“A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.” — Revelation 12:1

In the morning twilight of Dec. 9, 1531, a breathtaking chorus of birdsong stopped the Aztec Indian Juan Diego in his tracks as he was rounding the foot of a hill called Tepeyac. The birds’ music so enthralled the fervent convert that he asked himself whether he was in a dream or, perhaps, even in Heaven, for the hill itself seemed to be singing responses to the birds each time their chorus quieted, a miraculous symphony of nature greeting the dawn. But the music ceased, and Juan Diego heard a woman’s voice calling from the hilltop: “Juanito! Juan Dieguito!” 

Mystified, he ascended in the half-light to find a beautiful mestiza maiden awaiting him above, her raiment shining like the sun. Even the crag on which she stood radiated light. Perhaps Juan Diego thought of the Woman of Revelation with the moon under her feet — or perhaps he was too captivated even to think, for, according to the Nican Mopohua, the earliest and most authoritative account of the Guadalupe apparitions, the hilltop itself shone “like a rainbow in the mist” while its usual flora — the mesquite trees and cacti and other plants — looked like emeralds, their foliage like fine turquoise, and their branches and thorns like glittering gold.

The resplendent Maiden wore a black sash above her waist, meaning she had a baby in her womb, while her loose hair proclaimed her virginity — two signs recognizable to any Aztec. Juan Diego prostrated himself before her.

“Listen, my youngest son, Juanito,” she said. “Where are you going?”

He answered in a perplexity of love and veneration. “My Lady, my Queen, my beloved Maiden, I am on my way to your house in Tlatilolco to follow the things of God given us by those who are the images of Our Lord, our priests.”

Her house, he said, because he knew in his heart who she was, which she confirmed: “Know for certain, my littlest son, that I am the ever-virgin Santa María, Mother of the True God, by whom you live.”

Clearly, this humble Aztec peasant, although converted from the most hellish sort of paganism only a few short years before, was better catechized than are many putative Catholics today, for he understood both in persona Christi and the Blessed Virgin’s motherhood of all believers.

Only a decade had passed since the Spanish conquistadors’ conquest of the Aztec Empire after the murder of its ruler, Montezuma, by his own people — not because he reportedly ate the flesh of children, but because he had allowed the conquistadors, those foreigners who demanded an end to idol worship, human sacrifice, sodomy and cannibalism, to camp in his palace and detain him there. The Aztecs’ killing of their own emperor began a frenzy of attacks on Cortés and his men by all the massed warriors of the Aztec empire — attacks the Spaniards answered with legendary grit.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a conquistador on the scene, relates:

But as the numbers of our opponents were so immense, and as they constantly brought up fresh troops, even if we had been 10,000 Hectors of Troy, and as many Rolands, we could not have beaten them off; nor can I give any idea of the desperation of this battle; for though in every charge we made upon them we brought down 30 and even 40, it was of no avail; they came on even with more spirit than at first, nor could we, by our cannon or firearms, make any impression on them.

Only by a miracle of ferocious soldiering did Captain Hernán Cortés finally escape destruction along with a battered remnant of his force, leaving behind, after five days’ fighting, “upwards of 870” Spanish soldiers and 1,200 of his native allies, men of Tlaxcala, dead or dying in the Aztecs’ clutches.

Let us compare the hilltop where the Maiden stood so miraculously resplendent — that Heaven on earth bedecked in soft hues as of a rainbow veiled in mist — with the bloody stone platform atop the Aztec pyramid in Tenochtitlán where, only a decade earlier, countless human sacrificial “offerings,” splayed out on a demon’s altar, had baked under the searing Mexican sun as the Aztec “priest” drove his razor-sharp obsidian blade into each victim’s sternum to get at the beating heart and lift it toward that satanically-worshiped sun. The victim’s corpse would soon be tossed away to roll down the pyramid’s long, steep course of stone steps for butchering and devouring by his fellow man.

Yet even greater horrors were demanded by the so-called Tlaloques, the gods of water and rain. While that anthropomorphized sun named Huitzilopochtli thirsted for the slaughter of one’s fellow man (or so the pagans believed), these “gods” savored the flesh of little boys and girls.

Franciscan missionary Father Bernardino de Sahagún, pioneering ethnographer of 16th-century Mexico, describes a festival celebrated annually before the conquest achieved by Captain Cortés and his men:

On the initial days of the first month of the year … which began on the second day of February, they would celebrate a great festival in honor of the gods of water or rain, called Tlaloque.

For this festival, they would seek out many nursing babies and buy them from their mothers. They would choose the ones who had two cowlicks [or crowns] on their head and had been born under a good sign. They said that these were the most pleasing sacrifice to these gods, so that they might grant them rain at the right time. They would take these children to be killed on the high mountains, where they had made a vow to make offerings. They would tear out the hearts of some of them on those mountains, while they would do the same to the others in certain spots on the lagoon of Mexico. … Every year they would kill a great number of children in these places. When they were dead, they would cook and eat them.

Before taking them to be killed, they would adorn these wretched children with precious stones, valuable feathers, very finely embroidered capes and maxtles [loincloths], and finely carved sandals. And they would put some paper wings on them, like angels, and dye their faces with ulli oil; and in the middle of their cheeks, they would paint a small, white disk.

And they would place them on some litters that were highly adorned with valuable feathers and other rich jewels. And as they carried them on the litters, they would be playing music for them on the flutes and trumpets that they used. And all the people would weep wherever they carried them.

These sacrificial child-victims were taken to a temple where they would be kept sleepless all night by Aztec “priests” singing to keep them awake.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo depicts the Aztec priests:

These priests … wore their hair very long, down to the waist, with some even reaching down to the feet, covered with blood and so matted together that it could not be separated, and their ears were cut to pieces by way of sacrifice, and they stank like sulfur, and they had another bad smell like carrion, and … these priests were the sons of chiefs and they abstained from women, but they indulged in the cursed practice of sodomy.

As for the child-victims, Father Sahagún continues:

And when the children were about to reach the places where they were to be killed, if they happened to go along weeping and shedding many tears, those who saw them crying would rejoice, for they said that this was a sign that it would soon rain.

The satanic horrors plaguing the peoples of Mexico — the gut-wrenching spectacles of child sacrifice and cannibalism, the nauseating filth paraded by the “priests” and their sodomy flaunted as abstinence from women — demanded a Christian conquest, a civilization imposed by force of arms if necessary.

But how could the natives trust the God of the conquistadors after those doughty men of arms had abolished their sacrifices and laid waste their temples begrimed with the putrid scraps and congealed blood of countless images of Almighty God slaughtered by their own devil-priests?

Mexico needed a deep cleansing, a disinfection such as only brash sunshine can provide.

Enter the dazzling, resplendent Maiden on the hilltop, the ever-virgin Mother of God bearing the testimony of her Son, Jesus Christ, come to free Mexico from Satan’s talons.

One of their own, a mestiza Maiden clothed with the sun, had come to call them out of the horrors of the past and into the marvelous light of her Son, the Light of the World, a meek, Almighty God who is Love.

As news of the miracle spread, a New-World Pentecost ensued, a flood of conversions sweeping an empire, snatching millions of captive souls out of hell’s greedy jaws.

Luke O’Hara lived 23 years in Japan, where his interest in Japan’s martyrs drew him into the Catholic Church. His articles and books can be found on his websites, kirishtan.com and lukeohara.com.