Today, people all over Latin
America and especially throughout Mexico, celebrate Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. It is the most
prominent Catholic feast among Spanish speaking Catholics in the US and
certainly in Boyle Heights, near East LA.
Three aspects of this feast really help me
this Advent. First, it celebrates the feminine side of the divine. Scholars
like Elizabeth Johnson observe keenly that Mary is the maternal face of God.
Mary’s active and total “yes” provides a home for God to dwell in human flesh.
She models the values of receptivity, openness, and hospitality which make
space for Emmanuel, God-with-us. Second, the feast celebrates how God relates
personally to us. Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego, not as a
European Madonna, but as an Aztec princess, wearing native dress, and speaking
to him in Nahuatl, his own language. Through
Mary, God relates to us through the customs and language that we can
understand. Third, the feast celebrates God’s preferential love for the poor
and powerless. In their context of mistreatment and
oppression by Spanish colonizers, Our
Lady’s tender assurance to Juan and his people opens them up to greater hope in
God: “Am I not here, who am your Mother? Are
you not under my shadow and protection?” Not surprisingly, more than 9 million local people became Catholics
shortly after Our Lady’s apparition, whereas before conversions to the faith
had been sporadic.
Through
Our Lady of Guadalupe, God is revealed as one
who is maternal, who speaks our language, and who stands with and for the poor.
This God encounters us where we are and as we are. As the loss of my young
cousin sets in my heart and violence rises in the neighborhoods around Boyle
Heights, the feast of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe
is touches me in a profound way. Join me in this petition found in the opening
prayer at Mass today:
“… grant that all who invoke the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe,
may seek with ever more lively faith
the progress of peoples in the ways of justice and of peace.”
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