Feast day: December 12
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Mary's appearance to Juan Diego as a native woman, speaking Nahuatl — within a decade, millions of indigenous Mexicans embraced Christianity.
In December 1531, only a decade after the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Blessed Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a poor Indian convert named Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City. Speaking to him in his own Nahuatl tongue and appearing as a native woman, she asked that a church be built on the spot so that she might show her love and compassion to all the peoples of the land.
When the bishop asked for a sign, the Lady sent Juan Diego to gather roses blooming out of season on the barren hilltop. He carried them in his rough cloak, his 'tilma,' and when he opened it before the bishop, the flowers tumbled out and there, imprinted on the cloth, was the image of Our Lady as he had seen her — a young dark-skinned woman, clothed with the sun and standing on the moon.
The image, still venerated in the great basilica at Guadalupe, became the heart of the evangelization of the Americas. In the years that followed, millions of the native peoples embraced the faith, drawn by a Mother who had come to them not as a stranger but as one of their own, in their own land and likeness.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is honored as Patroness of the Americas and of the unborn, and her feast on December 12 is among the greatest celebrations of the New World. Juan Diego, who carried her message, was canonized in 2002 — the first indigenous saint of the Americas.
Her image is a message in Aztec symbols: standing on the moon, clothed with the sun, wearing the sash of a pregnant woman — a sermon the Aztecs could read at a glance.
“Am I not here, I who am your mother?”
— Our Lady of Guadalupe
Image: artist unknown (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/07043a.htm
Get a story like this every Sunday.