Our Lady of Guadalupe
Saint Juan Diego Quauhtlatoatzin (1474-1548)
From the Shrine Documents
The enormous basilica of Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in Mexico City is the most visited pilgrimage site in the Western Hemisphere. It is located on the hill of Tepeyac , a place previously used by the Aztec people as a site of pagan worship. In pre-Hispanic times, Tepeyac had been crowned with a temple dedicated to an earth and fertility goddess called Tonantzin, the “mother of the gods.” Tonantzin, like the Christian Guadalupe who usurped her shrine, was a virgin goddess, also associated with the moon. The Tepeyac hill and shrine had been an important pilgrimage place for the nearby Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan. Following the conquest of Tenochtitlan by Hernan Cortez in 1521, the shrine was demolished and the native people were forbidden to make pilgrimages to the hill for the ceremonies of pagan worship.
On Saturday, December 9, 1531, a baptized Aztec Indian named Juan Diego set out at dawn to attend Mass at the church of Santiago in the village of Tlaltelolco, a nearby town. Passing the hill of Tepeyac, he heard a voice calling to him. Climbing the hill, he saw on the summit a young woman who seemed to be no more than fourteen years old, standing in a golden mist. Revealing herself as the “ever-virgin Mary, Mother of the true God, who gives life and maintains it in existence. He created all things. He is in all places. He is Lord of heaven and earth. ” She told Juan Diego to go to the local bishop and tell him that she desired a church to be built on the hill. “I desire a church at this place where I will show my compassion to your people and to all people who sincerely ask my help in their work and in their sorrows. Here, I will see their tears; I will console them and they will be at ease. So run now to Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) and tell the Lord Bishop all that you have seen and heard.”
Juan did as he was instructed, but the bishop did not believe him. On his way home, Juan climbed the sacred hill and again saw the apparition of the Virgin Mary, who told him to return to the bishop the next day. This time the bishop listened more attentively to Juan’s message from Mary. He was still skeptical, however, and so asked for a sign from Mary.
Two days later Juan went again to Tepeyac hill and, meeting the Blessed Virgin, he was told to climb the hill to the site of their first encounter and to pick a bunch of roses that would be growing there, and return with the roses to Mary. Juan climbed the hill with misgivings. It was the dead of winter, and no roses could possibly be growing on the cold and frosty hill. But upon reaching the summit Juan found a profusion of roses, an armful of which he gathered and wrapped in his shawl to carry to Mary. Arranging the roses, Mary instructed Juan to take the shawl-encased bundle to the bishop, for this would be her sign. When the bishop unrolled the shawl, the presence of the roses was astounding. But truly miraculous was the image that had mysteriously appeared on the inside of Juan Diego’s shawl. The image showed a young woman with child, her head lowered demurely. Wearing an open crown and flowing gown, she stood upon a half moon. Soon thereafter the bishop began construction of the church.
News of the miraculous apparition of the Virgin’s image on a peasant’s shawl spread rapidly throughout Mexico. Indians by the tens of thousands, learning that the mother of the Christian God had appeared to one of their own kind and spoken to him in his native language, came from hundreds of miles away to see the image . It now hangs above the altar in the new church. The miraculous image was to have a powerful influence on the advancement of the Church’s mission in Mexico. In only seven years, from 1532 to 1538, more than eight million Indians were converted to Christianity. The shrine, rebuilt several times over the centuries, is today a great basilica that has space for 10,000 pilgrims. Juan Diego’s shawl is preserved behind bulletproof glass and hangs twenty-five feet above the main altar in the basilica. For more than 450 years the colors of the image have remained as bright as if they were painted yesterday, and the coarse-woven cactus cloth of the shawl, which seldom lasts more that twenty years, shows no evidence of decay.
Yearly, an estimated ten million pilgrims come to venerate the mysterious image and on the apparition date, create an extraordinary pageant. NuestraSenora de Guadalupe is Mexico’s patron saint, and her image adorns churches and altars, house fronts and interiors, taxis and buses, bull rings and can be found everywhere in Mexico. The shrine of Guadalupe is a place of extraordinary vitality and celebration. On major festival days, such as the anniversary of the apparition on December 12th, the atmosphere of devotion created by some six million pilgrims is truly electrifying.
Source: Documents from the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico
Saint Juan Diego Quauhtlatoatzin (1474-1548) – Little is known about the life of Juan Diego before his conversion, but tradition and archaeological and iconographical sources, along with the most important and oldest indigenous document on the event of Guadalupe, “El Nican Mopohua” (written in Náhuatl with Latin characters, 1556, by the Indigenous writer Antonio Valeriano), give some information on the life of the saint and the apparitions.
Juan Diego was born in 1474 with the name “Cuauhtlatoatzin” (“the talking eagle”) in Cuautlitlán, today part of Mexico City, Mexico. He was a gifted member of the Chichimeca people, one of the more culturally advanced groups living in the Anáhuac Valley.
When he was 50 years old he was baptized by a Franciscan priest, Fr Peter da Gand, one of the first Franciscan missionaries. On 9 December 1531, when Juan Diego was on his way to morning Mass, the Blessed Mother appeared to him on Tepeyac Hill, the outskirts of what is now Mexico City. She asked him to go to the Bishop and to request in her name that a shrine be built at Tepeyac, where she promised to pour out her grace upon those who invoked her. The Bishop, who did not believe Juan Diego, asked for a sign to prove that the apparition was true. On 12 December, Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac. Here, the Blessed Mother told him to climb the hill and to pick the flowers that he would find in bloom. He obeyed, and although it was winter time, he found roses flowering. He gathered the flowers and took them to Our Lady who carefully placed them in his mantle and told him to take them to the Bishop as “proof”. When he opened his mantle, the flowers fell on the ground and there remained impressed, in place of the flowers, an image of the Blessed Mother, the apparition at Tepeyac.
With the Bishop’s permission, Juan Diego lived the rest of his life as a hermit in a small hut near the chapel where the miraculous image was placed for veneration. Here he cared for the church and the first pilgrims who came to pray to the Mother of Jesus.
Much deeper than the “exterior grace” of having been “chosen” as Our Lady’s “messenger”, Juan Diego received the grace of interior enlightenment and from that moment, he began a life dedicated to prayer and the practice of virtue and boundless love of God and neighbor. He died in 1548 and was buried in the first chapel dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe. He was beatified on 6 May 1990 by Pope John Paul II in the Basilica of Santa Maria di Guadalupe, Mexico City and was canonized a saint by Pope John Paul II at the same Basilica on July 31, 2002.
The miraculous image, which is preserved in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, shows a woman with native features and dress. She is supported by an angel whose wings are reminiscent of one of the major gods of the traditional religion of that area. The moon is beneath her feet and her blue mantle is covered with gold stars. The black girdle about her waist signifies that she is pregnant. Thus, the image graphically depicts the fact that Christ is to be “born” again among the peoples of the New World, and is a message as relevant to the “New World” today as it was during the lifetime of Juan Diego.
Source: Vatican Library