On this holy date, 511 years ago today, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to St. Juan Diego in 1531.
Our Lady of Guadalupe holds a special place in the religious life of Mexicans as well as my late mother Margarita, and their most sacred religious devotions.
My youngest daughter Sabrina was there to pay a visit and worship. She sent me this venerated image on a cloak enshrined within the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Interestingly enough, I covered Pope John Paul II during his pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Pope John Paul II made this papal visit to Mexico during the 1990s, his second visit to Mexico; Preparations for the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the evangelization of the Americas.
As the story goes, on 12 December, Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac. Here, the Blessed Mother told him to climb the hill and to pick the flowers that he would find in bloom.
He obeyed, and although it was wintertime, he found roses flowering. He gathered the flowers and took them to Our Lady who carefully placed them in his mantle and told him to take them to the Bishop as "proof".
When he opened his mantle, the flowers fell on the ground and there remained impressed, in place of the flowers, an image of the Blessed Mother, the apparition at Tepeyac.
Juan Diego lived the rest of his life as a hermit in a small hut near the chapel where the miraculous image was placed for veneration.
Here he cared for the church and the first pilgrims who came to pray to the Mother of Jesus.
Much deeper than the "exterior grace" of having been ‘chosen’ as Our Lady’s ‘messenger,’ Juan Diego received the grace of interior enlightenment and from that moment, he began a life dedicated to prayer and the practice of virtue and boundless love of God and neighbor.
He died in 1548 and was buried in the first chapel dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe.
This miraculous image, which as you can see is preserved in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, shows a woman with native features and dress.
She is supported by an angel whose wings are reminiscent of one of the major gods of the traditional religion of that area.
The moon is beneath her feet and her blue mantle is covered with gold stars. The black girdle about her waist signifies that she is pregnant.
Thus, the image graphically depicts the fact that Christ is to be "born" again among the peoples of the New World, and is a message as relevant to the "New World" today as it was during the lifetime of Juan Diego.
The imagery of the moon and stars evokes the Woman clothed in the sun from Revelation 12, which is the optional first reading for the day.
