Our Lady of Guadalupe (32)

 

 Reflections in Our Lady of Guadalupe's Eyes

Detail of the face, showing the discoloration on the top part of the head, where a crown was present , now obscured by an enlarged frame. The image had originally featured a 12-point crown on the Virgin's head, but this disappeared in 1887–88. The change was first noticed on February 23, 1888, when the image was removed to a nearby church. Eventually a painter confessed on his deathbed that he had been instructed by a clergyman to remove the crown. The frame which surrounded the canvas was adjusted to leave almost no space above the Virgin's head, thereby obscuring the effects of the erasure."  On February 8, 1887, a Papal bull from Pope Leo XIII granted a Canonical Coronation of the image, which occurred on October 12, 1895

 Pope Leo XIII Pope Leo XIII 

 

The Image in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is now one of the world's major Christian pilgrimage destinations https://youtube.com/shorts/RRypyq1XKy4?

Guadalupe The Miracle https://youtu.be/KVlKq0EsnGs?

Guadalupe The Message https://youtu.be/bvwDuMuQPpc?

     Saint Juan Diego

St. Juan Diego was a 15th century indigenous Native American from Mexico, who saw a Marian apparition in 1531, now known as Our Lady of Guadalupe.  The apparition has had a significant impact on the spread of the Catholic Faith within Mexico.  He was canonized in 2002 as the Church’s first indigenous American saint.  

Juan Diego was born in 1474, in the Calpulli of Tlayacac in Cuautitlan, a small village 12 miles north of Mexico City.  His birth name was Juan Cuauhtlatoatzin, which translates as “Talking Eagle” in the Nahuatl language.  He was a farmer, landowner and weaver of mats, and witnessed the Spanish conquest of Mexico, by Herman Cortes in 1521 when he was 47 years old.  Following the invasion, in 1524, the first 12 Franciscan missionaries arrived in what is now Mexico City. Juan Diego and his wife were among the first to be baptized, he took the name Juan Diego, and his wife took the name Maria Lucia.  They then moved to Tolpetlac to be closer to Mexico City and the Catholic mission that had been set up by the Franciscan Friars.  In 1529, a few years after her baptism, Maria Lucia became sick and died.  As a widower now, Juan Diego walked every Saturday and Sunday to Church, an on cold mornings, wore a woven cloth called a tilma, or ayate made with course fibers from the maguey cactus, as cotton was only used by the upper class, Aztec.  

On Saturday morning, December 9, 1531, he reported that following.  As he was walking to Church, he heard the sound of birds singing on Tepeyac Hill and someone calling his name.  He ran up the hill, and there he saw a Lady, about fourteen years of age, resembling an Aztec princess in appearance, and surrounded by light.  The Lady spoke to him in Nahuatl, his native tongue.  The Lady asked Juan Diego to tell the Bishop of Mexico, a Franciscan named Juan de Zumarraga, that she wanted a “teocalli”, a Shrine, to be built on the spot where she stood, in her honor.  Where, “I will demonstrate, I will exhibit, I will give all my love, my compassion, my help and my protection to the people.  I am your merciful mother, the merciful mother of all of you who live united in this land, and of all mankind, of all those who love me, of those who cry to me, of those who seek me, of those who have confidence in me.  Here I will hear their weeping, their sorrow, and will remedy and alleviate all their multiple sufferings, necessities and misfortunes”.  

Recognizing the Lady as the Virgin Mary, Juan Diego went to Bishop as instructed, but the Spanish Bishop, Juan de Zumarraga was doubtful and told Juan Deigo he needed a sign.  Juan returned to Tepeyac Hill and explained to the Lady that the Bishop did not believe him.  He implored the Lady to use another messenger, insisting he was not worthy.  The Lady however insisted that it was of the utmost importance that it be Diego speaking to the Bishop on her behalf.  On Sunday, Juan Diego did as the Lady directed, but again the Bishop asked for a sign.  Later that day, the Lady promised Juan Diego she would give him a sign the following day.  

He returned home that night to his uncle Juan Bernardino’s house, and discovered him seriously ill.  The next morning, December 12, Juan Diego decided not to meet with the Lady, but to find a Priest who could administer the last rites to his dying uncle.  When he tried to skirt around Tepeyac hill, the Lady intercepted him, assured him his uncle would not die, and asked him to climb the hill and gather the flowers he found there.  It was December, when normally nothing blooms in the cold.  There, Diego’s “Miracle of the Roses” occurred.  He found roses from the region of Castille in Spain, former home of Bishop Zumarraga.  The Lady re-arranged the roses carefully inside the folded tilma that Juan Diego wore and told him not to open it before anyone but the Bishop.  When Juan unfolded his tilma before the Bishop, roses cascaded from his tilma, and an “Icon” of Our Lady of Guadalupe was miraculously impressed on the cloth, bringing the Bishop to his knees.  

Bishop Zumarraga acknowledged the miracle and within two weeks, ordered a Shrine to built where the Virgin Mary had appeared.  The Bishop then entrusted the image to Juan Diego, who chose to live, until his death at the age of 73, as a hermit near the spot where the Virgin Mary had appeared.  From his hermitage he cared for the chapel and the first pilgrims who came to pray there, propagating the account of the apparitions in Mexico.  

News of the apparition on Tepayac Hill spread quickly throughout Mexico, and in the following 7 years, approximately 9 million indigenous people converted to the Catholic Faith.  Catholics in Mexico and the rest of Latin America recognize the Virgin Mary as the patron saint of All the Americas.  To this day, Latin America remains a major pillar of the Catholic Church, thanks to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Juan Diego died on May 30, 1548.  he was declared Venerable on January 9, 1987, beatified on May 6,1990 , and Canonized on July 31, 2002. 

On November 14, 1921, a bomb hidden within a basket of flowers and left under the tilma by an anti-Catholic secularist exploded and damaged the altar of the Basilica that houses the original image, but the tilma was unharmed. A brass standing crucifix, bent by the explosion, is now preserved at the shrine's museum.