&ad=7367214512&kw=guadalupe


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## Belle Du Jour (Aug 29, 2012)

Another darker image of Mary: Our Lady of Kibeho


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## Galadriel (Aug 29, 2012)

auparavant thanks for providing these details! I definitely want to study up on this because there are just so many layers to it. Our Lady of Guadalupe is truly splendid.





auparavant said:


> There is an entire discourse on the apparition and the symbolism.  It brought me to tears.  The image turned to the side and it's stars correspond to the pre-Columbian important towns in Meso-America.  There icon is replete with symbolism!  Let me find it....HOld up
> 
> 
> Edit:
> ...


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## Galadriel (Aug 29, 2012)

Belle Du Jour said:


> Another darker image of Mary: Our Lady of Kibeho




Beautiful ...


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## auparavant (Aug 29, 2012)

St. Luke painted her (and is reported to have carved her image as well).  "Guadalupe" predates the apparition in 1531 Mexico by nearly 200 years and if you think about it, by 2,000 if St. Luke carved it.  Amazing.  There's another layer as to who the Mexica people truly are as well and I've heard it various times that some of scripture pointing to Israel is pointing to Indigenous in the Americas as well.  Who knows yet for sure?  But anyhoo, more info:







http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Guadalupe,_Extremadura

And more of La Virgen "trigueña":





St. Mark's Syrian Orthodox Monastery, Jerusalem, painted by St. Luke






St. Thomas Mount Church, Chennai, India, painted by St. Luke:


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## auparavant (Aug 29, 2012)

Index of Black Madonnas worldwide:

http://www.interfaithmarianpilgrimages.com/pages/indexblackmadonnas.htm

Some explanations on the Black Madonnas and iconography and symbolism:


http://www.netplaces.com/virgin-mary/mary-and-the-goddess/black-madonnas.htm


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