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MARY'S TITLES
Our Lady of Guadalupe
by John O’Connell
After Hernando Cortes conquered the Aztec Empire for
Spain in the early 1500s, missionaries spread out across the vanquished lands to bring the
Gospel to the native people. However, conversions to Catholicism were few.
Blessed Juan Diego, an impoverished peasant, his wife Maria Lucia,
and his uncle Juan Bernardino, were among the minority of Indians who had converted.
On Saturday morning, December 9, 1531, Juan, who was by then a widower,
set off for his journey to Holy Mass. At Tepeyec hill, the site of a former pagan temple,
(15 miles outside of what then were the boundaries of Mexico City) he heard the strains of
celestial music. Juan then saw a dazzling white cloud adorned with a beautiful rainbow. He
heard the voice of a woman beckoning him to come up the summit. When he climbed to the
summit, he saw a splendiferous young woman
suffused with light. The Noble Lady told Juan, “I am the perfect and perpetual Virgin
Mary, Mother of the True God.” She instructed Juan to go the Bishop’s house to
inform him that she desired that a temple be built on the summit of Tepeyec and that there
she would show that she is the Merciful Mother of all.
Juan immediately went to the Bishop’s residence. Bishop Zumrraga,
a holy Franciscan, met Juan with kindness but told him that he (the Bishop) must carefully
consider the message. Juan returned dejectedly to Tepeyec that same day. There Our Lady
appeared to Juan again telling him that he must return to the Bishop tomorrow with the
message she had entrusted to him.
The next day Juan went back to the Bishop and repeated the Lady’s
message. The Bishop asked in reply that the heavenly vision provide a sign. Juan
immediately returned to Tepeyec hill. Our Lady appeared to him again. She assured Juan
that when he came to Tepeyec tomorrow she would provide him with a sign for the Bishop.
But Juan discovered that evening that his beloved uncle was extremely
ill. All night and throughout most of the next day, Juan nursed his deathly ill uncle.
Early in the morning of the following day, Juan left to find a priest to come to his
uncle’s deathbed. When Juan came to Tepeyec hill, he took a different path around the
hill to avoid the Lady, but she came to meet him. He explained to her what had happened to
his uncle and why he had not returned to see her. Our Lady’s response to Juan has
become well known:
Listen and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little son. Do not be troubled or weighed down with grief. Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety, or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? In the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else you need? Do not let the sickness of your uncle worry you because he is not going to die of his sickness. At this very moment, he is cured.
Our Lady then instructed Juan to go to the summit of Tepeyac and
pick the beautiful flowers he would find miraculously blooming there. He returned down the
summit to the Noble Lady and she arranged the
flowers in his tilma (cloak) with her own hands. She told him not to unfold his tilma or
reveal its contents
to anyone but the Bishop.
Once again Juan ventured to the Bishop’s residence, only this time
he carried with him the marvelous sign the Noble Lady had provided for the Bishop. Juan
opened his tilma so the bishop could see the beautiful flowers from the Lady. But the
bishop and those with him soon fell to their knees while staring at the tilma. Juan,
amazed at their reaction, looked down at the
tilma to see a beautiful Image of Our Lady. She indeed had given a sign for the Bishop
— for all. The miraculous Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe led to the conversion of
millions of pagan Indians to Christianity in an unbelievably short period of time.
The Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is truly miraculous. The materials
used to create the Image are unknown to science; Juan’s tilma should have
deteriorated centuries ago; and (unknown until this century) the images of Juan Diego, and
two others, are present in the cornea of the eyes of the Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The name Guadalupe is a corruption made by the translator of the Aztec
— te coatlaxopeuhó — she who crushes the serpent. Our Lady, the Immaculate
Conception, identified herself as the Women in Genesis whom according to the traditional
translation, “will crush the head of the serpent with her heel.”
Mary Immaculate crushed the head of the Aztec
serpent god, and Providence again will use her to
destroy the wiles and snares of the evil one in our age.
John O’Connell is the Editor in Chief of The Catholic Faith magazine. © 1998 Inter Mirifica