Our Lady appeared to an Indian man by the name of Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, the latter name (taken from his native Nahuatl language, spoken by the Aztecs) means, “talking eagle”. Juan was born around 1474 in the village of Cuautitlan. He received an early education and was later married and had children. He was a landowner, a small farmer and was involved in textile manufacturing. Juan converted to Christianity between 1524-25 and was baptized, together with his wife, Maria Lucia, by the Franciscan missionary Friar Toribio de Benavente. Maria died in 1529.
Ten years after the Conquest on December 9, 1531, 57-year-old Juan, a recent widower, began his nine-mile walk from his home in Tolpetlac probably to Tlaltelolco near Mexico City “in pursuit of God and His commandments”, according to the Nican Mopohua, the earliest account of the apparitions written in 1545. Juan was walking either to attend catechetical instructions or Mass or both. He approached Tepeyac Hill that was the former site of worship to the Aztec goddess Tonantzin. His attention was drawn to the hill by the music of singing birds and a sweet feminine voice affectionately calling him, “Juan, dearest Juan Diego.” He climbed the hill and saw a beautiful young lady at the top. She later identified herself to his uncle, Juan Bernadino, as “The Perfect Virgin Holy Mary of Guadalupe.” Her dress shone like the sun and transformed the appearance of the rocks and plants on the barren cactus hill into glittering jewels.
Our Lady identified herself to Juan as “the perfect and perpetual Virgin Mary, Mother of the only true God in whom we live . . . .” She entrusted to him a mission to request Bishop Zumarraga to build a church on the hill so that she could manifest her Son to all of the people. She said, “I ardently desire that a little sacred house be built here for me where I will manifest Him, I will exalt Him, I will give Him to the people through my personal love, through my compassionate gaze, through my help and through my protection. Because I am, in truth, your merciful Mother and the mother of all 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 have confidence in me. Here I will hear their weeping and their sadness and will remedy and alleviate their troubles, their miseries and their suffering.”
Twice the Bishop politely rebuffed Juan. He prudently requested a sign from Our Lady so as to believe her request for him to build the church.. Juan returned to Our Lady and told her that he was unworthy of his mission. But Our Lady recognized his dignity and reassured him. She told him that she had many messengers who could “carry her breath” but “it is altogether necessary that you should be the one to undertake this mission and it will be through your mediation and assistance that my wish should be accomplished.”
She promised to give Juan the sign on December 11. However, on the appointed day Juan cared for his dying uncle, Juan Bernardino, and he stayed with him. On December 12, he left his uncle to get a priest to give him the last rites. As he approached Tepeyac Hill, Our Lady intercepted him and told him not to worry, that his uncle was well. She said, “Listen and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little son. Do not be troubled or weighed down with grief. Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety, or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? Are you not in the crossing of my arms? What else do you need?” She paused a moment and continued, “Do not let the illness of your uncle worry you because he is not going to die of his sickness. At this very moment, he is cured.”
Our Lady told Juan to go up to the top of the hill and cut and gather the flowers there. Juan obediently did so and found miraculous flowers growing in the middle of the frosty season that included Castilian roses that were native to the Bishop’s homeland in Spain. He put them together and returned to Our Lady. She helped to place the flowers in his tilma (cloak) and said that they were “the sign to take to the Bishop. Tell him, in my name, that in them he will recognize my will and that he must fulfill it. You will be my ambassador, fully worthy of my confidence.”
For the third time, Juan requested the Bishop to build the church. He said, “Here is your sign”, opened his tilma and the roses fell. At that moment the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe miraculously appeared on his tilma. The Bishop believed, the church was built, the miraculous tilma was displayed for the people’s veneration and it is still displayed today in the Basilica near Tepeyac Hill.
Our Lady was true to her promise and manifested her Son to the millions of indigenous people who converted to Him. For the next seventeen years Juan lived as a humble hermit in a hermitage at the base of Tepeyac Hill and cared for the nearby church that housed the tilma.
Since Juan was learned in Nahuatl and Christian doctrine, he was able to explain the Miraculous Image on the tilma that spoke to the natives as a pictograph. He explained its significance and the story of the apparitions over and over again. He spent hours in prayer to Jesus and Mary and cared for her Image. He lived a life of poverty, chastity and obedience and was revered by all. He died in 1548 at the age of 74 and was probably buried in his hermitage next to the chapel that he had cared for so well.
