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15.
Our Lady of Guadalupe
EARLY
ON A SATURDAY MORNING, December 9, 1531, an Indian convert in Mexico was
on his way to Mass. For a man in his mid-fifties, who had already covered
better than half of his six miles in all, Juan Diego walked rapidly. On
such a day when the liturgy was honoring the Virgin Mary he did not want
to come late, and felt sure he wouldn't. There remained but another hill
to climb. After that, he could run the rest of the way to the Franciscan
mission of Santiago in the village outside Mexico City.
As he started up Tepeyac Hill, he heard what
sounded to be a great clamor of birds, chirping together in a delirium of
joy, tremendously excited over something. But where could they be? Juan
saw none about him and suddenly neither did he hear them. He continued
his climb in silence when, presently, a voice was calling to him from the
summit—definitely a woman's voice of entrancing clarity. Her enunciation
of his name over and over again seemed to be coming out of a luminous
cloud on the horizon, which could not have taken its brilliance from the
sun, for dawn had not yet broken.
Juan hurried toward the voice—then halted. Was
it possible? The cloud was disappearing from around the figure of an
extremely young woman whose beauty was of another world, as there she
stood on the hilltop in her own radiance. Her glory, richer than the
sun's, so brightened the surroundings that the rocky terrain took on the
warm look of gold. But it did not dazzle. The visionary with a throb of
delight noticed that the resplendent Lady, whose face was of a Mexican
complexion, wore a rose-tinted tunic of full length, with a mantle and
coif of greenish blue, fringed with gold, studded with stars. Juan would
have knelt to her glory, except that her affectionate use of his language
eased his sense of awe.
"Juan, my dear son," she was saying, "I am the
Ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of the True God, by whose power we live and all
things exist, the Creator, the Lord of heaven and earth." Juan was now on
his knees. He had never felt so unworthy while at the same time he felt
his worth. She had called him her son!
The padres had told him of the Virgin Mother;
he had never doubted them; nor did he now doubt her. The grandeur of her
presence, her manner of speech, measured up to the claim. But his
instructors had not prepared him to meet the Mother of God in person this
side of heaven. He bowed his head in profound humility.
Then she was asking a favor of him. Juan
looked up. "Go to your bishop in Mexico City and tell him I desire to
have a church built that here I may show my compassion to your people and
all people who sincerely call upon me, confide in me."
The recent convert could not realize, being no
theologian, that he had just heard the mediatrix of grace acknowledge
herself such. He only knew that whatever she said had to be true, so holy
he felt her to be. Indeed, her promise to console his people Juan was
even now experiencing. He felt in his heart an inflow of ecstatic peace
from her presence, which kept on coming, and which the youthful splendor
of her dignity made all the more overwhelming. And when she reassured him
in the course of their dialogue that "I am in truth your merciful mother,"
he thought his heart could take no more. It found relief in action.
Juan rose from his knees. "Noble Lady," he
said, "I will do what you have asked."
She thereupon asked him, as a further request,
to bring back to her on this same hilltop the bishop's answer. She would
be awaiting it. Let him come when he would she would be here, on the
spot. Then she thanked Juan Diego in advance for his errand; wished him
well; vanished from sight.
The lithesome Aztec, athrill from the glory of
the vanished apparition, made for the hilltop, bounded over the ridge, and
went running down to the plain and then trod a distance of several miles
into the city to the episcopal residence. He had always shunned
Tenochtitlán since the Spanish conquest because of its open arrogance to
his kind. At the mission of Santiago in the suburban village it was
different. His tribe felt at home with the Franciscan friars, who with
their great swinging bell daily invited in the baptized and unbaptized
alike. But nothing was going to stop Juan Diego from invading Mexico City
today. He had his pride, too.
He had an important message for the bishop, he
announced to the porter who had opened the door to him. The Spaniard
could understand Nahuatl, but did not speak it with the fluency of the
blessed Lady of Tepeyac Hill. He asked Juan to give him the message and
he would take it to His Excellency (for although Don Fray Juan de
Zumárraga was not yet consecrated, the bishop-elect already enjoyed full
jurisdiction and along with it the title).
"Give me your message for the bishop," the
porter said again with the force of a command, since the Indian had
remained passive to the suggestion.
"No!" The word had the force of an explosion.
