On a December morning in 1531, an Aztec man named Juan Diego was on his way to church. As he passed a hill at Tepeyac, near present-day Mexico City, Juan heard a voice calling him by name. Looking up, he was surprised to see what appeared to be a young Aztec woman. She told him to go to the bishop and to tell him to build a shrine on the hill, the site of an ancient Nahuatl shrine. The bishop ignored Juan.
In her second appearance, the woman identified herself as the Mother of God and she told Juan to go back to the bishop with her request. Again, the bishop rejected the idea.
In her third appearance, she instructed Juan to gather a bouquet of roses, which were growing, out of season, at her feet. So, Juan gathered up the roses in his cloak and brought the roses to the bishop. When he opened up his cloak to present the flowers, both the bishop and Juan Diego were amazed to see, imprinted on the fabric of the cloak, a full-color image of the woman Juan Diego had seen.
That is the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the feast we celebrate today. But the apparition was also a turning point for the Church in the Americas. The apparitions took place ten years after the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish in 1521. Christianity was the religion of the conquerors but offered little to the native people.
All that changed after Guadalupe. Mary spoke to Juan not in Spanish but in Nahuatl, Juan’s native language. She seemed to be one of them and all the symbolism she appeared in spoke to the native people. She said that she wanted her shrine to give forth all of her love and compassion to the inhabitants of that land
Mary’s appearance was an experience of conversion: Within six years of the apparitions, nine million Aztecs were baptized. It was also a moment of conversion for the Church itself: The Church became the Church of the poor and oppressed and was no longer the religious arm of the conqueror but the voice of God’s justice and compassion. +
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