September 10, 2006 Mary Most Holy

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Mesoamerica, the New World, 1521: The capital city of the Aztec empire falls under the Spanish forces. Less than 20 years later, 9 million of the inhabitants of the land, who professed for centuries a polytheistic and human sacrificing religion, are converted to Christianity. What happened in those times that produced such an incredible and historically unprecedented conversion?

In 1531 a “Lady from Heaven” appeared to a poor Indian at Tepeyac, a hill northwest of Mexico City; she identified herself as the Mother of the True God, instructed him to have the bishop build a temple on the site and left an image of herself imprinted miraculously on his tilma, a poor quality cactus-cloth, which should have deteriorated in 20 years but shows no sign of decay 474 years later and still defies all scientific explanations of its origin.

It apparently even reflects in her eyes what was in front of her in 1531!

Her message of love and compassion, and her universal promise of help and protection to all mankind, as well as the story of the apparitions, are described in the “Nican Mopohua”, a 16th century document written in the native Nahuatl language.

There is reason to believe that at Tepeyac Mary came in her glorified body, and her actual physical hands rearranged the roses in Juan Diego’s tilma, which makes this apparition very special.

An incredible list of miracles, cures and interventions are attributed to Her. Yearly, an estimated 10 million visit her Basilica, making her Mexico City home the most popular Marian shrine in the world, and the most visited Catholic church in the world next to the Vatican.

Altogether 25 popes have officially honored Our Lady of Guadalupe. His Holiness John Paul II visited her Sanctuary four times: on his first apostolic trip outside Rome as Pope in 1979, and again in 1990, 1999 and 2002.

The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is celebrated on December 12th. In 1999, Pope John Paul II, in his homily from the Solemn Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, during his third visit to the sanctuary, declared the date of December the 12th as a Liturgical Holy Day for the whole continent.
During the same visit Pope John Paul II entrusted the cause of life to her loving protection, and placed under her motherly care the innocent lives of children, especially those who are in danger of not being born.

Saint Juan Diego
A Model of Humility

“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.” (Mt 11, 25-26)

In April of 1990 Juan Diego was declared Blessed by Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. The following month, in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, during his second visit to the shrine, John Paul II performed the beatification ceremony.

On July 2002 he was canonized by the Church, during a ceremony celebrated by John Paul II, again in the Basilica of Guadalupe.

Who was this Juan Diego?

Most historians agree that Juan Diego was born in 1474 in the calpulli or ward of Tlayacac in Cuauhtitlan, which was established in 1168 by Nahua tribesmen and conquered by the Aztec lord Axayacatl in 1467; and was located 20 kilometers (14 miles) north of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City).
His native name was Cuauhtlatoatzin, which could be translated as “One who talks like an eagle” or “eagle that talks”.
The Nican Mopohua describes him as a ‘macehualli’ or “poor Indian”, one who did not belong to any of the social categories of the Empire, as priests, warriors, merchants,…but not a slave; a member of the lowest and largest class in the Aztec Empire. When talking to Our Lady he calls himself “a nobody”, and refers to it as the source of his lack of credibility before the Bishop.
He devoted himself to hard work in the fields and manufacturing mats. He owned a piece of land and a small house on it. He was happily married but had no children.
Between 1524 and 1525 he was converted and baptized, as well as his wife, receiving the Christian name of Juan Diego and her wife the name of Maria Lucia. He was probably baptized by the famous and loved Franciscan missionary Fray Toribio de Benavente, called “Motolinia”, or “the poor one”, by the Indians for his extreme kindness and piety.
According to the first formal investigation by the Church about the events, the Informaciones Guadalupanas of 1666, Juan Diego seems to have been a very devoted, religious man, even before his conversion. He was a solitary, mystical character, prone to spells of silence and frequent penance and used to walk from his village to Tenochtitlan, 14 miles away, to receive instruction on the doctrine.
His wife Maria Lucia became sick and died in 1529. Juan Diego then moves to live with his uncle Juan Bernardino in Tolpetlac; which was closer (9 miles) to the church in Tlatelolco -Tenochtitlan.
“Juanito, Juan Dieguito” , “the most humble of my sons”, “my son the least”, “my little dear”.
He was 57 years old, certainly an old age in a time and place where the male life expectancy was barely above 40.

After the miracle of Guadalupe, Juan Diego moved to a room attached to the chapel that housed the sacred image, after having given his business and property to his uncle; and he spent the rest of his life propagating the account of the apparitions to his countrymen.

He died on May 30, 1548, at the age of 74.

Juan Diego deeply loved the Holy Eucharist, and by special permission of the Bishop he received Holy Communion three times a week, a highly unusual occurrence in those times.

Pope John Paul II praised Juan Diego for his simple faith nourished by catechesis and pictured him (who said to the Blessed Virgin Mary: “I am a nobody, I am a small rope, a tiny ladder, the tail end, a leaf”) as a model of humility for all of us.

See JOHN PAUL II - Homily for the Canonization of Juan Diego - Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico. July 31 2002

He walked every Saturday and Sunday many miles to church, departing early morning, before dawn, to be on time for Mass and religious instruction classes. He walked on naked feet, as all the people of his class, the macehualli. Only the higher social classes of the Aztecs wore cactlis, or sandals, made with vegetal fibers or leather. He used to wear in those chilly mornings a coarse-woven cactus cloth as a mantle, a tilma or ayate made with fibers from the maguey cactus. Cotton was only used by the upper Aztec classes.
During one of this walks to Tenochtitlan, which used to take about three and a half hours between villages and mountains, the First apparition occurred, in a place that is now known as the “Capilla del Cerrito”, where the Blessed Virgin Mary talked to him in his language, Nahuatl. She called him “Juanito, Juan Dieguito” , “the most humble of my sons”, “my son the least”, “my little dear”.

