Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady of Guadalupe is a name for the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. It refers to a reported appearance of Mary to a Mexican peasant in 1531 at Tepeyac Hill in Mexico. After a miraculous image of Mary appeared on the peasant's cloak, the local bishop was convinced to build a church on the location. Our Lady of Guadalupe is highly revered by Mexican Roman Catholics and is the patron saint of Mexico and the Americas.

Background

According to the Christian New Testament, the Virgin Mary is the mother of Jesus. She was part of most of the important moments of his life. Mary was also with the disciples after Jesus's death during an event known as Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to the disciples.

From that time, Christians have revered Mary for her role in Jesus's life and ministry. Christian tradition holds that Mary was taken bodily to heaven either before she died or shortly after. Since then, there have been multiple accounts of Mary appearing to people. Sometimes these visits educated people with an official religious role, such as a nun or monk. Other times, the appearances were reported by people who are uneducated and have little or no theological or religious education beyond what they might absorb from attending church services.

This was the case with the man credited with reporting the vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Cuahtlatohuac was a poor Mexican farmer and laborer who had converted to Christianity from pagan Aztec beliefs. When he was baptized, or initiated into the Christian faith, he took the name Juan Diego. On the morning of December 9, 1531, Juan Diego was climbing Tepeyac Hill on his way to church when he heard bird songs that sounded like music. When he investigated, he found a woman who appeared to him to be a beautiful native princess. She identified herself as Mary and told Juan Diego to ask the local bishop to build a church on the site for the people of Mexico.

The bishop listened but sent Juan Diego away. Juan Diego returned to where he saw the woman, and she again told him to ask the bishop for a church. The bishop, upset at Juan Diego's reappearance, told him to ask for a sign from the lady to prove it was Mary. Juan Diego promised to do so the next day; but when the morning came, his elderly uncle was very sick. Afraid to leave him, Juan Diego stayed with his uncle for two days until he needed to get a priest to provide the Christian sacrament of last rites. On the way, Juan Diego encountered the woman again. When Juan Diego told her the bishop wanted a sign, the woman told him to climb to the top of the hill and pick the flowers growing there, fill his tilma (cloak) with the flowers, and keep them covered until he reached the bishop.

Juan Diego did as instructed. When he reached the hill, he found beautiful roses that were not native to the area and should not have grown there in the December cold. He filled his cloak and went to the bishop. When he released the flowers to tumble to the ground, he and the bishop discovered that his cloak contained an image of the beautiful woman. At the same time, the woman appeared to the uncle, and he was healed. He asked her what she should be called, and she replied, St. Mary, of Guadalupe.

Overview

The image, seemingly miraculously imprinted on Juan Diego's cloak, depicts the woman he claimed to have seen. The image is of a woman with darker skin and high cheekbones. She wears a blue cloak decorated with stars depicting the constellations visible in the early morning sky when she appeared to Juan Diego. The lady wears a black sash, a sign of pregnancy, and appears to be with child. She stands on a crescent moon, symbolic of the Aztec religion. The site where she appeared was once the site of an Aztec temple. To the people of the time, the message of this image was that this woman represented a faith more powerful than the old Aztec beliefs.

The bishop was convinced to build the church, which became known as the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Juan Diego's tilma bearing the image of the lady, although made of rough cactus fibers that should have disintegrated in decades, remains on display into the twenty-first century at the basilica. The image and the story of Juan Diego's encounter with the woman who purportedly created it resulted in countless conversions to Christianity from the sixteenth century to the present.

The image has been examined scientifically, and experts have been unable to explain how it was created. They are also unable to explain how the image has survived for centuries when the material of the cloak on which it appears should have fallen apart long ago. Similar images commissioned by the bishop at the time looked comparable when created but crumbled within a few decades.

Experts have been unable to reproduce some of the characteristics of the image, including the way some of the colors shift depending on where a person is viewing the image and an iridescence that occurs in nature but cannot be reproduced by known artificial methods. The image has also survived two threats: one in 1785 when a worker accidentally spilled a solvent on the cloth while cleaning its display and once in 1921 when a terrorist's bomb placed beneath the tilma destroyed marble rails, metal crosses, and windows in the church but left the tilma unscathed. It has also been said that under microscopic examination, images appear in the eyes of the woman that look like the people who were present when the roses were released from the tilma.

The Catholic Church made Juan Diego a saint in 2002; his feast day is December 9. The feast day for Our Lady of Guadalupe is December 12. In 1946, Pope Pius XII proclaimed Our Lady of Guadalupe to be the patron saint of the Americas, including North, South, and Central America. She is also the patron saint of Mexico, and many shrines have been erected to her around the world.

Bibliography

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"Chronology of Events Related to the Miracle." Guadalupe Festival, www.guadalupefestival.org/en/resources/guad‗story‗en.pdf. Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.

"Everything You Need to Know about La Virgen de Guadalupe." Huffington Post, 12 Dec. 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/12/virgen-de-guadalupe‗n‗4434582.html. Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.

"Four Awesome Facts about Our Lady of Guadalupe." Crux, 12 Dec. 2014, cruxnow.com/faith/2014/12/12/four-awesome-facts-about-our-lady-of-guadalupe/. Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.

Miller, Don. "Our Lady of Guadalupe." Franciscan Media, www.franciscanmedia.org/our-lady-of-guadalupe/. Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.

"Our Lady of Guadalupe." Catholic Online, www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint‗id=456. Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.

"Our Lady of Guadalupe." Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, www.guadalupeshrine.org/resources/guadalupe. Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.

"Science Sees What Mary Saw from Juan Diego's Tilma." Catholic Education Resource Center, www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/catholic-contributions/science-sees-what-mary-saw-from-juan-diegos-tilma.html. Accessed 12 Sept. 2017.