A Reflection for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
You can find today’s readings here.
“God’s temple in heaven was opened…” (Rev 11:19)
I don’t know about you, but I find myself repeating a conversation that goes something like this: “When was that? Was that this year?” The predictable answer follows: “I’m not sure, time just seems to all run together now.” In my classroom, students recount with regret how they often feel like they’re sleepwalking through their lives on a treadmill. The pace is relentless and we feel unmoored.
Bewildered, we ask each other “When was that…? Was I there?”
Today, I invite you to stop, get off that treadmill and make time to contemplate the events recounted in the story of Nuestra Señora deGuadalupe. Feel yourself alive, an inhabitant of the early twenty-first century, a survivor of a global pandemic, a human being who knows our planet is traversing a time of great uncertainty. From this present moment, let your imagination awaken to the Spirit, ready to reveal wondrous things, who just needs your attention.
Bring to mind the possibility that as dawn broke over the horizon about five centuries ago, a man burdened by heartbreak in a world that was crumbling around him, walked down the same road he always did, to do the same thing he always did. He could have kept walking, lost in his grief. He could have, but he didn’t. There was something surprising in the song of the birds that morning. He followed the music into the meeting place of heaven and earth on a small hill called Tepeyac. Heaven had opened, and the widower Cuauhtitlán of the Chichimeca people, also called Juan Diego, walked forward uncertainly.
Did she seek out Juan Diego because she knew what it was like to be like him and his people, the dispossessed of the earth that no one bothers to see?
The one beckoning him from the hillside had done something similar 1,500 years earlier. Envision young Mary, tending to her chores, maybe covered in dust from sweeping or in flour from baking. See her frightened face (similar to Juan Diego’s perplexity,) as the veil between this world and God’s suddenly opens and a messenger enters. The gospel tells us she is scared and confused, but somehow (like Juan Diego would also learn to do), she trusts the mystery of a cosmos that swirls around them both, a mystery that tells them (and us) of a God wanting to be known.
Are you open to the frightening, demanding and also entrancing cosmic mystery seeking you out?
Juan Diego has to overcome his conviction that he is a nobody. How can he possibly speak to the powerful? Why didn’t the beautiful Señora del Cielo choose someone important? And then there are his many responsibilities, especially his very sick uncle. He has so much to do! He tries to avoid her, takes a different road, but she comes down from the hill to meet him in the midst of his doubts. Imagine her azure mantle picking up bits of brown earth as she walks toward him.
Did Maria remember feeling unworthy and insignificant in her family’s humble house in Nazareth? She was just a young girl from a borderland village where nothing important ever happened. Could the God of her ancestors really be calling out to her? Did she seek out Juan Diego because she knew what it was like to be like him and his people, the dispossessed of the earth that no one bothers to see? La Virgen asks for his trust; she knows from experience this is the only sure road toward God. To trust.
Stars may be swept from the sky by the dragon’s violence, but they will fall onto her mantle and cradling them, she will distribute their luminescence. Evil may want to devour the child that she carries, but she trusts in her God and God’s promise of boundless mercy.
She walks to Juan Diego and as time opens up, she reaches you. As the sun shimmers this morning, she asks you to not be afraid but to trust, heaven is opening up all around you. Stop. Listen to the birds. There’s something God needs you to do.
Get to know Cecilia González-Andrieu, Contributing Writer at America.
Favorite Advent or Christmas themed art? John August Swanson’s Nativity, 1988
Favorite Christmas tradition?
Setting up the many different Nacimientos (nativity sets) that we have collected over the years from many different lands.
Which project are you most proud to have worked on this year at America? I am definitely enjoying the challenge of writing an essay once a month for the Scripture reflections and feeling surprised by the texts I encounter and the insights they bring.
Favorite Christmas recipe? My Abuela’s black beans. In Cuba our feast is on Nochebuena (Christmas Eve). It includes roast pork (lechón), fried ripe sweet plantains (maduros) and also green salty plantains (tostones), black beans (frijoles negros) and rice. Soak beans overnight and then rinse, make a sofrito with olive oil, garlic, onions and a little bit of cut up green bell pepper. Add the beans to the sofrito with water to cover. Add salt to taste. Cook for a long time on a low simmer and serve with the rice.
Favorite Christmas photo? Part of our holiday tradition is to go to Yosemite, so all pictures of my family there are my favorites. In this recent one my husband and son are enthralled once more by the site of Yosemite Falls.
