A tale of two moons

A good friend sent me a link to an article written by Fr. Richard Heilman published in the Roman Catholic Man website on January 30. I am certain that you will find Fr Heilman’s article quite interesting. The title is intriguing enough: January 31 Super Blue Blood Moon And St. John Bosco’s Dream/Prophecy. If you are not familiar with the prophetic dream of St John Bosco, a brief account of it is presented here.

Fr Heilman makes a number of interesting connections. He quotes St John’s Bosco:

“There shall yet come a violent hurricane. Iniquity is at an end, sin shall cease, and before two full moons shall have shone in the month of flowers, the rainbow of peace shall appear on earth … Throughout the world a sun so bright shall shine as never seen since the flames of the Cenacle until today, nor shall it be seen again until the end of time.”

I will not repeat here what Fr Heilman presents in his article but I will add a personal experience that only some of my friends know. I hope I am not judged too harshly for presenting it here. It also came to me as a dream in the wee morning hours of October 13, 2016 — a Fatima day.

In this simple dream I was standing on a patch of grass, next to what I believed to be an old stone house that reminded me of the type of construction one can find in England or Ireland. On my left I could see a corner of the house, with one ojival door and windows. It was dark but there was light inside the house. There was no other source of light. There were no stars visible in the dark sky, only a very white moon that looked almost painted in the northeast quadrant to my left. I sensed that I was standing on an soft incline, looking east I could see nothing but the vague silhouette of a city skyline but it was too dark to distinguish much more. While I was looking up, something quite out of the ordinary happened: a second moon rapidly emerged from the horizon in front of me. It had three tiny satellites that circled it. They were like small dots of various colors. I can remember they were green, red, and blue. Rising rapidly towards the northeast in almost a 45 degree angle, that new moon was soon passing in front of our moon. At that time a number of people joined me in the garden. I remember pointing at the sky to show them the strange phenomena. Those were well dressed people, they looked like nobility, or people that were very wealthy. Their demeanor was calm but a bit sad, like if they were concerned about something. They invited me to go into a room in that building where a number of elderly men were watching a sort of vintage football game on television: Boston Patriots and New Jersey Generals. That was the end of my dream. A rather silly dream it was, quite  exceptional because I rarely remember what I dream. I woke up in the middle of the night wondering if perhaps I had eaten a bit too much for supper. That was Thursday very early in the morning.

That week I had exchanged a few emails with Mark (not his real name) a friend from Staunton, Virginia. We had talked on the phone a few days earlier and he wanted me to go back to Virginia and settle there in Staunton — a lovely town, by the way — After pouring myself a cup of tea I sat at my computer and placed a Google search to take a look. I remembered the local Catholic parish, St. Francis. I decided to visit their site. I learned that the church building had to undergo serious renovations due to some structural problems.  There were plenty of photographs of the building and I started flipping through them when something caught my attention: right there I recognized the patch of grass, the wall, the door, etc. that I had seen in my dream. I was astonished. Then I recalled the dream and wondered why everything was so dark when I was obviously in the middle of a thickly settled area. Dreams are never logical. I called Mark immediately and told him what had happened. Quite astonished himself, he responded that he had the same dream the previous week also — in fact he referred to me some details of my dream. Details that I had not shared with him in my rush to tell him about how I had found the spot by the church. Mark experienced exactly the same vision of the two moons but in his dream he was standing on the back porch of his house. We were both silent for a few seconds. We could not imagine how something like that could have happened but those things have happened to Mark before. This was not his first miracle.

Mark was not a Christian when I met him years ago in Central Virginia. We both moved out of that area but kept in touch through occasional emails. When I was about to travel to Buenos Aires we decided to meet for breakfast at a cafe somewhere in Albemarle County. There he told me the most amazing conversion story. I will share it with you here but I will omit some details not to give away too much of Mark’s identity.

