"Do not be afraid, you have nothing to fear.
Am I not here, your compassionate mother?"
(message of Mary to St. Juan Diego)
The story of Mary's appearance to St. Juan Diego and the image she left on his cloak is well-known. What many people miss, however, is the message of compassion, human development, and social justice.
The 1531 apparition came after decades of increasing oppression of the native peoples (primarily Aztecs) by the Spanish. Some of this was in the name of evangelization, but what the Spanish were doing was definitely not in keeping with the Gospel. On the other side, the human sacrifices of the Aztecs was an evil that was worth some attention by Christians. By the early 1500s, two cultures were in a virtual stand-off, with the Spanish winning the upper hand in a bloody defeat of the Aztec empire in 1521. With that, the Spanish set about forcing the Aztecs to either submit to them or die.
Ten years later, Mary's apparition as a Mestizo woman changed things. Here is what the Encyclopedia of Catholicism says about the image of Mary on the cloak of St. Juan Diego:
"In her, the two anthropologies come together so as to produce something totally different than either of the two had been able to achieve independently: the change is from the absolute exclusion of the other as other for the sake of ethnic/religious unity, to the inclusion of otherness for the sake of new life. In the Mestizo Mother of the Americas, irreconcilable differences are not only reconciled, but a new 'beyond exclusion existence' is introduced, one that will destroy the very basis of cruel violence produced by any exclusion-based existence."
So the Virgin of Guadalupe is a symbol of love, compassion, and hospitality. These are matters of social justice, and so we can once again look to Mary to show us the justice that her Son came into the world to bring about.
Copyright © 2010, Deacon Carl D. Smith. All rights reserved. Reprint permission granted to parishes for use in Sunday bulletins.
