How Does This Happen?, Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, December 12, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
December 12, 2018
Rev 11:19.12:1-6.10, Judith 13:18-19, Lk 1:39-47

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in this homily: 

• “How does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” This question asked by St. Elizabeth in the Visitation ought to be asked by each of us today on this great feast of the Patroness of America, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Mary identified herself to St. Juan Diego in Tepeyac as the “Mother of God” and then later as our “Merciful Mother” and she came there as a woman on a mission. A specific type of mission. She’s pregnant with Jesus seeking to bring him to others. In the Gospel, we see what she does as soon as she became pregnant by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit: she went with haste to care for her cousin Elizabeth, forming her embryonic son to be the itinerant missionary he would become before he even had developed the tiniest of feet. And when she arrived in Ein Karim, Jesus blessed his in utero cousin John the Baptist in the womb, preparing him for his own mission as the precursor of the Messiah. Likewise in the first reading from the Book of Revelation, we see Mary pregnant once again, this time with the Church — we know it’s the Church because she “wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth,” something that didn’t happen in Bethlehem, but certainly happened on Calvary as Jesus announced to her that she was to be the mother of the human race — seeking to help bring to birth in all of God’s children the image of her Son Jesus. Mary seeks to do for us what Jesus entrusted her to do as he was dying on the Cross: to help bring her Son to birth in us. When Mary appeared to St. Juan Diego 487 years ago, when she imprinted her image in his tilma, she did so as a pregnant Aztec princess, a symbol that she was about to give birth to her son here in our continent, in our hemisphere. Christianity had arrived in Mexico just a short 10 years before but there were relatively few converts because most of the indigenous people were turned off by the conquistadors than turned on by the Franciscan missionaries to the Lord both groups claimed to believe in. But after her appearance and seeing the image of this mestiza woman — which was an harmoniously beautiful mix between Indian and Spanish features, showing the compatibility of the Gospel being announced by the Spanish Franciscans and the Indian nature — there started to be converts by the millions. Ten million came to the faith in just the next decade.
• The mission Our Lady of Guadalupe gave to St. Juan Diego shows us how Mary sought to give birth to her Son in his hemisphere. It wasn’t merely bringing people to baptism and the sacraments. It was incorporating them into her Son’s saving mission. It was helping them to continue her own work of bringing Christ to birth in others. When she identified herself to St. Juan Diego, she said, “I am truly your merciful Mother” and she wanted a place built where she could “hear [her sons’ and daughters’] weeping, their complaints and heal all their sorrows, hardships and sufferings.” In this kairos of Mercy, she wants to show herself to be our merciful Mother, to hear our sorrows, hardships and sufferings, and to help us to become like Juan Diego’s, facilitating her doing that for so many others. St. Juan Diego’s vocation story shows us all how each of us, no matter how unworthy we think we are, are asked to cooperate in this missionary work of Christ — Mercy incarnate — and his Merciful mother.
• When the Blessed Mother appeared to Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill on December 9, 1531, he was a simple, humble, 57 year-widower known for walking with his head down and shuffling his feet. He had been baptized only seven years before by the Franciscan missionaries. He soon became a fervent believer. Every Saturday and Sunday he would walk 15 miles each way to Mass. As he was journeying one cold Saturday morning, he heard a voice calling from the top of a hill, “Juanito,” “Dieguito,” “Come here!” He scaled the rocky slope, where at the top he saw the Blessed Virgin Mary arrayed in splendor. Our Lady announced she was on a mission of mercy and wanted him to be her emissary to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga of Mexico City to have him build a church on Tepeyac Hill. She said, “Know, know for sure, my dearest, littlest, and youngest son, that I am the perfect and ever Virgin Holy Mary, Mother of the God of truth through Whom everything lives, the Lord of all things near us, the Lord of heaven and earth. I want very much to have a little house built here for me, in which I will show Him, I will exalt Him and make Him manifest. I will give Him to the people in all my personal love, in my compassion, in my help, in my protection: because I am truly your merciful Mother, yours and all the people who live united in this land and of all the other people of different ancestries, my lovers, who love me, those who seek me, those who trust in me. Here I will hear their weeping, their complaints and heal all their sorrows, hardships and sufferings. And to bring about what my compassionate and merciful concern is trying to achieve, you must go to the residence of the Bishop of Mexico and tell him that I sent you here to show him how strongly I wish him to build me a temple here on the plain; you will report to him exactly all you have seen, admired and what you have heard. Know for sure I will appreciate it very much, be grateful and will reward you. And you? You will deserve very much the reward I will give you for your fatigue, the work and trouble that my mission will cause you. Now my dearest son, you have heard my breath, my word; go now and put forth your best effort.”
