Thoughts on the day of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Wikipedia has a very nice summary of St. Juan Diego's encounter with the Virgin Mary, as the Lady of Guadalupe, that took place in 1531 over the December 9 through December 12 timeframe. The Catholic Church feast day is celebrated on December 12.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Diego

The Encounter

On Saturday morning, December 9, 1531, he reported the following: As he was walking to church, he heard the sound of birds singing on Tepeyac hill and someone calling his name. He ran up the hill, and saw a Lady, dressed like an Aztec princess. The Lady spoke to him in Nahuatl, his native tongue. She called him “Xocoyte,” her little son. He responded by calling her “Xocoyata,” his littlest daughter. The Lady asked Juan Diego to tell the bishop of Mexico, a Franciscan named Juan de Zumárraga, that she wanted a “teocalli,” a sacred little house, to be built on the spot where she stood.

Recognizing the Lady as the Virgin Mary, Juan Diego went to the bishop as instructed, but the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga was doubtful and told Juan Diego he needed a sign. Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac hill and explained to the Lady that the bishop did not believe him. He implored the Lady to use another messenger, insisting he was not worthy. The Lady insisted he return to the bishop. On Sunday, Juan Diego did as the Lady directed, but again the bishop asked for a sign. Later that day, the Lady promised Juan Diego she would give him a sign the following day.

According to Juan Diego, he returned home that night to his uncle Juan Bernardino’s house, and discovered him seriously ill. The next morning December 12, Juan Diego decided not to meet with the Lady, but to find a priest who could administer the last rites to his dying uncle. When he tried to skirt around Tepeyac hill, the Lady stopped him, assured him his uncle would not die, and asked him to climb the hill and gather flowers. It was December, when normally nothing blooms in the cold. There he found roses from the region of Castille in Spain, former home of bishop Zumárraga. The Lady placed the roses carefully inside the folded tilma that Juan Diego wore and told him not to open it before anyone but the bishop. When Juan Diego unfolded his tilma before the Bishop roses cascaded from his tilm, and icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously impressed on the cloth, bringing the bishop to his knees.

The bishop acknowledged the miracle and within two weeks, ordered a shrine to be built where the Virgin Mary had appeared. The bishop then entrusted the image to Juan Diego, who chose to live, until his death at age of 74 — on May 30, 1548 — in a small hermitage near the spot where the Virgin Mary had appeared. There he cared for the chapel and the first pilgrims who came to pray there, propagating the account of the apparitions in Mexico.

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I know it is hard to have faith in these modern cynical times. One of my greatest joys is seeing the great faith of those who believe in the proof that they can see with their very eyes, in the writings that record this visitation and the tilm cloth itself, with the miraculous image.

Some time ago there was argument about whether Juan Diego existed and so forth. Records were found, including his death certificate. Scientific examination of the tilm cloth image of Mary have even revealed the reflection in her eyes of all the people present at the time the image was unrolled and discovered.

I want to point out the most powerful and straightforward evidence of logic of all, as a way to enrich contemplation and prayer on this day. At this time of the conquest of the Aztec Indians, no one in their wildest dreams would have thought to create an image of Mary as a pregnant Aztec princess except for, of course, God himself who sent Mary to lead and console an afflicted people (their own affliction of a culture of death and human sacrifice plus the reality of being invaded). A poor and humble man would never have thought of marching to a Catholic Church of the conquerors with an image of their most revered Virgin Mary portrayed as a brown skinned native woman who was dressed in maternity garb.

Another thing people have wondered is why Juan Diego was chosen. Only God can fully answer that but if you reflect on his life, he was an early convert to Catholicism but more important, he had a pure and honest humility, living a chaste life even with a wife, and most important, he had an attentive silence. Most appearances of Mary have been to the humble, quiet child or adult, often in the wilderness or the sheep fields. It is not so much that Mary or God "chose" a person as being "more virtuous" than anyone else, but it is rather, he is the one who was capable of hearing her through his innate attentive silence. Like Lucia at Fatima, Juan Diego had the ability to hear and see Mary in fullness. Much of that is that "emptiness of spirit" that Jesus refers to in the Beatitudes. It is not a negative emptiness, but a positive open space that welcomes by its non-presumptuous purity and simplicity the connection with the outreach of Mary.