You might describe our situation as desperate: the splendors of Christendom are long-faded, appearing only in the yellowed pages of old history books. Modernism has attacked our Catholic faith, leaving the Church in a state of crisis, perhaps worse than any in her previous history. The world has turned its back on the beckoning of God’s grace and sunk itself into a mire of secularism and materialism, while globalist and Masonic forces seek to establish a world order completely devoid of God.
Yet it is just when the night is darkest that we ought to look for the Morning Star, the harbinger of the dawn and the fading of the moon.
Such, at least, was the experience of Gil Cordero, the humble cowherd of Extremadura, Spain, in the 14th century. It’s about the year 1326, and Cordero, who lives in the city of Caceres near the Wadi Lupe river in Spain, is searching for a lost animal in the mountains. Suddenly, a wondrously beautiful woman appears to him. She tells him that a statue of her lies hidden amidst the crags of the mountain. Faithful Catholics spirited it away there in the early 700s during the Muslim invasion of Spain, which initiated the longest war in history: the Reconquista. This “Reconquest” was the Spaniards’ attempt to reclaim the Iberian Peninsula, which had been overrun by Muslims. Though the Spanish have regained much of their territory, the war is still going on in Cordero’s time, 600 years after it began. The Lady instructs Cordero to bring the local bishop to the spot to recover the statue and build a church in her honor.
At first, the bishop doubts Cordero’s story. But Mary proves the authenticity of her message through miraculous works of mercy. First (the legend goes), the cow reappears, bearing a cross-shaped scar on its chest. And then – far more marvelously – the poor cowherd’s son is brought back to life. The darkness in Cordero’s life turns to dawn. And the bishop believes. The statue is recovered in the place that the Heavenly Lady indicated, and it proves to be the work of St. Luke himself, brought to the Extremadura region of Spain in the early centuries of the Church by St. Leander.
The long-lost statue reappears in Spain at a time of dire need, for the Muslim Marinid Empire in Morocco prepares its engines of war for a final, massive land invasion of Spain to rekindle the flame of Islam there and reverse the progress of reconquest the Spanish Catholics have made over the past several centuries. In the year 1340, Portuguese King Alfonso IV and Castilian King Alfonso XI make a pilgrimage to the statue, now installed in a shrine, laying their swords at the Lady’s feet and placing the coming battle in her hands. Through her intercession, the battle is won. The Catholics break the final attempt by the Muslims at a major land invasion of Spain.
The shrine that King Alfonso IV and King Alfonso XI traveled to stood near the river Wadi Lupe, or Guadalupe.
Fast forward 191 years. Mexico. Another bishop is skeptical of another apparition of a Heavenly Lady. Bishop Juan de Zumarraga at first did not listen to the tale of the Indian Juan Diego about what he saw and heard on his way to Mass, but when the miraculous roses and the miraculous image on the tilma appear, he believes, and the shrine Mary requested is built. Moreover, the name assigned to it echoes the name of the monastery where Zumarraga began his ecclesiastical life back in Spain: Guadalupe. What follows is arguably the largest mass conversion ever. Historian Warren Carroll puts the number of baptisms at nine million in his book Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness. This marks the final obliteration of the Aztec gods.
In the portrait painted by heaven on Juan Diego’s tilma, Mary – grave but loving, majestic but gentle, in her flowing robe the color of the early morning sky adorned with flaring stars – stands on top of a crescent moon. This symbolism, I believe, is a message of encouragement from her, not just for the time of Juan Diego but for our time as well, guaranteeing Mary’s final triumph over all the enemies of Christ.
For in this crescent we see symbolically each of the major enemies of God and the Church, all being trampled and crushed under her pure feet, just like the serpent himself. It is as if, in 1531, heaven wished to assure us of the role Mary would play in the great, cosmic battles of the modern age, our age, in definitively defeating our adversaries. This is not to say that the moon doesn’t contain other symbolic meanings – such as fertility, chastity, or Mary’s reflection of God’s light – but for the moment I wish to reflect on its relationship to the enemies of God.
Consider in the first place that the moon was representative of Metztli, the Aztec moon “goddess” – in reality, a demon (Psalm 95:5), one of that horde who had so long oppressed Mexico, ruling over the dark jungles with staring eyes and jaws discolored by the blood of millions of human sacrifices. Thus, in this celestial image on the tilma, Mary shows her superiority to this demon-goddess, crushing it underfoot, and offering herself as the people’s true mother, thus putting an end to the empire of evil. Indeed, her arrival marks the end of pagan Mexico and the birth of Catholic Mexico.
We have already seen the role that this same Virgin, with the same title, played in 1340 in halting the spread of Islam, symbolized by a blood-red crescent. And this is not even her most famous victory over the Muslims: that distinction must be assigned to the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, where the outnumbered Christian fleet shattered the Muslims and saved Christendom, no doubt through the power of Mary’s Holy Rosary. Aboard one of the sea-kissed ships, there was an image of the Mexican Our Lady of Guadalupe.
