Hanging near our dining room table is a reproduction of the image of the Virgen of Guadalupe that was placed on the tilma of the Aztec Juan Diego in 1531 Mexico. I look at it every day as a reminder that this world is surrounded by miracles. These miracles themselves are reminders that the world we live in is not the only world that there is. They remind us that not only is there another world, but that this other world has more power and is thus more real than the one we live in. I, for one, need this reminder, not only every day, but nearly every minute. This world has such a blinding effect, and such a binding effect that it is only through sheer will and the existence of miracles that I can keep my head above its shallow waters: shallow waters, but deep enough to drown in.
It has not always been so. In reading Guadalupe and the Flower World Prophecy (by Joseph Julian Gonzalez and Monique Gonzalez), I am brought back to the reason I decided to study anthropology. It is in the accounts of primitive, ancient, and archaic societies that we find again and again that the primary concern for many of these societies was (and still is for some) encountering God or the gods, both to appease them for favors, and to find a way to join them in eternity. From the aforementioned book Guadalupe, for instance, we have this poem from the pre-Columbian collection of Aztec poems, “Cantares Mexicanos:” ‘It is not true/it is not true/that we came to live here. We came only to sleep, only to dream.’ Clearly, the poet understands that this world is only an illusion in comparison to what else supersedes this world. And clearly, there is a longing in this to find that other world. This is exemplified in another poem from the “Cantares:” ‘Will you scatter your unworthy servants? I am leaving you, my God. I am leaving you my God, giver of life. Where is he, the God, the giver of life? Where do you live?’
We have in Guadalupe an explanation of how the Aztecs and the Mesoamerican world in general were positioned by God – that is, prefigured – to hear the word of Christ through Mary when the miracle of the tilma was given to them. Through this image, they saw ample representations of their heaven, the ‘Flower World’ that they had long imagined. More importantly, they also saw something that they also longed for but did not know: how to get into heaven. For these people to understand, a cuatrerfoil, or four-petal-led flower, was positioned on the pregnant belly of the image of the Virgen Mary. This flower had long been understood by Mesoamericans to represent the portal to heaven. To them, it then became obvious: the Christ to be born from the Virgen was destined to open this portal.
Within a few years, nearly the whole of the 9 million natives still alive in the area of current-day Mexico City converted of their free will to Christianity.
There are so many miraculous things about the image on the tilma that it would and has filled books. There are so many more miracles in this world, of bleeding statues and hosts and spinning suns and impossible cures as well, all presented to us so that we might believe, just as the Aztecs and their neighbors did 500 years ago. But times are different. Whereas before, everyone took the powers of God or of the gods for granted – how else could we exist? – the modern globalist – including most of us - now takes this life, our here and now, for granted as the center of existence. Where, we ask, is the proof of this alternative reality? If I jump off a bridge here, I will splatter on the rocks below. But what effects does the power of Heaven have on me now? Or on the future or past or ever? Where, we ask skeptically, are the blood and guts of this so-called invisible power?
Unlike the Aztecs who pined for the gateway to God, we generally dismiss any signs that it might even exist. If a woman, let’s just say, goes to the grotto of Lourdes and is cured of an incurable cancer – and this has happened dozens of times in recent years alone – we generally deny the miracle. Instead, we call this “psychosomatic healing,” as if labelling something with a Greek word settles the issue. It does not. It merely takes the issue out of the spiritual realm and puts it into the psychological where it sits, just as puzzling to us as before, if not more so. If, for instance, the power of our minds can heal us of great illness, why don’t we use it all the time? And – the elephant in the room – how does it do it? Bueller? Anyone?
The central problem with the above example is that we, as rational globalists, happily and naturally trade a mystical but salient reason for such a cure – that it is done by the maker of Heaven and Earth – for something about which we know nothing. It is not, then, that we are looking for an explanation in this case, but rather are looking for an explanation that will not involve the supernatural. For the average guy, this is not done simply because this is a field of inquiry beyond science. That is acceptable. Rather, it is done to dismiss the possibility of the very existence of the supernatural, no matter what.
This is the sign of our times. It is, as Christ once put it, the Sign of Jonah.
Jonah had to suffer three days in the belly of a fish before he would submit to God’s will. He had been ordered to go to the massive, pagan and enemy city of Nineveh to preach redemption from an impending catastrophe. He would not, and so embarked on a ship going elsewhere. When the ship was caught in a storm and was about to sink, Jonah admitted that the storm was his fault for having disobeyed God – whereby the crew threw him in the ocean. It was there that he was swallowed by a fish (or whale), and where he survived by the will of God for three days. Finally, a chastened Jonah was spit out onto the shores of Nineveh, where he finally did just as he was told. Shockingly, the city repented and was saved.
The Sign of Jonah was a prefiguration of Christ, who spent three days in Hell – in the cave of death – before he rose again to offer redemption to a fallen world. Such was the purpose of the image of the Virgen of Guadalupe, which also, incredibly, was hugely successful.
