Our Lady of Guadalupe

In the list of things I have done, I did not mention that I have been within a couple of feet of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose feastday is today (December 12).

According to traditional Catholic accounts of the Guadalupan apparitions, during a walk from his village to the city on the early morning of December 9, 1531, [NB: Roxie's birthday] Juan Diego saw a vision of the Virgin - a young girl of fifteen to sixteen, surrounded by light- at the Hill of Tepeyac. Speaking in Nahuatl, the Lady asked for a church to be built at that site in her honor. When Juan Diego spoke to the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the bishop asked him for a miraculous sign to prove his claim. The Virgin asked Juan Diego to gather some flowers at the top of Tepeyac Hill, even though it was winter when no flowers bloomed. He found there Castilian roses (which were of the Bishop's native home, but not indigenous of Tepeyac), gathered them, and the Virgin herself re-arranged them in his tilma (cloak). When Juan Diego presented the roses to Zumárraga, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe miraculously appeared imprinted on the cloth of Diego's tilma.

The first time I caught sight of the image through the open doors of the Basilica when I was studying in Mexico City in 1974, tears came to my eyes. That happened every time I went there that summer.

Whatever one thinks about the origin of the image, there is no doubt that part of its power for the indios was that Mary appeared as one of them, a dark-skinned young pregnant woman. This was interpreted as meaning that her son, who had taken flesh in a particular place and time, comes to all people in their own time and place, and embraces their reality to draw it into the reign of God.

Some (perhaps most) Catholic Spaniards at the time doubted that the peoples of the New World could be saved or were even human. The message of Our Lady of Guadalupe was that, in the eyes of God, all are beloved children of the Most High.

For those today who feel rejected by some political and religious leaders for whatever reason, this is a message that still needs to be heard.

Because she is presented as pregnant, Our Lady of Guadalupe is considered a special protector of pregnant women and their unborn children. May she watch over the expectant mothers in the Dodd clan at this time and over the children to be born to us in 2009.