Five centuries ago, St. Juan Diego was the first believer to meet the
Virgin Mary under the title and appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Today, millions continue to encounter and embrace her motherly presence,
especially on her feast day of Dec. 12.
The story of the Virgin Mary's appearance in Mexico is well-known to
many devotees. On Dec. 9, 1531, Juan Diego –a recently-baptized
indigenous Mexican convert to Catholicism– was hurrying to Mass, to
Celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. But the woman he was
heading to church to celebrate, came to him instead.
Regally attired, and speaking the native Aztec dialect, the radiant
woman announced herself as the “ever-perfect holy Mary, who has the
honor to be the mother of the true God.”
“I am your compassionate Mother, yours and that of all the people
that live together in this land,” she continued, “and also of all the
other various lineages of men.” She asked Juan Diego to make a request
of the local bishop.
“I want very much that they build my sacred little house here” – a
house dedicated to her son Jesus Christ, on the site of a former pagan
temple, that would “show Him” to all Mexicans and “exalt Him” throughout
the world.
She was asking a great deal of the newly-baptized Mexican peasant.
Not surprisingly, his bold request met with skepticism from Bishop Juan
de Zumárraga.
But Juan Diego said he would produce unquestionable proof
of the apparition– just as soon as he was finished tending to his dying
uncle, whose death seemed immanent.
Once again making his way to church on Dec. 12, this time to summon a
priest to his uncle's deathbed, Juan Diego again encountered the
radiant woman. She promised to cure his uncle, and to give him a sign to
display for the bishop.
On the hill where they had first met, she said
he would find roses and other flowers, although it was the middle of
winter.
Doing as she asked, he found the flowers and brought them back to
her.
The Virgin Mary then placed the flowers inside his tilma, the
traditional winter garment he had been wearing, for their storage.
She
instructed him not to unwrap the tilma containing the flowers, until he
had reached the bishop.
When he did, Bishop Zumárraga had his own encounter with Our Lady of
Guadalupe, through the image of her that he found miraculously imprinted
on the flower-filled tilma.
The Mexico City basilica that now houses
that tilma has become, by some estimates, the
most-visited Catholic
shrine in the world.
The outlook for the Catholic Church in Mexico, where European
religious orders had struggled to convey the faith to the native
Mexicans, changed suddenly and dramatically once the tilma appeared.
As
many as nine-million native Mexicans are said to have become Catholic,
between 1832 and 1838.
In 1999, three years before Pope John Paul II canonized St. Juan
Diego, he summed up the significance of the Virgin of Guadalupe for
Catholics throughout the Americas, describing her as the “mother and
evangelizer of America.”
The Pope also noted that “in the next
millennium … (North and South) America will be the continent with the
largest number of Catholics.”
Just as other Catholics might describe their faith as having a
“Franciscan” or “Dominican” emphasis, some Catholics deeply identify
with a “Guadalupan” Catholicism.
That sensibility tends to emphasize the
Virgin Mary's maternal care for all peoples, her identification with
the humble and oppressed, and her call for all cultures to receive the
Gospel message while preserving their own gifts.
Although the Virgin of Guadalupe announced herself to Juan Diego as
the mother of all peoples, devotion to her is understandably strongest
in Mexico and its former territories within the U.S., and among Latino
Catholics everywhere.
The image left for posterity on Juan Diego's tilma
has also been imprinted on their culture and outlook.
For Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio, Texas, devotion
to the Virgin of Guadalupe began before he was even born. As he
explained to CNA on Dec. 10, his mother made a pilgrimage with his
father to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe while she was pregnant
with him.
“When I was in the womb of my mother, my father and my mother went on
a pilgrimage to Mexico City,” about 300 miles from his birthplace in
the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi.
“They took me there, and they
prayed for me.”
“They asked Mary to help raise me as a good kid, and a good
Catholic,” the future archbishop recalled. He and his 14 siblings later
made “many, many pilgrimages” to the shrine.
Like many Mexican and other
Latino Catholics, Archbishop Garcia-Siller remembers the Guadalupe
image as a constant part of his home life, closely associated with the
daily family Rosary and novena prayers for particular needs.
“My faith in Jesus Christ, and in the Church, has a lot to do with her,” he reflected.
Many Latino Catholics celebrating their faith and culture on the
feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe would agree with his statement. His
archdiocese's Cathedral of San Fernando, the oldest active cathedral in
the U.S., has been a center for devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe for
almost 300 years.
And while the city has variously belonged to four
different nations during that time, devotion to her has never changed.
“The devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is very festive,” he
explained. “In the midst of tragic situations that people go through,
(celebrating) Our Lady is an occasion to be festive– because of the hope
that she brings.”
They'll celebrate that hope at Mass, and with processions and
prayers– but also by singing and dancing, eating and drinking, wearing
costumes or watching plays in which children re-enact the story of Juan
Diego. Even those who may not grasp or acknowledge it as a holy day, can
celebrate it as a holiday– and perhaps, Archbishop Garcia-Siller
speculated, they may hear what they image wordlessly conveys.
At San Fernando Cathedral, mariachi musicians and other devotees will
gather “to serenade Our Lady for an hour,” expressing their love in a
variety of songs many know by heart. Some are traditional hymns of the
Church– but “also, there are songs that are popular,” expressing
childlike or chivalrous affection toward “a mother who loves her
children.”
For Catholics of other backgrounds, the experience might be a foreign
one, at least on the surface.
But Archbishop Garcia-Siller noted that
Our Lady of Guadalupe, as a universal mother, can draw together
communities that may not understand their own interconnections.
“Her presence, her message, is for all those who follow Jesus, who want to have a relationship with him,” he said.
SIC: CNA/INT'L