However: would Jonah or the Virgen be successful now? Of the later, the image still exists, and it truly is filled with miracles, down to its very existence on an otherwise fragile cape of cactus fibers. But who is seeing and believing? Are most of us even capable of believing? Or has our preoccupation with the material world through our successes with science formed an impenetrable block against the reality of the spiritual world?
The Sign of Jonah in essence conveys the need for tremendous suffering to break through the wall that encloses all humanity. This may take the suffering of an individual ‘hero’ or of all of us. This wall once was made of pagan gods, who at least were thought to exist in the spiritual. Now, it is made of an even harder wall built from a complete absorption in the material world.
Miracles are still there to save us from the purgation of suffering. On April 8th, for instance, the central US will have a total eclipse of the sun. It will pass through ALL 7 towns in the US that are named Nineveh, as well as through the one and only Nineveh in Canada. It will first pass through the town of Jonah in Texas. It will allow us to see the allignment of the two brightest “stars” in the sky, Venus and Jupiter as they sit beside the moon, as well as a huge comet that will be at its nearest to the sun and visible in the darkness of the eclipse, a comet that passes by only once every 71 years.
Maybe this is not a miracle warning. There is no voice so far imparting messages to innocents. It certainly isn’t as noteworthy as a cancer cure or the spinning of the sun, either, but it does seem to me that it is in line with other unusual events. The Virgen of Guadalupe was backed by the sun, supported on the moon, and cloaked by the stars. Celestial events are often harbingers of God, such as the Star of Bethlehem. So many other warnings have happened recently or are happening right now, such as those in Fatima and Garabandal and Akita and Rwanda and Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina. I could go on. For those that leave a message, they all speak of one thing: the Sign of Jonah, a warning of impending (and necessary) suffering if we do not open our eyes and our hearts to the greater world. Because we are more blinded than ever, this suffering might well be greater than that which once threatened Nineveh.
The Aztecs saw the tilma and believed. Perhaps nothing will make us see en masse except a long confinement in a cave, in a whale, or in a bunker in Idaho. It certainly is getting harder and harder to see anything beyond our earthly concerns, even when we are allowed by an eclipse to peak into the heavens in daytime. It is necessary that we try. Truth, eternity, beauty, the Totality, whatever we wish to call it, is always worth the effort in a world such as ours where beautiful flowers always wilt and die.
Hanging near our dining room table is a reproduction of the image of the Virgen of Guadalupe that was placed on the tilma of the Aztec Juan Diego in 1531 Mexico. I look at it every day as a reminder that this world is surrounded by miracles. These miracles themselves are reminders that the world we live in is not the only world that there is. They remind us that not only is there another world, but that this other world has more power and is thus more real than the one we live in. I, for one, need this reminder, not only every day, but nearly every minute. This world has such a blinding effect, and such a binding effect that it is only through sheer will and the existence of miracles that I can keep my head above its shallow waters: shallow waters, but deep enough to drown in.
It has not always been so. In reading Guadalupe and the Flower World Prophecy (by Joseph Julian Gonzalez and Monique Gonzalez), I am brought back to the reason I decided to study anthropology. It is in the accounts of primitive, ancient, and archaic societies that we find again and again that the primary concern for many of these societies was (and still is for some) encountering God or the gods, both to appease them for favors, and to find a way to join them in eternity. From the aforementioned book Guadalupe, for instance, we have this poem from the pre-Columbian collection of Aztec poems, “Cantares Mexicanos:” ‘It is not true/it is not true/that we came to live here. We came only to sleep, only to dream.’ Clearly, the poet understands that this world is only an illusion in comparison to what else supersedes this world. And clearly, there is a longing in this to find that other world. This is exemplified in another poem from the “Cantares:” ‘Will you scatter your unworthy servants? I am leaving you, my God. I am leaving you my God, giver of life. Where is he, the God, the giver of life? Where do you live?’
We have in Guadalupe an explanation of how the Aztecs and the Mesoamerican world in general were positioned by God – that is, prefigured – to hear the word of Christ through Mary when the miracle of the tilma was given to them. Through this image, they saw ample representations of their heaven, the ‘Flower World’ that they had long imagined. More importantly, they also saw something that they also longed for but did not know: how to get into heaven. For these people to understand, a cuatrerfoil, or four-petal-led flower, was positioned on the pregnant belly of the image of the Virgen Mary. This flower had long been understood by Mesoamericans to represent the portal to heaven. To them, it then became obvious: the Christ to be born from the Virgen was destined to open this portal.
Within a few years, nearly the whole of the 9 million natives still alive in the area of current-day Mexico City converted of their free will to Christianity.
