Happy Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe!
Today is the day that we celebrate the anniversary of an amazing miracle.
Backstory
When Cortes reached the new world in 1519, he helped end the reign of terror by the Aztecs which practiced the evil, pagan practice of human sacrifice. They sacrificed 20,000 captured indigenous people every year by marching them up to the top of the temples, holding them down, and cutting out their still-beating heart with a knife fashion from obsidian glass (volcanic lava). 30 years prior to Cortes' arrival, the Aztecs sacrificed 80,000 in a four-day period. They were feared throughout the land.
(Editor's note: please don't read that I am white-washing the Spanish's actions toward the Mexicans. They practiced slavery, face-branding, etc. They were horribly abusive. In one defense, they did bring Franciscan priests to help convert the pagan population.)
In 1531, less that 20 decades after Martin Luther's 95 Thesis' was written, Christianity had not spread very far into modern-day Mexico.
Early one morning, on Dec 9, a Nahua peasant was walking to mass around Tepeyac Hill (near Mexico City) to pray for his sick uncle when he was approached by a young of mixed Indigenous and European features (mestiza) wearing a turquoise-colored mantle surrounded by a sunburst. She tells to Juan Diego to go to the bishop (Juan de Zumarraga) and request that a church be built at the top of the hill.
He goes to tell the bishop. He waits nearly all day. The bishop finally meets with him and Juan Diego explains what happened and what she said. He says to come back with proof.
He leaves and see the woman the following morning and relays what the bishop said to him. She says to come back on the 11th.
However, on the next day, Juan Diego's uncle became very sick and he was obligated to stay and care for him. Juan Diego set out the next to find a priest for his uncle. He was determined to get there quickly and didn't want to face the Virgin Mary with shame for missing the previous day's meeting.
She looked at him and asked "
No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?" (Am I not here, I who am your mother?) She promised him his uncle would be cured and asked him to climb to the hill and collect the flowers growing there. He obeyed and found many flowers (Castilian Roses) which blooming in December on the rocky land when roses don't typically bloom. He filled his tilma (cloak) with flowers and returned to Mary.
Like a carrying mother, the Virgin Mary arranged the flowers within his cloak and told him this would be the sign he is to present to the bishop.
Once Juan Diego found the bishop, he opened his cloak and showed him the out-of-season blooming flowers.
The roses were not the sign. When Juan Diego dropped the roses, the bishop was presented with a miraculous imprinted image of the Virgin Mary on the previously, flower-filled cloak.
When Juan Diego arrived back home his uncle was miraculously cured, and he stated that he also met the Virgin Mary.
The bishop did have a shrine built on Tepeyac Hill and now the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the most visited shrines in the world.
As a result of the Virgin Mary's appearance, more than 9 million pagans converted to Christianity within 10 years.
Miraculously, 475 years later, the tilma, made from cactus fibers, which normally disintegrates in 50 years, is still intact. Scientific study shows no sketch underneath. No brush strokes. The colors appear to be fused to the fibers. The stars on our Lady's mantle match the constellations in the sky that fateful night of December 12, 1531.
In 1921, the Mexico government was persecuting the Catholic Church during the Cristero War. An operative of the Mexican government, dressed as a pilgrim visiting the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, planted dynamite beneath the tilma. The explosion damaged candles, marble steps, the altar, a crucifix, and broke glass in windows up to several hundred yards away. The tilma and its frame remained unharmed.
Listed here are some
interesting facts about the Tilma.
Here the
Knights of Columbus have some facts and dispel some false miraculous claims that have been made about the tilma.
She is the patron saint of Mexico and the Americas.
Our Lady of Guadalupe ...
Pray for Us!