Mark had a road accident years ago and as a result he had to be operated multiple times. During the recovery process he became addicted to pain killers. That must have led to  acute depression because one day, Mark began to have suicidal thoughts. He had been married to his beautiful wife for about a year, he began to think that he was not good enough for her. He planned his suicide carefully in his mind and made sure his wife had full access to his money, insurance papers, etc. He picked a day and a mode of death. The weekend before “the day” his wife asked him to join her in finding a local evangelical church to attend. Mark agreed and they decided that Sunday morning they were going to visit a church nearby. Sunday came, they went there and sat quietly in one available pew. The service began, the pastor stood behind the podium and was silent, pensive for a few seconds. Then he said: “I had word from the Lord. Here among us is a young man who is thinking about committing suicide. The Lord says: ‘Don’t do it, the best days of your life are just ahead of you.'” When the service ended — my American readers know this — a number of people, and the pastor, flocked around the new young faces to welcome them to their church. [1]  The pastor introduced himself to Mark and his wife. Mark — moved by that powerful manifestation of God’s power and mercy — confessed to the pastor that he was the man about to commit suicide. What followed was a thorough and beautiful conversion. Soon after that, Mark got a great new job, and his wife gave him the news that he was going to be a father. Such is the love of God.

Back to the double dream of the double moon. I do not know what it means. I know that it means something because it is fraught with symbolism but I do not dare to  guess its meaning. When I read Fr Heilman’s article — sent to me by a colleague blogger — I felt that I should share my dream with all of you. May be someone can make sense of all that is happening these days.

While I was writing these lines, news came that the Spanish edition of my last book Guadalupe: A River of Light is already available in Mexico, Spain, and the US. That book has some “moon connections” also, since it tells the story of the miraculous conversion of the Mexica people (our modern Mexicans) after the Virgin Mary appeared to San Juan Diego near Tepeyac Hill. You will have to read the book to get the full details but the Mexica called themselves “the people of the navel of the moon” a concept that made them sons and daughters of the forces of darkness, like the moon-goddess that ruled the night and was defeated every morning by her brother, the sun-god ruler of the day.

When I was doing the research for that book, I developed the idea that the social circumstances surrounding the Mexican apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe are part of a divinely arranged parable, perhaps a prophetic model representing the end of our present global civilization. All the elements are there in Aztec religion and culture: human sacrifices to “sustain the environment and the economy” akin to the no less barbaric practice of abortion today, ritual homosexuality, brutal taxation, state terrorism, enslavement of the population, intolerable oppression, etc.

The fall of the Aztec Empire of Moctezuma II was preceded by “signs in the heavens” quite similar to those predicted by Our Lord in Matthew 24.

Moctezuma listened to the account of that vision with a fearful heart. He understood that the ancient prophecy of Quetzalcoatl was about to be fulfilled during his reign. Since he was sitting on the Throne of the Feathered Serpent, he knew he had to relinquish it when Quetzalcoatl arrived to rightfully claim it back. The anxiety in the heart of Moctezuma caused by Papantzin’s vision diminished as the years went by uneventfully. The daily sacrifices and the flower wars continued without interruption until one day in 1510—without any warning or seismic movement—the Lake Texcoco was moved violently out of the lakebed causing great damage and many deaths in the coastal villages. Not long after that strange event, a comet appeared in the night sky.[2] In 1516 a second comet appeared, and then a third one followed by a strong earthquake. Those were bad omens for Emperor Moctezuma and his gods; three times a sun had dared to cross the sky as the gods of darkness watched impotently. Finally, even the Coatlicue, the Earth mother of all the gods was trembling. The Emperor of Mexico was no longer anxious or uneasy, he was now in full panic: it was clear to him that the gods were coming to reclaim his throne.

I do not know if Fr Heilman is correct in his interpretation but it would not surprise me if he is very close to the truth. Ever since I was received in the Church I have seen strange things. It seems to me that we are very near the darkest part of the night. The good side of that is the certainty that a glorious dawn is about to break, conquering darkness with he light of life. Our best days are ahead of us.

Addendum: recommended by a reader,  please visit Emmett O’Reagan’s blog Unveiling the Apocalypse. Check this article:  Pope St. Pius X on the Indefectibility of the Church and the Prophecies of St. John Bosco

This photo was taken on March 31. It is apparently a fulfillment of St John Bosco’s prophecy quoted in Fr Heilman’s article.

---

[1] Note to Catholics: it would be nice to have that lovely Evangelical habit in Catholic parishes instead of rushing to the parking lot at the end of Mass like if the building was on fire, or looking at newcomers with an ice-cold stare. One day we will have to have a conversation on that theme.

[2] The Codex Telleriano-Remensis (Manuscript Mexicain No. 385) depicted “an immense streamer of light leaping from the Earth connecting the horizon to the stars, noted in the Spanish calendar in 1509 A.D.” La Vie Quotidienne des Aztèques a la Veille de la Conquête Espagnole by Jacques Soustelle. Hachette Littératures; Paris, 1955. Halley’s Comet was also visible in 1531, in the year when Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin.