"I Who am Your Mother"

Our Lady of Guadalupe

By Andrew J. Clarendon Editor’s Note: At the recent Angelus Press Conference in Kansas City, Professor Andrew Clarendon presented a keynote address which not unlike his masterful presentation on Pope Pius XII at last year’s Conference, provided brilliant and inspiring analysis that enables us to better understand where we stand in history’s context. Many thanks to Professor Clarendon for allowing us to publish a transcript of his powerful address, and may Our Lady of Guadalupe—who many centuries ago claimed this land as her own, thus tearing it from the cloven clutches of the Serpent—be with us now as the satanic darkness of old returns to the shores of the new world. MJM

History

is a tricky subject. It is an attempt to find trends and patterns in the sometimes chaotic drama of past human events to help us in the present, although it remains true that "human kind / Cannot bear very much reality"

1

and that the same lessons have to be taught over and over. From Saint Paul and Saint Augustine to Dostoevsky and T. S. Eliot many have pointed out how perilous the gift of free will is. In spite of or perhaps because of fallen human will, though, history is really a description of events that involve the plan of Divine Providence, the mysterious entrance of the eternal into time that makes moments in time eternally redeemed. It usually takes many years, even centuries, to really appreciate the ramifications, but there are events that, with our limited human vision, we can say are an extraordinary intervention

1 T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton" in Four Quartets (New York: A Harvest Book, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1971), 42-43.

by Providence to further the merciful aims of the Trinity. Such an occasion is the series of apparitions of Our Lady from December 9 to December 12, 1531 beginning on the hill of Tepeyac north of Tenochtitlán, today’s Mexico City. Like everything else in history, in addition to immeasurable eternal consequences, what happened in this particular time and place happened in the midst of a historical context and is a part of a particular pattern of events. So, before discussing the apparitions, I’d like to begin this evening by providing some of this context.

~ Guadalupe/ Page 8