This is not the only connection we find in history between Our Lady and the Muslim religion; and indeed, her presence seems to bridge the gap between Islam and communism as well when we move into 20th century history. Bishop Fulton Sheen explains in The World’s First Love:
[T]he Muslims occupied Portugal for centuries. At the time when they were finally driven out, the last Muslim chief had a beautiful daughter by the name of Fatima. A Catholic boy fell in love with her, and for him she not only stayed behind when the Muslims left but even embraced the Faith. The young husband was so much in love with her that he changed the name of the town where he lived to Fatima. Thus, the very place where Our Lady appeared in 1917 bears a historical connection to Fatima the daughter of Mohammed… Since nothing ever happens out of Heaven except with a finesse of all details, I believe that the Blessed Virgin chose to be known as ‘Our Lady of Fatima’ as a pledge and a sign of hope to the Muslim people and as an assurance that they… will one day accept her Divine Son, too.
We know well what dread words Mary uttered at Fatima, about the dangers threatening the Church and the world, and especially “the errors of Russia” – which have spread throughout the world in the form of communism, atheism, and postmodern neo-Marxism. Our Heavenly Mother was aware of this new threat to God’s Church from the beginning, and, again, we find it symbolized with a crescent-shape: in this case, a sickle. The hammer and sickle have ruled over much of the world, but they, too, lie beneath the feet of Mary, ready to be crushed.
As just one example, we can look to 1960s Brazil, where President João Goulart and his revolutionaries sought to force communism on the people. Everything was prepared, including extensive and deeply entrenched communist cells within all facets of society. The communists could taste victory. They were so certain of success that they wrote to the Moscow International Press with the precise date that Brazil would become communist. But, when all seemed lost, a massive Rosary rally was held, with millions of people praying to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to spare them from the fate that Cuba, Poland, Hungary, and so many other places had suffered under the steel grip of the communists. President Goulart, seeing the uprising, panicked and fled the country, and the communist plot dissolved. Brazil was saved. The Virgin had triumphed over the sickle.
The symbols of the Muslim crescent and communist sickle are well-known, and it’s not difficult to see Our Lady’s maternal hand intervening through the centuries-long struggles against these foes. Less well known, however, is the fact that a crescent moon is also a symbol of Freemasonry. Dr. David Harrison, an expert on Freemasonry and a Masonic historian, explains that the crescent moon is a prominent Freemasonic symbol dating back to the 18th century. A crescent moon is also the official emblem of the Shriners, an American Masonic society. Not long after the Battle of Lepanto, Our Lady appeared in Quito, Ecuador, and warned us of the powerful corrupting influence the Freemasonic secret societies would come to wield in the 19th and 20th centuries:
Thus, I make it known to you that from the end of the 19th century and from shortly after the middle of the 20th century, in what is today the Colony and will then be the Republic of Ecuador, the passions will erupt and there will be a total corruption of customs, for Satan will reign almost completely by means of the Masonic Sects. They will focus principally on the children in order to sustain this general corruption… Freemasonry, which will then be in power, will enact iniquitous laws with the aim of doing away with this Sacrament [of marriage], making it easy for everyone to live in sin and encouraging the procreation of illegitimate children born without the blessing of the Church.
The maelstrom of attacks launched in our day against marriage, family, and sexuality – from divorce to birth control to abortion to homosexuality to human trafficking to transgenderism – likely have Masonic roots. We are witnessing what Mary warned of.
But, at the same time, in spite of the colossal crisis we face, we are not to lose hope. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe – with her slight smile and “eyes as deep as the sea,” in Carroll’s phrase – teaches us that.
I think it may be, in fact, that hidden within the gleaming image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas, lies a pledge of Mary’s final triumph over the Freemasons, whose ideas have gained such power over Church and state in our time. For she stands calm and triumphant atop the crescent moon that Freemasonry has adopted as one of its symbols. It, too, will be crushed beneath her feet one day.
I do not think it is a coincidence that each of our great foes – paganism, Islam, communism, and Freemasonry – can be represented by a crescent, and that that crescent lies beneath the feet of Our Lady, she who is “terrible as an army set in array.” The final triumph over these enemies is still to come, but the Virgin stands ready to help us in our battles, as she has proven throughout history, and we await the right time, the time reserved in the heavenly councils, for the total triumph of her Immaculate Heart. It may be nearer than we think. And we may hasten it by fulfilling the requests at Fatima of daily Rosary and First Saturday devotions, and following the example of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who made use of prayer and the Miraculous Medal to convert the Freemasons.
For now, let us take courage. The speech of Our Lady to the humble Juan Diego, as recorded by Carroll, is not just for him, but for us, too: “Listen and be sure, my dear son, that I will protect you; do not be frightened or grieve, or let your heart be dismayed… I am your merciful mother, the mother of all of you who live united in this land, and of all mankind, of all those who love me, of those who cry to me, of those who seek me, of those who have confidence in me.”
(Article by Walker Larson republished from LifeSiteNews.com)
