Our Lady of Guadalupe — And the Men Who Cleared the Way

They were pious Christians. They were also rough–but they had to be.

And we’re not talking about the rough ones who strayed from the commands of the Spanish and papal thrones. Yes, there were bad colonizers–but such is the nature of every endeavor meant to glorify God.

The devil will do his dirty work in souls too.

But the story of Spain’s evangelization of the Americas, a topic on which I have created a sort of ecosystem in both video and article form, is must-know material for the serious Christian. As my ongoing work on Modernism states, we have evolved into a soft people, unable to understand the spirit behind the Church Militant that was the heart of the Catholic Church for centuries and centuries and centuries. We turn the other way when topics of blood martyrs or Reconquista come up, too apathetic to study more in depth on our own beyond the agenda-driven propaganda pushed by enemy-owned publishing houses and schools–not to mention well-meaning teachers who learned it innocently enough themselves. So perhaps my work in itself is a tip of the cap to the Catholic warriors of the past, a spirited effort to blaze a literary trail before God himself comes to hearts and minds of the willing.

A good book:

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the celebration of an apparition that would convert millions of Indian souls when Catholic missionaries couldn’t muster the conversion numbers based on sheer practicality–two reasons being 1) time and numbers, and 2) the obstacles encountered when bad Catholics treated the Indians poorly. Before the Virgen de Guadalupe appeared on Tepeyac Hill, before millions of indigenous hearts turned toward Christ in a single generation, God raised up rough, imperfect, battle-worn men to prepare the ground. This is always his pattern. The fast before the feast. Elijah in the Old Testament. The spirit of Elijah in John the Baptist before the Messiah. And among many others, in the sixteenth century, the conquistadors and Catholic Spain before Our Lady of Guadalupe.

So just 14 years after Luther and the Protest, after a decade of meaningful yet minimal progress on the evangelization front–a mere decade after Cortés and his men cleared the way against murderous, diabolical Aztecs–God basically said, in today’s terms so don’t think I’m disrespecting him, hold my beer. Hold my St Arnold’s beer and watch me glorify my Kingdom.

Some texts say eight million. Some say nine. In just a decade or so, the Catholic Christians lost to Protestantism in Europe were replaced many times over here in the Americas.

That may not matter to many Americans caught up in the religion of America First. But it most certainly needs to matter to Catholic Americans. And I hope that my Protestant friends will see it all through as well.

I know, politics and something called Santa Muerte has greatly altered the Mexican Christian landscape, but still, for those who remain steadfastly Catholic–those are some of the most devout Christians you’ll ever meet.

And they are descendants of a people who were converted by a brave army of Christians–Spanish Christians whom other European countries have always chosen to sully–who had in their very DNA the 800-year war against the infidels for Christ and his Kingdom. Without the Reconquista, perhaps none of us would be Christian–even Martin Luther in 1517.

I doubt many Christians–Catholic or non–know that.

We forget this because we all mix together–in the workplace, in school, even in our marriages. We cannot fathom a world where “one of these” Christian religions not only has it right, but has it on command to preach it from Christ himself. But exist, that world did–and for nearly two millennia, even after Luther.

But the twentieth century has seen a marked victory for the devil and his army. Modernism has trained us to prefer a Church without muscle, a Church Mild-like instead of Militant, a Church allergic to confrontation.

But history is honest.

Columbus sailed not for self-expression or gold for its own sake but under the banner of the Holy Trinity, for the conversion of souls, and for wealth enough to provide the Spanish throne to regain the Holy Land–not to mention for payment to Spanish roughnecks hired to protect those very Indians from neighboring Indian tribes and their lust for human sacrifice!

Similarly, Ferdinand and Isabella saw their monarchy as an instrument of evangelization.

Cortés dismantled an empire of human sacrifice so the Gospel could be preached where demons once demanded blood.

This was Christianity–once upon a time.

Their methods were imperfect, of course. It’s easy to look back and cherry-pick everything they should have done, but we forget all the dangers menacing them–on nearly every front. And yes, among their number were rebels that broke Catholic rank with both the hierarchy and Cortés and Columbus themselves, making the history on some very brave Catholic men the fodder of university classrooms indoctrinating generation after generation to condemn both them and Catholicism. The entire technology and knowledge base they were moving through was limited. But God used their courage and undying persistence–not to mention the hatred history would levy on them–to tear down altars so that Mary could raise her own to her Son.

You want to write that “But God” thing on your Facebook timeline when the air conditioner breaks in September? Think about “But God” when life was a whole lot rougher. And perhaps I’m saying that to myself more than anyone.

But God. After all of that–a that that could never be fully understood by willing men of 2025 much less the unwilling–she came.

And yet so many non-Catholics who don’t understand our particular veneration scoff at the miracle–the miracle of nine million souls who just a decade earlier were watching their sons and daughters by the thousands be dragged off to have their hearts cut out of their chest.

There were four levels of worship in the old sacred texts. God owns one of them on his own. Mary is at another level. Remember the work I’ve been putting out on words–on the war over words. The enemy has stolen our words.

Plus just consider how much we venerate our own mothers or any other woman for that matter “living her best life” on Facebook.

I say all of this with charity. 

Our Lady of Guadalupe did what no army could do: she converted a continent–and she did it humbly, by instructing Juan Diego to go straight to the local Catholic bishop first–who didn’t believe him. Her tilma quelled fear, ended the confusion of living between two worlds, and brought a population the size of New York City to Christian, sacramental baptism in a decade. She completed what men could only begin. She was the ultimate closer–sent by a God who loves allowing his creatures to do great things for him and his glory.

May just one soul read this article and be moved by it. Just one, Lord.

The limitless contrasts in this beautiful story–one on which I haven’t even scratched the surface here–is precisely the point. The Church Militant once fought to clear the way for the Church Maternal. The rough and impetuous Peter was supposed to fight for centuries so that the gentle John could one day see us through the last days. Today, Modernism forces upon us the decree that we must be timid, tolerant of darkness, hesitant to confront the idols of our age. But the pattern of God has not changed. He still calls flawed and sinful men to prepare the soil, to do the dirty work, to fight what must be fought–so that grace may flutter in like a gentle flame in its wake.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.