as i write, one of those candles in a glass tube one finds in the mexican food section of supermarkets, with a paper icon of the virgen del guadalupe on one side, and prayers to her in spanish and english on the other side, is burning before the icons of my sleeping loft, icons of my patron st. chad, a saxon who was trained by the celtic abbot aidan and who came to be consecrated bishop of mercia--the welsh marches--by the roman-appointed archbishop of canterbury from tarsus, and of ezekiel, the hebrew prophet and priest who wrote in exile in chaldea.
the twelth of december is the feast day of our lady of guadalupe, commemorating the appearance in 1531 of a young girl to the peasant juan diego, to whom she spoke in his native languge, nahuatl, that a church should be built in her honor on the hill of tepeyac. he told the story to his bishop, who suggested his story would be more convincing if there were some proof from the mysterious virgin, so juan diego returned to the hill. the young woman, in deep winter, brought castilian roses into bloom from the dry desert soil, filling juan's cloak. when he returned to the bishop and opened his cloak, the flowers fell out and in their place on the cloak, the tilpa which is still the center of the shrine to the virgen in what is now mexico city, was the image which is now the symbol of mexico and known in nearly every catholic parish in the world.
as so often happened, franciscans, in charge of the church that had been built on the spot of an ancient native shrine to tonantzin, opposed accepting juan diego's claim, but the dominicans supported the aztec veneration of this image and understanding of our lady. the archbishop, alonzo du montafar, himself a dominican, agreed to the veneration, gave the site to the keeping of the domincans, and called for the building of a larger church. greater acclaim would follow. in 1754, benedict xiv would declare the virgin of guadalupe the patron of new spain, pius x made her patron of latin america in 1910, and in 1945 pius xii would declare her patroness of all the americas.
it was only when i came to live in santa fe in 1989 that i began to understand the significance of the virgin of guadalupe. it was not primarily because of the great devotion to her there. (the photograph above is of the new statue--some of my more protestant friends might call it an idol--of her outside the santuario de guadalupe, said to be the oldest shrine to her in north america.) it was because in santa fe, where the valley of the river that gives life to the city seems itself like labial folds, a resonance made famous in georgia o'keefe's flower paintings, that i began to appreciate the importance of the mother. it was there that i forgave my mother for what had seemed to me to be mistreatment of my brothers. it was in santa fe that i began to appreciate the necessity of the virgin's willing partcipation in the salvation of the world, and there that i started my exploration of the many ways the virgin has come to be known to us.
now that i am at the corner of the united states, perched out towards the pacific ocean, living near a big field where i go to view the starry starry night, it is our lady the star of the sea who captures my imagination.
but for today's feast the important question remains, who is this young woman, this virgin, who spoke to juan diego in his own tongue? is she really, as the franciscans said, the local goddess craftily reimaged by an aztec painter inside juan hildago's tilma? or is she, as the dominicans said, the very mother of our lord. my response is, why must it be one and not the other? why can they not be the same? those who find the veneration of the virgin of guadalupe superstitious like to point out that the aztec tonantzin is coatlaxopeuh, 'she who crushes the serpent,' and not the virgin mary of our christmas carols. ah, but the virgin of our christmas carols, quiet songs like 'away in a manger' is she not the 'woman clothed with the sun' of john's vision on patmos. (i am delighted that both visionaries had the same name, john and juan.)
in a few weeks we will hear once again the angels' song to the shepherds of a savior which shall be to all people. all people, not just to those living in judea. we will respond with the symbol of the faith in which we say that savior rose 'in accordance with the scriptures.' do we not deminish that rising when we insist that it is only in accordance with the hebrew scriptures? we do well to remember that in those same hebrew scriptures, which we call 'the old testament', the holy and eternal one makes covenant with all people before abram is singled out, and the blessing through abram, renamed abraham, is itself for all people.
here at the corner of the world, for me that may be the star of the sea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gER1FAfi3Oc&feature=related
lovely - thank you.
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