The image of Mary in the image, shows her standing on a crescent, which was a symbol for Quetzalcoatl, the serpent god whom the Aztec Indians offered human sacrifice too. For this reason, other historians say the term Guadalupe comes from the Nahuatl word coatlaxopeuh which is pronounced “quatlasupeh”, and sounds remarkably like Guadalupe. It means, “she who will crush the stone serpent” Bishop Zumarraga, and the other Spanish officials, may have thought of the shrine in Spain spoken about earlier, and that is how the image obtained its name.
Regardless, human sacrifice was abolished, and a new Christian civilization was born in the centre of the Americas because of Our Lady’s intervention, drawing attention to the proto-evangelium of Genesis 3:15 where the woman will crush the head of the serpent, an allusion to Satan.
The tilma on which the image of the Virgin Mary appears, has defied any scientific explanation. Made of a coarse ayate fibre, it should have disintegrated within about 20 years. But today, 460 years later, as it hangs in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, it has remained, as it was, when the Castilian roses fell before Bishop Zumarraga's astounded gaze, and under high magnification does not show the slightest cracking or fading.
For many centuries, winds from Lake Texcoco which have the ability to corrode iron, should have destroyed the image, particularly when it was housed with in primitive dwellings, but never did anything happen like this. Then one has to appreciate that for centuries, thousands of people approached the images with lighted candles. In such a confined space, as it was, this should have blackened the picture beyond recognition.
In the 1600’s a workman accidentally dropped a bottle of nitric acid, but this left only a barely discernible watermark.
One of the most extraordinary miracles connected with its survival, was on November 4, 1921 when a well-dressed young man asked permission to place a bouquet of flowers beneath the image, concealing a bomb. This was during the period of the brutal rule of Plutarco Calles, who persecuted the Church greatly, where there were many martyrs, like Blessed Miguel Pro SJ. When the bomb exploded, chunks of marble came out of the altar, windows in the Basilica were shattered, and a large iron crucifix was bent double, that can still be seen at the entrance to the new Basilica opened in 1976. But once again, a divine hand seem to interpose any sort of natural destruction the image of Our Lady would endure. The bomb did not even tint the image’s protective covering. After this, it was placed behind bullet proof glass.
In 1936, Nobel Prize winning scientist Richard Kuhn examined some threads of the image and said the coloring had no natural origin, either animal, vegetable, or mineral. Synthetic coloring was ruled out as this was a much later invention
In the 1950’s the announcement was made that under high magnification, the image of Juan Diego had been discovered in the eyes of Our Blessed Mother. . More recent discoveries, used with the aid of an ophthalmoscope, have revealed as many as 12 images in the eyes. It is though Our Lady was present in the corner of the room looking upon the scene of the display of Juan’s tilma during that historic encounter, and she photographed the images in her eyes, in the convex reflectory way that normal eyes focus on a scene.
Albeit the incredible elements of the miraculous image, probably the greatest miracle of Our Lady of Guadalupe, was the conversion of 8-9 million Indians in the decade following her appearance to Juan Diego. It is as though Mary united both her children, Spaniard and Indian to form the present day Mexican nation. In the history of the world, no conquered group have intermarried their conquerors on such a giant scale
Never in the two millennia of the Catholic Church, has there been a greater mass conversion, leading to further expansion in the Americas of Catholic missionaries. Based on present day demographics, there is no region of the world more Catholic than the Americas. What underscores this heavenly intervention, is that it happened in the same century as the Reformation, when the Church lost so much ground to Protestantism. It is though Our Lady was trying to tip the scales.
Further pictorial analysis of the image has shown that Mary is pregnant, so in the current battle for the preservation of innocent life, Our Lady of Guadalupe has been venerated as the patroness of the unborn child, by popular acclamation. Often individuals who will pray and protest outside abortion clinics, will take a copy of the image there. In the last US presidential election, millions of prolifers around the world implored her intercession for the grace of a prolife President. After the tightest election in US history, the Supreme Court of the US confirmed the election of George W. Bush, who is against abortion, on December 12, 2000, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Jubilee Year.
One of the striking ways that Our Lady of Guadalupe, is becoming known to the masses is through the Missionary Images, which have travelled through many countries, including Australia. Blessed by the late Cardinal Posadas of Mexico, it is touring the world in order to bring about an end to abortion and to burgeon the “culture of life” called for by the Holy Father in his encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, the Gospel of Life. Tens of thousands have seen and prayed before these images.
