I could imagine there's no one who tunes-in here who doesn't know who Our Lady of Guadalupe is. The story is so important Mexican Catholics call it the Fifth Gospel. Some Catholics know the Guadalupe only for devotional purposes. Other Catholics claim her as the patron of their cause. But I'd suggest the Guadalupe is of much greater meaning and value than this; it's a story closely linked to the Incarnation feast we're getting ready to celebrate in two weeks - Christmas.
In 1531 the Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego - a newly baptized Christian whose indigenous culture had been violently suppressed by the Spanish empire. Empires expand to take, not give. When Mary asked Juan Diego to speak with the Spanish bishop about building a chapel on the site where she appeared, he nervously asked her, "But why ask me? I'm the tail on the dog, the bottom rung on the ladder, a leaf?" Forgive the indelicacy, but in referring to himself as "a leaf" he was likening himself to toilet paper. That's how worthless he thought of himself and his degraded, exploited and ruined people.
The Incarnation of God at Christmas is this: God is now enculturated. This means God has stepped out from the beyond, the glory-place, and into the terrible messiness of our planet with its cultures and peoples. Other religions believe their god has become human, but never to share our lives so intimately, and to help us find our way through to the fullness of what it means to be a human person. This is new!
The Guadalupe then - Mary visioned as standing barefoot on the ground, brown and black with the features of a crushed people, speaking not an imperial language but an indigenous one - is the visible image of Christianity's ability to express itself in the signs and symbols, the languages, struggles and values of every culture on earth. Her appearance says: "We can be seized by new ideas, new mindsets, new possibilities, and a new understanding of what to-be-alive means."
- The new idea of a humanity at peace.
- The new idea of a humanity of joy and inclusion.
- The new idea of every life's inherent dignity and worth
- The new idea of divisions overcome.
- The new idea that we don't have to stay stuck in shameless lies, stubborn selfishness and greed.
- The new idea of political agendas that are truly just and loving.
- The new idea that we can become new Christ-persons with opened hearts and opened minds and so reveal God's goodness, God's coming to us in love, God who has put down the warrior weapons and picked up the staff of a good and tender Shepherd.
The Guadalupe message has the power to change our world, our hemisphere and this nation of ours, so sorely stressed and tested from within these days. Bless you, and happy Feast Day everyone!