"I must give him the message myself."
And so he did. Bishop Zumárraga received him
into his private quarters, listened attentively, and with the aid of his
bilingual interpreter understood. Juan had felt a sense of ease at sight
of the dignitary's Franciscan habit and cord, only to become sad and ill
at east. His Excellency was not finding the message, nor the description
of the heavenly Lady, a source of joy. He had his misgivings. How could
he know the apparition was authentic? Maybe the devil was up to one of
his tricks.
"I shall have to think this over, Juan. Come
back another time."
Disappointed, yet undaunted, Juan returned to
the sacred hilltop. Seeing what he had seen, what he now saw, how could
he consider it anything but sacred? Its rocky waste was again bright with
a superior glory than that of sundown as the Holy Mother of the Morning,
faithful to her word, awaited him. He fell to his knees.
"My Holy One, the bishop didn't believe me. He
didn't see why you would want a church in such a place. He wasn't sure it
was you. He told me to come back another time."
"Then go back tomorrow morning," quietly broke
in the voice he would never think of disobeying. "And do not feel sad, my
beloved child. You will succeed. Repeat to the bishop my request for a
church on this hill. Tell him again who sends you."
Carrying in his heart the joy that his glorious
apparition had not lost faith in him, he went to Mass in the village
church the next morning, a Sunday, and then hurried into Mexico City.
Unlike yesterday, he received an immediate admission to the bishop's
house. But the bishop was nonetheless disconcerted, and a little
irritated on so busy a morning, that the Indian had not waited a
respectable time before returning. His Excellency listened to the same
recital, though definitely satisfied by now that this was no delusionist
standing before him. Still, prudence demanded caution.
"Return to the hill, Juan, and ask your blessed
Lady to give us a sign, work a miracle of some kind, to prove herself.
Then we'll talk some more."
Juan Diego returned as quickly as his long
strides could take him to the spot. "Noble Lady," he said, meeting his
radiant apparition for the third time, "the bishop thinks you ought to
work a miracle for him."
"I will!" Juan was listening closely. "If you
come here tomorrow at daybreak you will have your miracle for the bishop."
Juan spent the better part of yesterday and
much of this day running errands. His visions had become the dominant
force in his life. On his way home that Sunday evening he wondered what
the miracle would be, and whether it would satisfy the bishop. His
anticipation generated an eagerness to keep his appointment tomorrow at
dawn. But when the sun rose over Tepeyac Hill he was not there.
A widower without children, he lived nearby his
uncle in the Indian village of Tolpetlac. Each occupied his own hut, but
it was like living in two separate rooms of the same house, so readily did
these Franciscan tertiaries exchange daily visits. The hill stood
directly between their village and that of the Santiago mission where the
two had been baptized together, given their Christian names, and together
attended Mass until the older man took ill. For days now Juan Bernardino
lay sick in bed.
When Juan Diego returned to their village he
found his uncle running a high temperature. He stayed with him all
through that Sunday night and the next day and night, preparing medicinal
herbs for him, bathing his fevered brow, awakening from sleep at his
calls. The old man had always been more a father than an uncle, having
assumed the custody of his orphaned nephew in childhood: now the adult
nephew would repay him with constant care. Accordingly, Juan Diego did
not have the time on Monday to walk the several miles before sunrise to
his appointment. He dared not leave the sick bed.
Then early Tuesday morning, before daybreak,
Juan Bernardino suffered a severe turn for the worse. He asked his nephew
to leave him and for the love of God to go at once for a padre. There was
no time to lose. He was dying. He must have the last rites.
So Juan Diego set out. He must get to the
Santiago mission as rapidly as he could. To have his foster father die
without the sacraments would be, to men of their faith, a worse
catastrophe than death. Strange, what complications life could turn up!
What was now a desperate rush for help would have been yesterday, had he
kept his blessed appointment, an errand of joy. Would his glorious Lady
be awaiting him this morning, displeased? Nearing the hill, Juan could
see the first glimmer of daybreak on the horizon and his heart gave a
lurch. If he took his usual shorter path to the summit, the Holy Mother
might be there with her miracle, and in his hurry he would have to keep on
walking as if he didn't care, and this might offend her. His love for her
prompted his decision. He did not ascend the hill. He took the longer
path around its base, despite his hurry to get to the mission friary.
