I'm more than a little embarrassed to admit that until yesterday, I had not delved into the details of the "Our Lady of Guadalupe" story.
The Catholich Church celebrates the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe each year on Dec. 12, celebrating the day in 1531 when the Blessed Mother Mary revealed herself to a 57-year old peasant named Juan Diego.
As the story goes, Señor Diego was trekking toward Tepeyac Hill, now better known as Mexico City, when the Virgin Mary made her first appearance.
NCR picks it up from there:
Juan Diego was a recently baptized indigenous Mexican who, on his way to Mass on Dec. 9, 1531, encountered a woman dressed in indigenous regal attire.
The radiant woman, who spoke the native Aztec dialect, announced herself as the “ever-perfect holy Mary, who has the honor to be the mother of the true God.”In the course of several visitations, she asked Juan Diego to build a church dedicated to Christ on the site of a former pagan temple and promised to cure his dying uncle.
As a sign for the bishop, she told Juan Diego to find roses and other flowers on the hill, though it was the middle of winter. St. Juan Diego gathered the flowers, and Mary placed them into his cloak, known as a tilma, and told him not to unwrap it until he reached the bishop.
When Juan Diego unwrapped the tilma before the bishop, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe had been miraculously imprinted upon it.
Matthew Sewell over at Crux tells us more about this tilma:
The image became the wellspring of a conversion movement the likes of which have rarely been seen before or since.
The fact that the Virgin Mother not only spoke to Juan Diego in his native language, but appeared to
be wearing the dress of an Aztec princess sparked millions of conversions to the Catholic faith in just under seven years.
The shrine that was subsequently built on the spot, where the original tilma can still be seen, remains one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in the world.
But this post isn’t about the whole apparition story so much as it is about the tilma, Juan Diego’s cloak, on which the image of the Blessed Mother was imprinted. In the centuries following the event, some amazing and unexplainable qualities have been discovered about it.
Sewell goes on to chronicle four amazing characteristics about the tilma, excerpts follow:
1. It has qualities that are humanly impossible to replicate.
Made primarily of cactus fibers, a tilma was typically of very poor quality and had a rough surface, making it difficult enough to wear, much less to paint a lasting image on it.
Nevertheless, the image remains, and scientists who have studied the image insist there was no technique used beforehand to treat the surface. The surface bearing the image is reportedly like silk to the touch, while the unused portion of the tilma remains coarse.
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2. People say it’s just a painting, yet the tilma has outlived them all, in time and in quality.
One of the first things skeptics say about the image is that it somehow has to be a forgery or a fraud. Yet in every attempt to replicate the image, while the original never seems to fade, the duplicates have deteriorated over a short time.
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3. The tilma has shown characteristics startlingly like a living human body.
In 1979, when Callahan, the Florida biophysicist, was analyzing thetilma using infrared technology, he apparently also discovered that the tilma maintains a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the same as that of a living person.
When Carlos Fernandez del Castillo, a Mexican gynecologist, examined the tilma, he first noticed a four-petaled flower over what was Mary’s womb.
The flower, called the Nahui Ollin by the Aztecs, was a symbol of the sun and a symbol of plenitude.
Upon further examination, Castillo concluded that the dimensions of Our Lady’s body in the image were that of an expectant mother due quite soon. Dec. 9, the day of the unveiling, is barely two weeks from Christmas.
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4. It appears to be virtually indestructible.
Over the centuries, two separate events had the potential to harm the tilma, one in 1785 and one in 1921.
In 1785, a worker was cleaning the glass encasement of the image when he accidentally spilled strong nitric acid solvent onto a large portion of the image itself.
The image and the rest of the tilma, which should have been eaten away almost instantly by the spill, reportedly self-restored over the next 30 days, and it remains unscathed to this day, aside from small stains on the parts not bearing the image.
In 1921, an anti-clerical activist hid a bomb containing 29 sticks of dynamite in a pot of roses and placed it before the image inside the Basilica at Guadalupe.
When the bomb exploded, the marble altar rail and windows 150 feet shattered. A brass crucifix was twisted and bent out of shape. But the tilma and its glass case remained fully intact.
Go and read the entire Sewell piece as there are more incredible details.
The story in and of itself is inspiring and I'm beating myself up for not knowing, until yesterday, more about it but the additional details surrounding the tilma is pretty special.
I can't help but wonder how many are as unaware as i was about the beauty and inspiration this Feast day brings.
Shame on all we Catholics who tell no one about it.
