Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness, one of many books on Our Lady of Guadalupe, was written by Warren Carroll, depicting in detail the Catholic Church’s arrival in Mexico. At this time in history, the Aztec nation was drowned in human sacrifice and the worship of demons. God changed all that by teaching the Aztecs a whole new way of life through the Franciscan missionaries, including Juan de Zummaraga, the future bishop at the time of St Juan Diego. Life under the rule of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is the complete opposite of life under the rule of the evil that had governed them for so long - a rule of fear, darkness and bloodshed. While many of the Aztecs had been baptized, Warren Carroll notes that the Indians needed the Catholic Faith to become their own, not just a faith brought to them from a land across the ocean.
Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Saint Juan Diego just four years after the Catholic faith was brought to the Aztecs. The Mother of God came to her children and said to them, “Am I not your mother? Am I not of your kind?” “With these words, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, gave back to those who had been Satan’s captives their dignity and their hope. She was of their kind. She was no alien, no stranger. She was theirs” (Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness, p. 134).
Our Lady is ours. She is “of our kind.” The point that Warren Carroll makes of her giving back to the Indians their dignity, is true for all of us. Our Lady, the one assumed into Heaven and crowned as our Queen, gives back to all of us our identity as belonging to Christ.