It did no good. He could not escape. A light,
not of the dawn, was suddenly on his path and a voice was speaking to him
softly as he looked up to the same resplendent face and figure of his
former visions.
"Juan, my child, why have you taken this way?"
Juan bowed his head in shame. "Heavenly
Mother," he found the words to say, raising a look at her, "my uncle
Bernardino is dying and I must bring him a padre and I didn't have time."
No time? He was abruptly contradicted with a
graciousness that relieved his bliss of all anxiety.
"No, Juan, your uncle is not dying. You have
the time. He is well again." Not a word in reference to his broken
appointment of yesterday! The Holy Mother who did not blame him was
saying instead, as with a graceful gesture she pointed to the top of the
hill: "Go up there, Juan, and gather into the folds of your tilma
all the roses you can carry. Then bring them here to me before you take
them to the bishop. They will be his sign—the proof he requested."
Roses in December? Growing out of an arid
waste? Yet Juan did not doubt. He never did, he could not, question one
in whose presence he always felt a secure child under the guidance of a
knowing mother. He climbed the slope out of her ambient splendor into the
natural light of dawn. At the summit, there they were, fresh and bright
with sunrise, a thicket of such full-grown roses as simply do not grow in
Mexico. The devout Aztec had no difficulty accepting the reality. They
were God's miracle for the bishop. And it gave him a little thrill of
pride that he alone of his countrymen knew who had put in the order for
them to the divine Florist.
Juan set about picking the roses with one hand
and with the other held up the lower end of his tilma so as to form
a kind of basket into which the blooms were dropped. The tilma, a
flimsy mantle woven of cactus fiber, the Aztecs wore in the front of the
body like a long and loose apron which was knotted behind at the nape of
the neck. It was used for carrying parcels in. But never before did the
ample folds of a tilma enclose anything like the supply of roses
which Juan Diego of the Santiago mission carried downhill to his waiting
Vision on the 12th morning of December in 1531. With both arms
under his bundle, he proudly lifted it for her inspection. She reached
into the heap of flowers to rearrange them carefully, then closed the
folds of the mantle over them and issued the instruction: "Go now, Juan,
and keep the roses covered until you show them to the bishop."
Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga was in for the
surprise of his life. Receiving his caller into his private sanctum,
where he had his interpreter standing by, he was shown more of a sign than
he had intended. When he saw the roses tumbling to the floor from the
tilma, which Juan had let fall open to its full length, the bishop
felt that surely these flowers of such beauty and in such abundance would
have sufficed. But now that the mantle had been emptied of them, it still
was not empty.
What remained brought Bishop Zumárraga and
interpreter Juan Gonzalez to their knees among the roses, and a prayer to
their lips. They were witnessing a second miracle greater than the
first. For there, painted to the surface of the tilma, and unknown
to Juan Diego, appeared in the most delicate tinting a portrait of the
blessed Lady of Tepeyac Hill, but now standing on what looked to be a
crescent moon and framed, as in her apparitions to the Indian, in the
sun's brilliant rays. Nor was that all. Beneath the moon, as a service
to his Queen, a partially shown angel in an upward reach of both hands is
fondly clasping the hem of her robe in one and the hem of her outer
garment in the other, while in a downward look of evident appeal he
invites the world to her maternal care.
The Blessed Mother, through whom God has worked
innumerable miracles, did one in this self-portrait that stands unique in
the history of art. It is essentially a homily painted on the shabbiest
of materials and in the most intricate coloring, without benefit of
brush. In contrast to the outward-looking angel, she is at prayer, with
hands folded and eyes downcast, a perfect model of piety, a deep study in
adoration, Juan would afterwards recognize, at his first glimpse of the
painting, the blessed Lady of his visions in just a different pose. The
bishop saw in her, with the moon at her feet and the golden light of the
sun around her, the unmistakable Woman of Scripture.
The bishop, arising from his knees still in a
state of reverie, reached to the back of Juan's neck to untie the blessed
tilma, showed its painting to the astounded Indian, and then
carried it to his chapel. It hung there in the sanctuary for the rest of
the day and through the night, receiving an ever increasing number of
visits from the curious. Word of it spread abroad like the wind. The
date itself Mexico would never forget. Nor would the Church. The liturgy
of a hemisphere holds sacred year after year, December the 12th.
