Miracles (part 1): The story of the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe
This month, my wife and I had the blessing of taking a short pilgrimage to Mexico City to visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe to see the miraculous tilma of Juan Diego and associated sites. This Basilica is by far the most visited shrine of the Christian faith, surpassing Notre Dame, Fatima, Lourdes, St. Peter’s Basilica (Vatican) by good measure. For those not familiar with the story, it makes a fascinating tale.
The setting was 1531, only 12 years after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in Mexico. Juan Diego was a 57-year-old native Indian, merchant, widower, recent convert to Christianity, and caretaker for his sickly uncle. On December 9, 1531, Mary the mother of Jesus appeared to Juan Diego as he was walking to what is now Mexico City. Mary’s appearance was that of an Indian maiden, and she introduced herself as the “mother of the one great god” and as “your compassionate mother, yours and of all the people who live together in this land, and of all the other people of different ancestries.” She asked him to talk to the local bishop about having a temple built at that site in her honor. Mary met with Juan Diego several times, but his attempts to fulfill her requests were unsuccessful, with the bishop asking this unassuming messenger for proof.
Juan Diego was side-tracked while trying to find help for his uncle’s worsening medical condition, but Mary tracked him down on December 12th and told him not to worry, that she would heal his uncle, and wanted to give him the proof that the bishop requested. Mary asked Juan Diego to climb a nearby hill and pick a bouquet of roses from the top and bring them to her. This was odd, given that roses did not grow in the middle of winter on top of this craggy desert hill. But Juan Diego obeyed and found the beautiful roses and brought them down the hill to Mary in his tilma (a poncho made of rough cactus fiber). She rearranged the roses and instructed Juan Diego to show no one until he could present them to the bishop. Juan Diego did just that, persisting through much interference, given that it must not have been easy to gain an audience with a bishop 3 times in 4 days, even back in those days.
When Juan Diego opened his tilma before the bishop and let the roses fall to the ground, the bishop and his attendants immediately fell to their knees gazing at Juan Diego’s tilma. The tilma had been miraculously imbued with a most extraordinary image of Mary as she had appeared to Juan Diego, standing in front of the sun, on top of the moon, supported by an angel, pregnant, dancing, and eyes lowered in reverence to the one great God. Her cloak and tunic were covered in stars and flowers. The entire picture contained numerous symbols of great significance to the Aztec religion of the native Indians. Quite amazingly, at the same time that Mary was arranging the roses in the tilma, she also appeared to Juan Diego’s dying uncle and completely healed him of his illness.
As a result, the bishop indeed had a temple built as Mary requested, which has now grown through several iterations to the massive basilica that houses 10,000 people inside and many more in the courtyard surrounding. Juan Diego cared for the tilma and showed it to visitors for the remainder of his life. Over the next decade, this image led to a dramatic conversion of Latin America to Christianity, and improved relations between the different races of people inhabiting the region in a way that never could have been accomplished by the church or government alone. Replicas of the image are seen everywhere throughout Mexico, and the people afford Our Lady of Guadalupe great honor to this day. But the miracles do not end there. Check out the next post to read about miraculous discoveries of the tilma in our modern times.