John Paul II’s Prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe

O Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the true God and Mother of the Church!, who from this place reveal your clemency and your pity to all those who ask for your protection, hear the prayer that we address to you with filial trust, and present it to your Son Jesus, our sole Redeemer.
Mother of Mercy, Teacher of hidden and silent sacrifice, to you, who come to meet us sinners, we dedicate on this day all our being and all our love. We also dedicate to you our life, our work, our joys, our infirmities and our sorrows. Grant peace, justice and prosperity to our peoples; for we entrust to your care all that we have and all that we are; our Lady and Mother. We wish to be entirely yours and to walk with you along the way of complete faithfulness to Jesus Christ in His Church; hold us always with your loving hand.
Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas, we pray to you for all the Bishops, that they may lead the faithful along paths of intense Christian life, of love and humble service of God and souls. Contemplate this immense harvest, and intercede with the Lord that He may instill a hunger for holiness in the whole people of God, and grant abundant vocations of priests and religious, strong in the faith and zealous dispensers of God’s mysteries.
Grant to our homes the grace of loving and respecting life in its beginnings, with the same love with which you conceived in your womb the life of the Son of God. Blessed Virgin Mary, protect our families, so that they may always be united, and bless the upbringing of our children.
Our hope, look upon us with compassion, teach us to go continually to Jesus and, if we fall, help us to rise again, to return to Him, by means of the confession of our faults and sins in the Sacrament of Penance, which gives peace to the soul.
We beg you to grant us a great love for all the holy Sacraments, which are, as it were, the signs that your Son left us on earth.
Thus, Most Holy Mother, with the peace of God in our conscience, with our hearts free from evil and hatred, we will be able to bring to all true joy and true peace, which come to us from your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen.

His Holiness John Paul II
Mexico, January 1979: Visiting Her Basilica during his first foreign trip as Pope.

Personal Reflections Volume II: A collection of memories…by Father Bernardino Giuseppe Bucci, parish priest, Capuchino.

…Faith

“Faith is God.” The Servant of God, Luisa, speaks about faith in obedience to the orders of her confessor, who had commanded her to write on the virtue of faith. Luisa says that, as she found herself in the height of the Heavens with Jesus, He spoke these words to her: “Faith is God.”

The Servant of God understood that the word Faith was nothing other than God Himself, and for better comprehension she gives a simile: “Just as material food gives life to the body, so that man not die, so Faith gives life to the soul; without Faith the soul is dead”; and she continues: “Faith vivifies, Faith sanctifies, Faith spiritualizes, with Faith man always has his eye turned toward God, so that he learns nothing of the things of the world and if he learns them, he learns them only in God.”

The happiness of a soul who lives of faith! She flies always toward God. Whatever may happen to her, she keeps her gaze always toward God. In fact, through Faith, tribulations are changed into virtues, which rise in God, in such a way that she neither afflicts herself nor does she complain, because she knows very well that she will find all justice and all happiness in Heaven. The joys, the riches, the pleasures that surround human life have value only in God, therefore a soul finds only annoyance in merely earthly goods, she despises them and tramples them underfoot.

Returning to the simile of food, here is what the Servant of God says about it: “By taking food, the body is not only sustained, but shares in the substance of the food, which is transformed with the body itself. The same for the soul who lives of Faith: since Faith is God Himself, the soul comes to live of God Himself; and by feeding herself with God Himself, she comes to share in the substance of God; and by sharing in Him, she comes to resemble Him and to be transformed with God Himself. Therefore, it happens to the soul who lives of Faith, that, just as God is holy, the soul is holy; powerful God - powerful the soul; wise, strong and just God - wise, strong and just the soul; and so with all the other attributes of God. In sum, the soul becomes a little god.”

There is also another aspect in the Servant of God: the spousal idea of Faith. Here are her words: “I also comprehended that those words which the Lord says to His beloved souls – “I will espouse you in the Faith” – mean nothing less but that the Lord, in this mystical marriage, comes to endow the souls with His own virtues. It seems to me that it happens as to two spouses: as they join their properties together, the belongings of one can no longer be distinguished from those of the other, but both of them become the owners. However, in our case, the soul is poor – all the good comes from the Lord, who lets her share in His possessions.”

The goods of the soul are only God, and the soul grafts herself by grace in all the virtues, and Faith is at the center of these virtues that serve her. In fact, without Faith all the virtues are dead. The Lord God communicates Faith to men in two ways: the first is in Holy Baptism, the second is when God shares with man His power, communicating the Virtue of Miracles: as in resurrecting the dead, curing the infirm, stopping the sun, and more. If the world had Faith, it would certainly transform into a terrestrial paradise. The soul who practices Faith is like the birds which, fearing to be caught by hunters, remain always at the highest top of the trees, and when they need food they descend hurriedly to the ground, they take it and carry it up to the top of the tree, to then eat it. The soul who lives of Faith is always timid with earthly things, and her dwelling is always up high, in the wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and with Him she suffers and prays for the human condition and miseries.

The soul who lives of Faith abhors sin, but at the same time she bends down toward sinners, and prays that they may be drawn out of the precipice into which they have fallen, and she offers herself as victim to placate Divine Justice, even if it should cost her her life.

From all this long explanation about Faith springs a definition that opens a preamble for comprehension of the Divinity: “Faith is God; God is Faith”

Adela Maria, BSP…all beautiful, all good, all holy.