There are so many miraculous things about the image on the tilma that it would and has filled books. There are so many more miracles in this world, of bleeding statues and hosts and spinning suns and impossible cures as well, all presented to us so that we might believe, just as the Aztecs and their neighbors did 500 years ago. But times are different. Whereas before, everyone took the powers of God or of the gods for granted – how else could we exist? – the modern globalist – including most of us - now takes this life, our here and now, for granted as the center of existence. Where, we ask, is the proof of this alternative reality? If I jump off a bridge here, I will splatter on the rocks below. But what effects does the power of Heaven have on me now? Or on the future or past or ever? Where, we ask skeptically, are the blood and guts of this so-called invisible power?
Unlike the Aztecs who pined for the gateway to God, we generally dismiss any signs that it might even exist. If a woman, let’s just say, goes to the grotto of Lourdes and is cured of an incurable cancer – and this has happened dozens of times in recent years alone – we generally deny the miracle. Instead, we call this “psychosomatic healing,” as if labelling something with a Greek word settles the issue. It does not. It merely takes the issue out of the spiritual realm and puts it into the psychological where it sits, just as puzzling to us as before, if not more so. If, for instance, the power of our minds can heal us of great illness, why don’t we use it all the time? And – the elephant in the room – how does it do it? Bueller? Anyone?
The central problem with the above example is that we, as rational globalists, happily and naturally trade a mystical but salient reason for such a cure – that it is done by the maker of Heaven and Earth – for something about which we know nothing. It is not, then, that we are looking for an explanation in this case, but rather are looking for an explanation that will not involve the supernatural. For the average guy, this is not done simply because this is a field of inquiry beyond science. That is acceptable. Rather, it is done to dismiss the possibility of the very existence of the supernatural, no matter what.
This is the sign of our times. It is, as Christ once put it, the Sign of Jonah.
Jonah had to suffer three days in the belly of a fish before he would submit to God’s will. He had been ordered to go to the massive, pagan and enemy city of Nineveh to preach redemption from an impending catastrophe. He would not, and so embarked on a ship going elsewhere. When the ship was caught in a storm and was about to sink, Jonah admitted that the storm was his fault for having disobeyed God – whereby the crew threw him in the ocean. It was there that he was swallowed by a fish (or whale), and where he survived by the will of God for three days. Finally, a chastened Jonah was spit out onto the shores of Nineveh, where he finally did just as he was told. Shockingly, the city repented and was saved.
The Sign of Jonah was a prefiguration of Christ, who spent three days in Hell – in the cave of death – before he rose again to offer redemption to a fallen world. Such was the purpose of the image of the Virgen of Guadalupe, which also, incredibly, was hugely successful.
However: would Jonah or the Virgen be successful now? Of the later, the image still exists, and it truly is filled with miracles, down to its very existence on an otherwise fragile cape of cactus fibers. But who is seeing and believing? Are most of us even capable of believing? Or has our preoccupation with the material world through our successes with science formed an impenetrable block against the reality of the spiritual world?
The Sign of Jonah in essence conveys the need for tremendous suffering to break through the wall that encloses all humanity. This may take the suffering of an individual ‘hero’ or of all of us. This wall once was made of pagan gods, who at least were thought to exist in the spiritual. Now, it is made of an even harder wall built from a complete absorption in the material world.
Miracles are still there to save us from the purgation of suffering. On April 8th, for instance, the central US will have a total eclipse of the sun. It will pass through ALL 7 towns in the US that are named Nineveh, as well as through the one and only Nineveh in Canada. It will first pass through the town of Jonah in Texas. It will allow us to see the allignment of the two brightest “stars” in the sky, Venus and Jupiter as they sit beside the moon, as well as a huge comet that will be at its nearest to the sun and visible in the darkness of the eclipse, a comet that passes by only once every 71 years.
Maybe this is not a miracle warning. There is no voice so far imparting messages to innocents. It certainly isn’t as noteworthy as a cancer cure or the spinning of the sun, either, but it does seem to me that it is in line with other unusual events. The Virgen of Guadalupe was backed by the sun, supported on the moon, and cloaked by the stars. Celestial events are often harbingers of God, such as the Star of Bethlehem. So many other warnings have happened recently or are happening right now, such as those in Fatima and Garabandal and Akita and Rwanda and Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina. I could go on. For those that leave a message, they all speak of one thing: the Sign of Jonah, a warning of impending (and necessary) suffering if we do not open our eyes and our hearts to the greater world. Because we are more blinded than ever, this suffering might well be greater than that which once threatened Nineveh.
The Aztecs saw the tilma and believed. Perhaps nothing will make us see en masse except a long confinement in a cave, in a whale, or in a bunker in Idaho. It certainly is getting harder and harder to see anything beyond our earthly concerns, even when we are allowed by an eclipse to peak into the heavens in daytime. It is necessary that we try. Truth, eternity, beauty, the Totality, whatever we wish to call it, is always worth the effort in a world such as ours where beautiful flowers always wilt and die.
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