A Message That Resonates
Heaven on Earth
Late in her life, my mother Ann, a life-long Catholic with a devotion to the Virgin Mary, shared with me that the closest she had ever felt to heaven on earth was on a visit to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City. I always had a close relationship with my earthly mother but, unlike her, not with my Blessed Mother. In the years since, I feel Ann has drawn me into a true and profound relationship with Mary, especially in her personification as the patroness of the Americas. I vowed to make my own pilgrimage to the holy ground of Tepeyac. I have at last done so and, after a brief history, will share my day-to-day experience in the hope of inspiring you to do the same.
From a Trickle to a Flood
“Many primitive peoples have practiced occasional human sacrifice…. None has ever done so on a scale remotely approaching that of the Aztecs…. Early Mexican historian Ixtlilxóchitl estimated that one in every five children was sacrificed.”
Warren Carroll, Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness (1981, Christendom Press)
Franciscan missionaries arrived in 1524, walking barefoot across mountains and desert from Veracruz to Mexico City. Among the first to be baptized was a simple Aztec man who took the name Juan Diego. The brutal and macabre Aztec religious rituals he witnessed had only recently ended, and cultural barriers and the corruption and cruelty of some Spanish officials made it difficult to preach the Gospel effectively. The Franciscans set up schools and immersed themselves in the culture and dialects of the native people but gained only a trickle of converts. A miraculous series of events opened the floodgates, with millions of natives flocking to the missionaries seeking Baptism.
The Apparitions
On December 9, 1531, 57 year-old Juan Diego was walking toward daily Mass around Tepeyac Hill when he heard music and saw a brilliant white cloud from which a beautiful native woman emerged. She told him:
“I am your merciful mother… the mother of those who cry to me, of those who seek me, of those who have confidence in me. Here I will hear their weeping, their sorrow, and will remedy and alleviate their suffering, necessities, and misfortune.… Go to the house of the Bishop and tell him that I sent you, and that it is my desire to have a sanctuary built here.”
The bishop listened with interest but dismissed him. Juan returned to the hill and found the luminous lady waiting for him. She instructed him to try again the next day, December 10. After some difficulties, he repeated the message. Intrigued, the bishop asked for a sign. At sunset, Juan Diego again met the lady at the top of the hill, who assured him she would give him the sign the bishop asked for the next day.
Juan Diego, caring for his sick uncle, was unable to keep the appointment. As he hurried to fetch a priest to anoint the dying man on December 12, 1531, he skirted Tepeyac Hill, ashamed for disappointing the Lady. She nevertheless intercepted him.
“Do not let your heart be dismayed, however great the illness you speak of. Am I not here? I, who am your Mother, and is not my help a refuge? Am I not of your kind? Be assured your uncle is already well.”
She then told Juan Diego to climb the hill and pluck the flowers he found growing there. Dr. Warren Carroll continues the narrative:
The hill was a desert place where only cactus, thistles, and thornbrush grew. Juan Diego had never seen a flower there. But when he reached the top, it was covered with beautiful Castilian roses, touched with dew, of exquisite fragrance. Mary took them from him as he gathered them, arranged them with her own hands, and put them in his cloak, or tilma, made of the fiber of the maguey cactus, and tied a knot in it behind his neck to hold the roses in place.
The Tilma
She told him to take the roses as a sign to the bishop. When finally allowed to see him, the humble man told the story and opened his cloak. The roses tumbled to the floor, and the bishop dropped to his knees in awe and wonder. Imprinted on the Tilma was a portrait of Our Lady in native dress, hands folded in prayer for her children of the New World. Nearly 500 years later, at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, pilgrims still gaze upon this miraculous Tilma, the fibers of which should have disintegrated within 20 years.
A Message That Resonates
It is fitting that the merciful Mother of God – with compassion and understanding – had come to a place that had so recently been brutally sacrificing its children to the demands of the culture. She herself knew the sorrows of watching a beloved Son being brutally offered up. If we reflect upon it, in different but no less tragic ways we continue to offer up our children to the demands of the dominant culture in the name of sexual freedom and reproductive choice. We are not defined by the worst things we have ever done, praise God, and five hundred years later Mary remains “the mother of those who cry to me, of those who seek me, of those who have confidence in me. Here I will hear their weeping, their sorrow, and will remedy an alleviate their suffering, necessities, and misfortune.”
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pray for us.
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