Juan Diego never did get his tilma
back. From the chapel it was carried the next day in solemn procession to
the cathedral where it would stay until the shrine for it on Tepeyac Hill
stood ready. "And the sooner construction begins the better" is how the
bishop felt about it. Accordingly, from the cathedral right after the
public veneration of the painting, he had the visionary lead him and a
delegation to the spot, the requested site, a rocky eminence now become
holy ground. It would be mere conjecture to say which of the two
experienced the greater joy over the prospect: the Indian without his
tilma or the friar who would soon exchange his habit for the robes of
the episcopacy.
Juan, retained overnight in the bishop's house,
was now dismissed with a blessing to return to his village. Absent from
his uncle since early yesterday morning, he went in full confidence that
he would find his dying patient, on the strength of a heavenly assurance,
restored to health. And he did. He and the group of witnesses, whom the
bishop had sent with him, found the old man sitting outside his hut in the
sunshine. They heard from him an account that fitted in with his
nephew's. Yesterday after Juan Diego had left his bedside a beautiful and
saintly young woman in a radiance of light appeared to him, and his fever
was suddenly gone and he could see clearly that she wore a rose-colored
robe and a cape of blue with many gold stars. She told him not to expect
his nephew back for a while, because he was on business for her to have a
church built on the hill.
Then the witnesses who knew Nahuatle listened
intently. For the old man warned them that what he was to say was
important. He quoted his heavenly Visitant as saying: "You are dear to
me, Juan Bernardino, and would you do me a favor? Get word around that I
and my picture are to be called Santa Maria de Guadalupe."
Did the Spaniards hear correctly? What sounded
to them as de Guadalupe may have been an Indian term of altogether
different meaning. Familiar with her shrine in Spain by that name, they
at once thought the blessed Lady wanted this one to be known by the same
title.
If Our Lady of Guadalupe has in popular
usage replaced the title of Saint Mary of Guadalupe, how can that
matter? Either refers to the same Holy Mother whom Juan Diego saw four
times and Juan Bernardino saw once. And if she really did use another
term that de Guadalupe which the interpreters misunderstood, it
still does not matter. She could have corrected the error, if error there
was, but did not. She would do nothing to estrange ever so slightly the
newcomers in Mexico from her maternal love of them. Her painting, though
a hieroglyphic appeal to the Indian, need not carry an Aztec
identification. It belongs to the human race.
The mother of mankind made it clear to her
"beloved son" Juan Diego in their first meeting that she desired a church
only because in it she could show her compassion to his people and other
people who would come there to pray. She specifically promised her aid to
"all those who live united in this land." She would unify, not divide,
not exclude.
In Mexico she has done that. The original
hostility, which existed between the Indian and the Spaniard, began
noticeably to wane under the impetus of their mutual devotion to Our Lady
of Guadalupe. Their descendants kneel together in her present basilica,
and beneath her high-hanging picture they see to either side of the main
altar a representation of their unity. On the pedestal to the right
kneels a statue of the Aztec seer in profile, who reaches out a bunch of
roses toward the statue opposite. For there on the pedestal to the left
kneels a figure of the bishop-elect, a padre in his cowled gown, with his
gaze not on the roses but lifted ecstatically to the painting: to a face
which holds in its delicate pigments a compassion for the whole human
race.
Pope Pius XII well understood that. His radio address to the
shrine, Oct. 12, 1945, develops the theme. Others of his high office had
certainly appreciated our Lady of Guadalupe, entitling her the Queen of
Mexico, the Queen of Latin America, and conferring on her basilica the
privileges it deserves. But he saw what they may have missed: namely,
that she chose a location midway between the two continents in which to
make her appearances, so as to demonstrate her equal concern for North
America and South America. In naming her "the Empress of America", Pope
Pius was honestly interpreting her own mind, as expressed to Juan Diego,
that on this hemisphere there are no divisions to her all-embracing empire
of charity. It covers every square mile of the vast expanse of land from
the farthermost border of Canada to the extreme tip of Argentina, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific seaboards. Let those call her Empress of the
Americas, who prefer the plural, so long as they understand that she
exercises her authority from God toward the three—Central, South, North—as
a single unit, with a mother's impartial benevolence. |