Few events in history have brought so many people into the Catholic Church, as has the event that happened in Mexico in 1531 with the apparition of the Virgin Mary under the name Guadalupe.

By then there were already big cities with very powerful people.  It would make more sense that the apparition was in one of those places,  yet she appears in a little hill called Tepeyac, a completely unknown location that has now become the most visited place in the world, and her image is worldwide.  Guadalupe moves, in  church, culture, and politics.

In church, you find her anywhere. From St.  Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, the financial capital of the world, to Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris whose chapel dedicated to her is the most visited chapel in France, to Nagasaki Japan where when entering churches the first thing you see at is the image of a Mesoamerican woman. 

In culture, her image is everywhere. Murals on buildings, car details, outfits, blankets, clothes, medals… she is in movies, commercials and series. It is one of the most popular names. Any Catholic or non-Catholic person sees the image and immediately recognizes her.

In politics, her image and message has motivated the fight for justice and the rights of the oppressed and poor.  Father Miguel Hidalgo consecrated himself to Guadalupe before leading the movement for the independence of Mexico. The Cristeros, in their struggle to defend religious freedom, marched with the image of Guadalupe on their flags. Cesar Chavez, the activist who fought for the rights of immigrant workers and farm workers in California, organized marches with banners containing the image of Guadalupe in front, and behind her walked Latinos, Filipinos, Americans, blacks, Catholics, evangelicals, Jews, atheists, people of all nations and religions.

Why has this little brown-skinned woman had such an influence on the world?  Because she is a gift from God. We have grown fond of her, with her simplicity, with her tenderness, and in her we find light and life, and she was a gift that came at a time of death and darkness in the history of Mexico.

Since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mesoamerica in 1519, an enmity grew between the indigenous and the Europeans.

 The Spaniards did not understand Aztec culture. In the Spanish worldview, the world was composed of two opposing forces: good and evil, and everything in life fell under one or the other. Things were either white or black. True, or false. Right, or wrong. Cold, or hot. Day, or night.  So, when they met the indigenous peoples, they only saw one side, the evil. They saw them as people without manners, without education, without a written language, without intelligence who were just blood thirsty and in need of Christ. In their mind, the had to come to side of the good and be converted under whatever circumstance necessary.

However, for the indigenous culture things were not opposite, they considered that everything existed in a relationship.  That there was good in evil, and evil in good. Positive in the negative, and negative in the positive. White in black, and black in white.  Night in the day, and day in the night.

This way of thinking and processing the world was very different, which made Aztec culture very complex, very philosophical, very creative and poetic. They did not have a written language because the language to express the relationships in life for them was art: music, nature, dance, rituals, sculptures, architecture and drawings.

For the Spaniards, God communicated in the writing, the Bible, there they found life.  For indigenous people, divine revelation was communicated through natural beauty, in what was seen and heard, and they had a special relationship with flowers and sounds, singing. Flower and song was the language of divinity, and there they found life.

         We can see the problem. When the conquerors tried to teach them about God by forcing them to abandon their ways and forcing them to learn to read and write the doctrine and catechism, instead of experiencing the divinity of Jesus Christ through flower and song… they experience pain and tears. This caused great mental stress on the community to the point that there were mass suicides, just adding to the division and hatred between the two groups.

         This is where the Franciscan missionaries who accompanied the conquerors arrive. The Franciscan friars, priests, and bishops took time to understand the indigenous culture and began to evangelize using their way of communication.  There arose posadas (Christmas novenas), pastorelas (Christmas plays), songs and piñatas, ways of teaching the faith through song and art.  That helped, Juan Diego was one of the people who had accepted Jesus Christ and was in catechism thanks to this better model of evangelizing, but, there was still no reconciliation, many still preferred death.

         It was in this context that God gives the gift of Guadalupe in an apparition that is a work of art. The narration itself in the native tongue Nahuatl, the Nican mopohua, is a poem written in the style of the book of Genesis, full of symbolic images charged with cultural meaning. Listen to these parts of the poem translated into English:

It was a Saturday, very early in the morning… [Juan Diego] heard singing over the hill, like the song of many fine birds; when their voices ceased, as if the hill answered them, exceedingly soft, delightful… in the land of flowers…

It’s beautiful! The poem speaks directly to the indigenous heart… On the hill I hear a song… in the land of flowers… flower and song. Divinity was finally communicated to them.

Guadalupe achieved what the Spanish missionaries could not: she respected the value of the indigenous people, respected their culture, understands their worldview, and through her message, gave them what they desperately needed: life. The whole narrative of the apparitions is a movement towards light, and that helps them abandon certain customs of death like the human sacrifices, and she accomplishes that through her tenderness, by exalting their dignity, not destroying it and belittling them.

For example, Guadalupe appears in the early morning. The early morning is that time where night and day seem to mix. There is night in the day, and day in the night, but the day ends up triumphant, and she herself ends up dressed with sun, teaching them that though there is a relationship in dark and light, they are to choose light, and in light they find Jesus Christ, life itself.

Guadalupe came, as a gift from God, to give life. She came to heal division, exalt the dignity of the indigenous, and unite two opposing cultures under one name, one mestizo people. Today, there is Spanish in the indigenous, and indigenous in the Spanish, and what unites them is a new identity: a Christian nation. A Catholic nation. A Guadalupe nation. A nation of life.

The world needs people of Guadalupe. It needs people dedicated to fighting for peace and justice, a people open to receiving the Light of the world and passing on the beauty of our faith to the next generations. To be Guadalupan is to be people who give life, inside and outside the church. Within it, we help foster vocations to the priesthood to continue giving the life of Christ through the sacraments. Outside, we fight for a just society. To be Guadalupan is to fight against the forces that prohibit your life: the conditions that lead to abortion, domestic abuse, abuse of natural resources, migratory injustices.  It is to not let vices and addiction lead us into darkness that end up separating families.  

We are all Guadalupanos, that is why this little brown woman has become a worldwide phenomenon, because we can all identify with her cause, her mission, and her longing for the world.

I earnestly desire that a temple be erected here to show and give all my love, compassion, help and defense, to you and to all the inhabitants of this land. to hear their laments there, and to remedy all their miseries, sorrows and sorrows.

That temple is built in the heart, in our families, in our parishes, in St. James Cathedral here in Seattle, in our jobs and schools, in any corner of the world, and nothing can stop her. That is why today, united under her mantle, through flowers and song, as one people and motivated by her love, we are proud to call ourselves Guadalupanos and shout: Viva la Virgen de Gudadalupe! (long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!)

+Fr. Carlos Orozco