+As Mary received recognition, as still more Christians discussed her pureness and the concept that she had been free from original sin, as they spoke of her Assumption into Heaven and accepted the powers of her intercession, so was she empowered to unleash more signs, so could she help more directly.
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In 714 she appeared in Constantinople to the mother of Saint Stephen the Younger, predicting the birth of that holy martyr, and showed herself to the abbottress of a monastery in Montreiul, France, half a century later. Most awesome was her place high up Montserrat, a most extraordinary mountain with soaring pillars and ramparts that reached a height of 4,055 feet north of Barcelona.
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There was a hermitage up there and during the Arab invasions it was a major place of refuge as Muslims swept across the Iberian Peninsula — across the old territory of James — and sought to destroy anything Christian, causing the frenzied Catholics to hide many of their most precious relics, including the statue that had been given to Bishop Eterius (which on April 22, 718, was taken to Montserrat and like the image of Guadalupe and many others hidden in a hole or cave).
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Up there with eagles the image transformed Montserrat into a huge altar that seemed to look upon the entire continent.
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Below, across Europe, the spiritual landscape was greatly influenced by the Blessed Mother, who continued to work spreading her purity in areas that had long been marred, had long been contaminated, by Druids and other occultists. It was a most serious form of idolatry and the human sacrifices by long-robed Druids in wooded areas had alarmed even the Romans.
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There was something unusually spooky about the Druids (perhaps it was because they operated in darkness or the legends that they could conjure remarkable magic, creating an actual fog), and their essence was that of other pagans, worshipping the moon and sun or nature spirits like those thought to inhabit the mighty oak and other trees of the forest.
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Such occultism had been targeted by Christians from the very start and was dangerous because it revered the creation instead of the Creator and spread the false notion that utopia — that Heaven — could be achieved on earth.
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Worse, as Saint Paul had indicated, the worship of nature spirits was the worship of devils, and just as Mary had quietly and secretly ushered in Jesus to a world of pagans seven centuries before, so was she now quietly but powerfully moving into Western Europe; so was she now overcoming occultists not with warfare, not with an inquisition, but by the simple sweet grace which the Holy Spirit had formed in her.
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She had an intimate relation with the Church from its very beginning and now, while never equating her with Jesus (Timothy 2:5), the Church in both the West and East, Roman and Byzantine, knew her as a most extraordinary intercessor, an ambassador, an exorcist, her prayers heard in a special way because of her purity and obedience.
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When humans asked for her prayer, when they sought her in the Name of Christ, she answered. In some way she always answered. She drew grace from Christ. She had a reservoir of it. And she shared.
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She shared with those who implored her and placed them under the cloak of her protection. While the Antichrist had not arrived in 500 as many had foreseen, there was still plenty of evil and Mary was sent because no one doing evil, no one infested with a demon, could stay near her. They had to convert or take leave. She was stronger than the dark angel.
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She had to struggle like anyone on his territory but it was already written that she would win, that Christ would triumph, even if the devil in his pride couldn’t accept that, even if he refused to accept the inevitable. Clearly the victory at Calvary had brought Satan into a near-panic and he was determined now to do anything to erase that victory and claim the earth by the end of time. It’s what one might call the “end-game.”
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How could he be prince of the world if people turned to Jesus?
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[resources: excerpted from The Last Secret]
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