Our Lady of Guadalupe

excerpts from encyclopedia of Catholic history - Guadalupe' our lady of.

     The Virgin is depicted with the sun, moon and stars, and an angel beneath a crescent moon, the chief colors are gold, blue, green and rosy red.

     I remember reading about Our Lady of Guadalupe and learning that the reason the Indians accepted the Virgin Mary so easily and quickly is because they had worshiped a moon goddess who required them to off up their children in an holocaust.

     These thoughts have caused me to think about our own Blessed Virgin statue in Our Lady of the Lake Church.

     I understand that our statue of the Blessed Virgin was one of some statues donated to our parish at the time of its 25th anniversary in 1933.  They were installed in the original church.  The Blessed Virgin was placed above the main altar.  When Fr. Carl Wagner built the second church in 1961 He had placed the blessed Virgin statue above the side altar (south side.)

     When Fr. Lawrence Clark became pastor he remodeled the church that Fr. Wagner had built. The main altar was shifted to the north side of the church.  The statues, including that of the Blessed Virgin were not displayed but stored in the pickle factory where they became battered.

     When Father Leo Joyce became pastor he had the statues repaired and painted and placed in the remodeled church.

     I remember I was disappointed to see how they were painted.  The garments of the Blessed Virgin was drab instead of colored, but the thing that bothered me most was missing the red tongue of the serpent.  The bottom orb and the dragon were all covered non-distinct and drab brown with no distinction between orb and serpent.

     Now I am questioning --was meant to be the earth or was it meant to be the moon?  Have we been ignoring the dragon? Hiding it under the moon?

     Many times through the years has the serpent not only been camouflaged, but hidden behind some plantor flower?

     Should we be taking the arts of the serpent more seriously than we have been?  Are we ignoring the power of the moon.