[Pearls Ep 152: Preparing for Sunday.]
We’re looking at Marian apparitions, how Mary’s timing is always perfect, and the merits of a New Year’s resolution to deepen our devotion to Mary.
Today is the Feast of the Holy Family, and Sunday’s scripture focusses on the Holy Family as well.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is a fitting apparition by the Virgin Mary as it is a rare instance where she appears pregnant.
Let’s start with the great Aztec Empire, which lasted from 1428 until 1521. It arguably reached its zenith with the completion of the great pyramid temple in 1487. The Aztec society is often described as the most blood thirsty in world history, and that is saying something. The dedication of the temple was “celebrated” with the slaughter of tens of thousands of victims. The gods of the Aztecs were a thirsty lot.
The Aztec Empire was formed from an alliance of three kingdoms (or, city-states) and inherited their many gods.
Quetzalcoatle was the Winged Serpent, and was the peaceful god of day and night, or death and resurrection.
Tezcatlipoca was the chief god of the Aztecs, and vanquished the virtuous Quetzalcoatle. Tezcatlipoca is the lord of darkness who demanded human sacrifice.
King Necahualcoyotl, king of Texcoco (one of the Aztec city-states) had a vision of an “Unknown God who paints things with beauty.” Necahualcoyotl turned away from the Aztec practices of human sacrifice and built temples in honor of this “unknown God” (sound familiar), in which human sacrifice was forbidden.
Necahualcoyotl’s son continued his father’s traditions, and in 1515 told the Aztec Emperor, Montezuma, of a dream in which he saw Montezuma would soon lose his throne to foreign invaders from across the sea who would bring the one true religion.
Perhaps the one true god, the unknown god, was the return of Quetzalcoatle? And, perhaps Quetzalcoatle was a mystical symbol for Christ?
Here are a few more details, and you can decide.
Cortez arrived in Mexico on April 22, 1519. That day happened to be a day of feast historically dedicated to Quetzalcoatle.
It also happened to be Good Friday.
In 1521 Emperor Montezuma peacefully handed over the Aztec empire to a small band of Spanish conquistadors.
As extraordinary as that is, the story continues…
The great pyramid was soon demolished, and a Church erected upon its ruins. And it was there, in 1523, that Juan Diego was baptized into the Catholic Church.
Not far from the great pyramid was a hill that was home to the “mother of the gods” – Coatlicue. She was a “devouring mother”, depicted as wearing a neckless of human hearts, and demanded the sacrifice of women and children.
Coatlicue’s temple, the location of so much carnage, was located on a hill – Tepeyac Hill.
And in December of 1531 the true Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, appeared to Juan Diego with the command that a temple be built for her on Tepeyac Hill. Mary announced herself as “Mother of the True God.”
As is well known, our Blessed Mother provided Juan Diego with the miraculous image on his tunic (the tilma), which with other signs, convinced the local authorities of the authenticity of her message to Juan Diego. And today, on Tepeyac Hill, at the exact location of countless human sacrifices to the “mother of the gods” now stands the basilica of the Mother of the True God.
The Blessed Virgin Mary presented herself as a pregnant women at perhaps the most abominable location of child sacrifice, in the same year when Henry VIII was acknowledged the head of the church of England and on the verge of the so-called enlightenment, which would soon usher in a new age of attacks on the family.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is fittingly the patroness of the unborn. But she also has a message for each of us in her words to Juan Diego:
“I am ever Virgin Holy Mary, Mother of the true God from whom all life has come, of the Creator, close to whom is everything the Lord of heaven and earth. I ardently desire that a temple be built for me here, where I can show and offer all my love, compassion, help and protection, for I am your merciful mother. Here I wish to hear and help you, and all those who dwell in this land and all those others who love me, and invoke and place their confidence in me; and to hear your complaints and remedy all your sorrows, hardships, and suffering.”
A timely reminder that we should always turn to our Blessed Mother. By God’s grace she conquered the goddess of the Aztecs – she can conquer our “sorrows, hardships and suffering.”
Christmas blessings –
Steve and Karen Smith
Interior Life
Postscript: Deepening relationship with Mary in 2023.
- Pray more rosaries. Do you pray one a week? Commit to praying two. Do you pray one a day? Add a second on Sunday. Not praying the rosary regularly? Set a goal of a rosary each Sunday. And then build from there.
- Go through one of the Marian Consecrations (more details in follow-up messages).
- Pray the Angelus at noon and 6pm each day.
- Once a week reflect on Mary’s seven sorrows. https://www.immaculee.com/pages/7-sorrows-rosary-prayer
- During Lent (not far off…) pray the Mary’s Way of the Cross (the Stations of the Cross from Mary’s perspective). https://littlesistersofthepoor.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Mary_Way_of_the_Cross_e.pdf
- Pick one of Mary’s major apparitions, learn about it, and pray for Mary’s intercession under that title (more details in the follow-up messages).
- Pray the Lectio Rosary in the Interior Life app.