Guadalupe - Things We Don't Often Hear

Still prepping for Saturday:

A couple of years back, I read Donal Anthony Flew's Marian Apparitions, the Bible, and the Modern World, and was surprised by the background information it contained on Mary's appearance outside Mexico City.  I had heard before how the Aztecs were looking for the return of their pale-faced god, Quetzalcoatl, and his reclamation of their empire, and how the Aztecs thought Cortes was either Quatzalcoatl's emissary, or the god himself.  What I had never come across before was how ten years before Cortes arrival, Princess Papantzin, sister of the Aztec ruler Montezuma, fell into a coma and was buried.  She revived in the tomb and recounted for her brother the dream she had had.  Dolan narrates, "In it she was taken by a shining being with a black cross on his forehead to the shore of the ocean to see a number of ships with black crosses on their sails approaching.  She was told that these were the future conquerors of the country, who would also bring knowledge of the true God" (p.8).

The Aztecs expected Quatzalcoatl to return on his personal name day according to their calendar and to be wearing black when he did so.  It just so happened that Cortes arrived in the New World in ships with black crosses on the sails and stepped ashore wearing black due to the date on the Christian calendar, Good Friday (April 22, 1519).