Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12th)

Of the saints and feast days commemorated this week:

Dec. 9th -  Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin*

Dec. 10th - Saint Damasus I, Pope

Dec. 12th - Our Lady of Guadalupe

Dec. 13th - Saint Lucy, Virgin and Martyr

Dec  14th - Saint John of the Cross, Priest and Doctor of the Church


I have chosen to write about Our Lady of Guadalupe.


* Note that in 2024, Dec 8th, the day of the Sol. of the Immaculate Conception of the B.V. Mary fell on a Sunday, and thus the feast was celebrated on Mon, Dec. 9th instead and the commemoration of Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin wasn’t celebrated in the United States at all this year.



The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is among the most important of the feast days commemorating a particular set of Marian apparitions declared to be "worthy of belief" by the Holy See.


Now, what makes a miracle or apparition "worthy of belief" by the Holy See?  The short answer would be that the apparition or miracle does not contradict the Scriptures or previous Church Teaching (the Church’s Magisterium).  Extra-Biblical miracles can be seen as "flowers."  They can be nice, but can not substantially change (add requirements) to the conditions for our salvation.  


Thus one need not believe that Mary appeared to a lowly Mexican convert named Saint Juan Diego (Cuauhtlatoatzin) in December 1531 at the outskirts of Mexico City.  However, the Apparitions have been formally investigated repeatedly since the 1600s, most recently in the context of the canonization of Saint Juan Diego (Cuauhtlatoatzin) and have been held to _not contradict_ either the Biblical Scriptures or Church Teaching.


Indeed, the greatest source of the scepticism regarding the story has also been also the source of its overwhelming popularity especially among the Mexican people: 


That in the aftermath of the collapse of Meso-American world after the unlikely but ultimately quite brutal Conquest of Mexico by Hernan Cortez in 1522, that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of (the Son of) God, herself, would deign to come down and talk to a lowly convert named Cuauhtlatoatzin (who had taken on the Christian name Juan Diego after his baptism), became a sweeping source of pride for the down-trodden, defeated and disoriented populace. 


The previous world that the people had known had been turned totally upside down by the Spanish Conquest and up until the Apparitions in 1531 conversion to Christianity, or even cooperation with the Spanish Authorities was a slog.  Few wanted to join the religion of the people who had destroyed their world.


Yet within 10 years of the Apparitions, Mexico was effectively and enthusiastically Catholic, as it is to this day.  The Conquistadors hadn’t converted Mexico, instead it was Mary, and the people, themselves. 


And yes, that raised questions among soom skeptics to this day.  Was the conversion real?  Was it somehow syncretic – mixing past pre-Columbian beliefs with Catholic / Christian ones?


Yet it didn’t and doesn’t seem so.  Our Lady of Guadalupe was from the beginning understood to be a lady, not a Goddess, and a Mestiza – part-European, part-Indigenous:  


The Spaniards hearing her name, thought of “the other/first Our Lady of Guadalupe,” a Marian shrine existing in Caceres, Spain which predated Spanish arrival to the Americas by centuries.  


The indigenous, Nahuatl speaking peoples of Central Mexico heard: Tecuatlanopeuh (“the one who banishes those who devoured us”) or Coatlaxopeuh “one who tread upon the serpent,” in either case a source of liberation, the latter actually being linked later to traditional Catholic Mariology, portraying Mary as the woman whose heel crushes the serpent’s (source of evil’s) head (cf. Gen. 3:15).


The message taken by Mexico’s conquered people was that Mary, hence Jesus, hence God, cares.  And that became an overwhelming message of hope across the country, and really to the rest of the world, to this day.


And It’s hard to imagine a clearer, yet gentle expression that God is with us, and that God loves us.


Hence at every step across subsequent centuries when aspects of this Apparition were challenged, they were beaten down by the overwhelming popularity and acceptance of its message.


Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us and help us to treat each other with compassion and dignity.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

All Saints (Nov. 1st) and All Souls (Nov. 2nd) Days

Image
After a good number weeks of a large number of saints and/or topics to chose  to write about, this week, this week, the selection is smaller: Oct. 28th, Sts. Simon and Jude , Apostles Nov. 1st, All Saints Nov. 2nd, All Souls Of these, I’m choosing to write about the celebrations of All Saints (Nov 1st) and All Souls (Nov 2nd) . What makes a Saint ?   In the Christian sense, a Saint is a member of the Church, hence baptized and in good standing before both God and the Christian Community (the Church). To non-Catholics this definition would naturally seem rather “parrochial” – What about Gandhi ?  What about Martin Luther King, Jr ?  What about Elie Weisal ?  What about the nice Muslim grandma on our block who, ever dressed in her hijab, would always bring us a lovely plate of baklavas at the end of her family’s celebration of Ramadan? Pretty much every religious tradition faces similar issues.  As we learn to try to live together – and between nuclear...
Read more

St. John XXIII (Oct. 11th)

Image
Of the possibilities to write about this week: October 7 - Our Lady of the Rosary October 9 - St. Denis, bishop, and companions, martyrs October 9 - St. John Leonardi , priest October 11 - St. John XXIII , Pope I’ve decided to devote this week’s reflection to St. John XXIII . Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli , the future Pope John XXIII and Saint John XXIII was born in 1881 into a poor sharing cropping family living in the town of Sotto il Monte , in the Province of Bergamo in the Region of Lombardy in Northern Italy, That he came from a poor family itself is significant, because in previous centuries from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance to the Enlightenment to the beginning of the Modern Era , priests tended to come from middle class families, and bishops, let alone Cardinals and Popes tended to come from upper-class noble families.   On the one hand, massive improvements in the education of common people across the Catholic world in the 19th century allowed their childre...
Read more

The Holy Archangels, Gabriel, Michael and Raphael (Sept. 29th)

Image
  There are plenty of worthy saints to reflect on this week: Sept 23 Saint Pius of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio) , Priest  Sept 26 Saints Cosmas and Damian , Martyrs Sept 27 Saint Vincent de Paul , Priest  Sept 28 Saint Wenceslaus , Martyr Sept 28 Saint Lawrence Ruiz and companions , Martyrs Sept 29 The Holy Archangels of Gabriel , Michael and Raphael I decided to pick the Holy Archangels . I did so in good part because the Holy Archangels of Gabriel , Michael and Rafael transcend our Catholic Christian tradition.  The three along with four others - Salathiel , Jegudiel , Barachiel , and Jeremiel - show up in Jewish (both biblical and rabinnic) , Islamic , Bah’ai and even Zoroastrian and pre-Zoroastrian traditions.  (Note that in the Islamic tradition , the Holy Qur'an was dictated to the prophet Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel ) There is even a small Middle Eastern sect,  called the Yazidis , who arguably venerate an angelic figure often portrayed...
Read more