A Reflection for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
You’ll find today’s readings here.
“God’s temple in heaven was opened…” (Rev 11:19)
I don’t learn about you, but I find myself repeating a conversation that goes something like this: “When was that? Was that this 12 months?” The predictable answer follows: “I’m unsure, 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 one another “When was that…? Was I there?”
Today, I invite you to stop, get off that treadmill and make time to contemplate the events recounted within the story of Nuestra Señora deGuadalupe. Feel yourself alive, an inhabitant of the early twenty-first century, a survivor of a worldwide 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, able to reveal wondrous things, who just needs your attention.
Call to mind the likelihood that as dawn broke over the horizon about five centuries ago, a person burdened by heartbreak in a world that was crumbling around him, walked down the identical road he at all times did, to do the identical thing he at all times did. He could have kept walking, lost in his grief. He could have, but he didn’t. There was something surprising within 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 hunt down Juan Diego because she knew what it was wish to be like him and his people, the dispossessed of the earth that nobody 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, perhaps covered in dust from sweeping or in flour from baking. See her frightened face (much like Juan Diego’s perplexity,) because the veil between this world and God’s suddenly opens and a messenger enters. The gospel tells us she is scared and confused, but by some means (like Juan Diego would also learn to do), she trusts the mystery of a cosmos that swirls around them each, a mystery that tells them (and us) of a God wanting to be known.
Are you open to the frightening, demanding and in addition entrancing cosmic mystery in search of you out?
Juan Diego has to beat his conviction that he’s a no person. How can he possibly speak to the powerful? Why didn’t the gorgeous Señora del Cielo select someone vital? After which there are his many responsibilities, especially his very sick uncle. He has a lot to do! He tries to avoid her, takes a distinct road, but she comes down from the hill to fulfill him within 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 only a young girl from a borderland village where nothing vital ever happened. Could the God of her ancestors really be calling out to her? Did she hunt down Juan Diego because she knew what it was wish to be like him and his people, the dispossessed of the earth that nobody bothers to see? La Virgen asks for his trust; she knows from experience that is the one sure road toward God. To trust.
Stars could also be swept from the sky by the dragon’s violence, but they are going to fall onto her mantle and cradling them, she’s going to distribute their luminescence. Evil will want to devour the kid 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. Because the sun shimmers this morning, she asks you to not be afraid but to trust, heaven is opening up throughout you. Stop. Hearken to the birds. There’s something God needs you to do.
Get to know Cecilia González-Andrieu, Contributing Author at America.
Favorite Advent or Christmas themed art? John August Swanson’s Nativity, 1988
Favorite Christmas tradition?
Establishing the many alternative Nacimientos (nativity sets) that we’ve collected through the years from many alternative lands.
Which project are you most proud to have worked on this 12 months at America? I’m definitely having fun with 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 about.
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 in addition green salty plantains (tostones), black beans (frijoles negros) and rice. Soak beans overnight after which rinse, make a sofrito with olive oil, garlic, onions and a bit of 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 very long time on a low simmer and serve with the rice.
Favorite Christmas photo? A part of our holiday tradition is to go to Yosemite, so all pictures of my family there are my favorites. On this recent one my husband and son are enthralled over again by the positioning of Yosemite Falls.