Juan Diego was a model lay apostle who foreshadowed those described in The Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity of the Second Vatican Council. In his person and mission he understood the power of God, the intercession of Mary and her love for all mankind to whom she leads her Son. Juan may become known as one of the great saints in the history of the Church. He should be recognized as something of a Patriarch, like Abraham or Moses. Of course, he didn’t lead thousands to the Promised Land but he led millions to the Promised One through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“Whether the lay apostolate is exercised by the faithful as individuals or as members of organizations, it should be incorporated into the apostolate of the whole Church according to a right system of relationships. Indeed, union with those whom the Holy Spirit has assigned to rule His Church (cf. Acts
20.28) is an essential element of the Christian apostolate.” (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity ch. 5, no. 23).
Juan Diego received the mission. Mary called him and sent him with her words, “I urge you to go to the Bishop . . .” The Holy Spirit anointed Juan as an individual but he exercised his role in union with the whole Church through his Bishop just as the Council requested over 400 years later.
As Pope John Paul II said at the canonization of Juan Diego on July 31, 2002, before millions of people who had come to pay homage at the event, “the Virgin Mary, the handmaid "who glorified the Lord" (Lk 1:46), reveals herself to Juan Diego as the Mother of the true God. As a sign, she gives him precious roses, and as he shows them to the Bishop, he discovers the blessed image of Our Lady imprinted on his tilma.
The Holy Father continues, "The Guadalupe Event", as the Mexican Episcopate has pointed out, "meant the beginning of evangelization with a vitality that surpassed all expectations. Christ's message, through his Mother, took up the central elements of the indigenous culture, purified them and gave them the definitive sense of salvation" (14 May 2002, No. 8). Consequently Guadalupe and Juan Diego have a deep ecclesial and missionary meaning and are a model of perfectly inculturated evangelization.”
This is also a message to people of the Western world, who often have to evangelise in a post-Christian culture that with its zeal for abortion, euthanasia, and embryo experimentation, has taken on many of the hallmarks of the pagan culture Juan Diego came out of.
No shrine in the world is visited more frequently than that of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. This is a testament of her power of evangelisation, and her desire in this new millennium, as in the 16th century, to bring all souls to her Divine Son, Jesus Christ, the Lord.
The canonization miracle obtained through the intercession of Juan Diego is one of the most extraordinary in Church History. On May 6, 1990, at the very moment the Holy Father was proclaiming Juan Diego Blessed, Juan José Barragán Silva, a drug addict in his twenties stabbed himself with a knife at home in Mexico City in his mother's presence and went to a balcony to jump from the window.
His mother, Esperanza, tried to hold him by the legs, but he freed himself and plunged thirty feet head-first to the ground. He then was rushed to the intensive care unit of Durango Hospital in Mexico City.
Esperanza said that when her son was falling she entrusted him to God and Our Lady of Guadalupe. She invoked Juan Diego and implored, “Give me a proof . . . save this son of mine! And you, my Mother, listen to Juan Diego!”
Suddenly and inexplicably, three days after the fall, her son was completely cured. Subsequent examinations confirmed that he had no neurological or psychic effects, and the doctors concluded that his cure was “scientifically inexplicable.”
Medical experts said the youth should have died in the fall, or at least been left seriously handicapped. J.H. Hernández Illescas, regarded internationally as one of the best specialists in the field of neurology, and two other specialists, described the case as “unheard of, amazing, and inconceivable.”
What is most extraordinary here, is that when it comes to miracles that are examined to establish a saint’s holiness, they almost invariably involve the cure of a sick or dying person. In this case, as has been described, it has been the prevention of fatal injury in someone, involving the suspension of natural laws.
This miracle was the decisive factor in the recognition of Juan Diego's sainthood. Our Lady promised Juan that she would reward him for his efforts on her behalf. She told him, “Yes, I will enrich you, I will glorify you.” Her promise is now fulfilled.
By Dan Lynch, Guardian of Missionary Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, with assistance of Andrew Rabel, copywriter and researcher, Melbourne RE Texts.
For further information on the Missionary Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, see www.ourladyofguadalupe.org
© Dan Lynch & Andrew Rabel 2002