• Obeying simply and immediately, he headed in his simple peasant’s outfit to the episcopal residence, where he was forced to wait for hours in an outdoor courtyard. Eventually the bishop received him, treated him with kindness, but basically, despite Juan Diego’s obvious sincerity, as a little deluded. Juan Diego left feeling like a complete failure. Returning at once to Our Lady on Tepeyac Hill, he said that he had struck out. “I beg you, Noble Lady,” he implored, “to entrust this message to someone of importance, someone well-known and respected, so that your wish will be accomplished. For I am only a lowly peasant and you, my Lady, have sent me to a place where I have no standing. Forgive me if I have disappointed you for having failed in my mission.”
• Our Lady smiled tenderly on him and said, “Listen to me, my dearest son, and understand that I have many servants and messengers whom I could charge with the delivery of my message. But it is altogether necessary that you should be the one to undertake this mission and that it be through your mediation and assistance that my wish should be accomplished. I urge you to go to the Bishop again tomorrow. Tell him in my name and make him fully understand my disposition, that he should undertake the erection of the teocalli (temple) for which I ask. And repeat to him that it is I in person, the ever Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, who send you.” We see here that Mary didn’t strictly speaking need Juan Diego. She could have appeared to the Bishop himself. But she wanted to incorporate him in this saving mission. Likewise she wants to involve each of us, no matter how unqualified we feel or may in fact be.
• So after that second meeting with our Lady, Juan Diego went with trepidation to see the bishop a second time. He feared what the bishop’s overprotective servants might do to him. They greeted him with ill-concealed exasperation. He was told the bishop was busy with more important matters. He told them he was willing to wait — and did, for several hours in the frigid outdoor courtyard. When he finally met the bishop again, he repeated, with fervor and tears, the message of Our Lady entrusted to him. The bishop asked some questions. Though moved by Juan Diego’s sincerity, he wasn’t going to build a church in a desolate spot on the basis of one native’s unsubstantiated word. To test the message, the bishop asked him for a special secret sign from Our Lady. Juan Diego left at once to ask for the sign. Arriving back at Tepeyac, the Virgin told him to return the following day to receive the sign to bring the bishop: “That is fine, my youngest and dearest son; you will return here tomorrow so that you may take the sign he asked for. Then, he will believe and no longer doubt or be suspicious of you; and know, my dear son, I shall reward your care, work and fatigue in my behalf. Go now; tomorrow I shall be here waiting for you.” That sign turned out to be Castillian roses, which had not yet been introduced to Mexico, growing on the top of a stony hill in frigid December temperatures. Juan Diego was instructed to bring them back to the bishop in his tilma, or outer parka. When he returned to the bishop, as he opened up his tilma, the bishop saw the roses from his native Castille, the sign he was seeking. He and everyone else also saw something even more miraculous: some of the roses had melted into the tilma and produced the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe: our Lady, dressed like a pregnant Aztec princess, was giving witness that she was ready to give birth to Christ among the Mexican people.
• For me one of the most impressive elements of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and an incredible sign of its authenticity is what has happened when they’ve done modern scientific tests on the tilma. Various tilmas like it of maguey-fiber (ayate) fabric have been made as controls and they all begin decomposing, even behind glass, after about 20 years, and yet the image itself is present without any decomposition after 487 years. Studies have been done about how an image could get and stay on a tilma like that, showing that it defies human means; infrared studies have shown that there was no trace of paint at all and that the fabric hadn’t been treated with a means to receive paint. And my favorite is what has been discovered with regard to the eyes. With high-tech zooms magnifying the image 2500 times, it’s been discovered that 13 highly detailed figures are present in the iris and pupil of her eyes, in the left and right eyes, as would happen when human eyes reflect the objects before them. The figures seem to be all those who would have been present in the Bishop’s room when Juan Diego unfurled the tilma, including the Bishop himself, shown as a balding, elderly man with a white beard, matching portraits of him at the time. Such optical information would be impossible for anyone to paint, not only because of the microscopic detail but also because the science of the eye and how images are processed in reflection (the Purkinje effect) not known at the time. At a theological level, it shows that the Blessed Virgin always has us in the apple of the eye. She’s looking at all of us now with love. We’re not only in her eyes but in her heart. She really is our merciful mother.
• And just like she gave birth to Jesus among the Mexicans in the 1530s, so she wants to give birth to Christ within us, to teach us how to relate to him within us like she did as he was growing within her. And she has that chance here at Mass, particularly daily Mass, which is how she appeared to St. Juan Diego. It’s here that she gives us a chance to enter into communion with her Merciful Son and together with him, united with her and all the saints, offer to the Eternal Father Christ’s body, blood, soul and divinity, in expiation for our sins and the sins of the world stretching from the beginning to the end of time!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Reading 1
RV 11:19A; 12:1-6A, 10AB