Mary of Guadalupe: Building Bridges Not Walls

Devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus, under her title Virgin of Guadalupe is one of the world's most popular and widespread religious and cultural traditions.

Her apparition to the Aztec native Juan Diego five centuries ago on a hill just north of Tenochtitlán, today's Mexico City, is commemorated yearly on Dec. 12. There are historic and mythic elements of the Guadalupe tradition which over centuries have grown in response to the power of the symbol to engage the struggles, accomplishments and aspirations of the Mexican nation, especially the poor and marginal among them.

In recent times the symbol has served to energize and inspire the struggle for human dignity and rights, especially those of farmworkers and women. The extraordinary popularity of the image and the narrative it enshrines have resonated and had an incredible ripple effect wherever the Mexican people have gone. Dec. 12 is the most widely celebrated feast of Mary in the United States not just in Mexico. The image is displayed in almost every nook and cranny of the U.S. and increasingly throughout the world.

A few years ago, while fulfilling a teaching assignment in Communist China, I even discovered a beautiful bronze statue of Guadalupe in a shop devoted to precious images of the Buddha. While there are hundreds of apparitions and images of the Virgin Mary throughout the world venerated by the more than 1.3 billion Catholics, the Guadalupe image seems to have risen to the very top in popularity.

It all started on Tepeyac Hill where the goddess Tonantzin (Our Mother) beloved of the Aztecs was worshipped. The earliest Aztec language text called the Nican Mopohua tells the story of several apparitions at Tepeyac of a beautiful woman claiming to be the mother of God. Juan Diego was a recently baptized Christian on his way to Mass in the city and took a shortcut. The beautiful native woman wearing the clothes of a pregnant woman suddenly called out to him.

She spoke in Nahuatl, the Aztecs' language not Spanish, in tender and affectionate words. She indicated that she loved the people and would intercede on their behalf with God. This is, of course, in the context of the suffering and violence of the Spanish conquest and the Church's own sad complicity in it.

She asked him to contact the local bishop and request that a church be built on the site of her apparitions. Juan Diego was hesitant and wondered whether this was real. When he communicated the request, the bishop was skeptical and asked for a sign. Later, the Virgin provided Juan Diego with many fresh roses wrapped in his tilma, a cloak worn commonly by both men and women made of cactus fiber. This occurred in the winter when roses were out of season. When Juan Diego returned with what the Virgin had given him - the "sign" for the bishop - he presented the roses wrapped in his tilma, and all those present discovered the image of the Virgin Lady imprinted in blazing colors on the cloak.

This is the origin of the image of Guadalupe displayed today for millions to view every year at the magnificent Basilica just below Tepeyac Hill. We are all familiar with it: the pregnant woman standing on the moon, surrounded by stars and with the sun brightly beaming behind her. The original is conserved in the Basilica of Guadalupe, which is the most visited shrine of the Americas and the fourth-most frequented in the world after Mecca, Jerusalem, and Rome.

Why is this image so attractive and meaningful? Scholars like LMU's own theologians Cecilia Gonzalez-Andrieu, Nancy Pineda-Madrid, Dorian Llewelyn, S.J., and others have written and lectured on many aspects of this unfathomable phenomenon. While Mary of Guadalupe is not worshiped as God, she is venerated as the feminine image of God, that is, of a God of nearness, tenderness, generativity, and creativity. The God who's coming into the world she announces is an inclusive God who manifests compassion for all humanity.

This message resonates ever more loudly in times, like ours, of poisonous polarization, of nationalistic, homophobic, xenophobic, and insider-outsider thinking. The power of her harmonious message is relived yearly in popular plays and art, in conjunction with the posadas and the Christmas holidays. It is a time for deepening one's relationships, for reunion with family and friends, good music and food, especially tamales.

The Guadalupe story communicates an attitude of universal receptivity toward others and the reality of communion in diversity. This transformative tradition re-affirms the biblical teaching that God's love is universal for every human being without exception. As such, Guadalupe is the great bridgebuilder of North and South America and beyond.