Friday, 12/13/14
Every year
we hear her story. On December 9, 1531 Juan Diego, a simple Nahunta Indian, was
hastening into town for medicine and a priest for his sick uncle. On a
slope known as Tepeyac Hill he was confronted by the vision of a light filled
fifteen year old young lady. Speaking to him in Nahunta, she asked that a
church in her honor be built on that site.
Juan Diego got in to see
the Spanish bishop, and speaking through an interpreter he conveyed the lady’s
message. The bishop, perhaps to get rid of him, told him to go back and ask for
a sign. When Juan again met with the lady, she told him to gather roses from
the top of Tepeyac Hill. The season for roses was past, but turning, Juan saw a
bush blooming gloriously, so he gathered its buds in his tilma, then hurried
back to show them to the bishop.
When he unrolled his
tilma the bishop and those with him saw on it the colorful image of a lady
standing above a new moon, crushing a serpent under her feet. (The painting on
the pancho-like garment of rough burlap does not seem to be a trick.)
Perhaps you know the
story better than I do. I had always wondered what the name Guadalupe meant.
One explanation I have heard is that in Nahunta it would mean “The lady who
crushes the snake.” That would refer back to Chapter Three of Genesis where we
read that God would put enmity between the serpent and the woman, and she would
crush the serpent's head.
Although Pope John XXIII called Our
Lady of Guadalupe the Mother of the Americas, and Pope John Paul II named her
the patron saint of North and South America, we seldom hear of devotion to her
outside of Mexican circles. Our gringo snobbery could even be sinful in God’s
eyes. There was a bit of that two years ago when Jenny Rivera, a great
Mexcan-American singer with fifteen million albums died in a plane crash. There
was great mourning up and down the border, but outside of the Southwest people
just asked, “Jenny who”?
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