Our Lady of Guadalupe

The first time I heard anything about Our Lady of Guadalupe was in a Dennis the Menace comic book in the winter of 1960. I was ten years old. I recall nothing else about that comic, but one thing that Dennis did was visit the basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac where he heard the story of Juan Diego's encounter with the beautiful lady who was morena -- dark -- like him and his people, but who sent him on a mission to the Spanish bishop to ask for a church to be built in her honor as the Mother of the Lord of the World. According to the story, after Juan Diego's initial efforts to convince the bishop failed, the lady reappeared and told him to gather the roses that were in bloom where she stood and to take them to the bishop as a sign. When Juan Diego opened his tilma -- mantle -- which he had filled with roses, the flowers fell to the floor revealing imprinted on the tilma an image of Mary that millions come to venerate at the basilica near Mexico City to this day. Such is the story.

 

I studied in Mexico City for three summers in the mid-1970s, and I visited the basilica -- the present one, dating from 1976, as well as the one that preceded it -- at least once each summer. The first time I went in 1974, before I even made it through the large open doors, I caught sight of the image high over the main altar and began to cry. Not sobbing, just tears flowing down my cheeks. It was very moving, which surprised me because the atmosphere I had walked through outside the church was culturally foreign to me: people crawling on their knees across the stone courtyard, people hawking pictures and statues and all sorts of religious kitsch. It was not at all what my Northern European religious sensitivities found inspiring or even appropriate. But every time I visited that summer, I shed tears when I caught sight of the tilma.

Tonight I am making Mexican food and Rich and Peggy will join us for dinner. This is my way of honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe and remembering that strange story of the poor Juan Diego and his encounter on the hill of Tepeyac in 1531. Do I believe it? I don't know how to answer that. All I know is that I cried.