Our Lady of Guadalupe
Our Lady of Guadalupe, also known as the Virgin of Guadalupe, is a Catholic title of Mary, mother of Jesus associated with a series of five Marian apparitions, which are believed to have occurred in December 1531, and a venerated image on a cloak enshrined within the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.
According to tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego, a man of Aztec descent who had converted to Christianity, on December 9, 1531. She asked Juan Diego to build a shrine on the spot where she had appeared, Tepeyac Hill, now in a suburb of Mexico City.
Nearly 500 years after Mexican peasant Juan Diego was greeted by Mary and urged to share a message of hope and comfort as promised by God’s compassion, Our Lady of Guadalupe continues to inspire new generations of faithful believers in their daily routines and struggles.
Our Lady Of Guadalupe Promises To Heal All Sorrows, Hardships, And Sufferings. I am truly your merciful Mother, yours and all the people who live united in this land and of all the other people of different ancestries, my lovers, who love me, those who seek me, those who trust in me.
The Blessed Mother told Juan Diego to climb the hill and to pick the flowers that he would find in bloom. He obeyed, and although it was wintertime, he found roses flowering. He gathered the flowers and took them to Our Lady who carefully placed them in his mantle and told him to take them to the Bishop as “proof”.
The tilma shows a woman with native features and dress.
She is supported by an angel whose wings are reminiscent of one of the major gods of the traditional religion of that area.
The moon is beneath her feet and her blue mantle is covered with gold stars.
The black girdle about her waist signifies that she is pregnant.
Thus, the image graphically depicts the fact that Christ is to be “born” again among the peoples of the New World and is a message as relevant to the “New World” today as it was during the lifetime of Juan Diego.
The imagery of the moon and stars evokes the Woman clothed in the sun from Revelation 12, which is the optional first reading for the day.
Pope Benedict: The venerated image of the Black Madonna of Tepeyac, with her sweet and peaceful countenance, imprinted on the tilma of St. Juan Diego, shows her as “the ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of the True God from whom she lives” (From the Office of Readings. Nicán Mopohua, 12th ed., Mexico City, D.F., 1971, 3-19).
She reminds us of the ‘woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child’ (Revelation 12:1-2).
She signals the presence of the Savior to the indigenous and mestizo population.
She always leads us to her divine Son, who is revealed as the foundation of the dignity of every human being, as a love that is stronger than the powers of evil and death, and the fountain of joy, filial trust, consolation and hope.
May the Lord bless you in the name of the Father and if the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen