Our Lady of Guadalupe
Christmas overflows with joy and love because it celebrates the greatest love of all time. It celebrates God, who is love, becoming man, so that by His perfect love all men and women could know Him more personally, and share Him more deeply. This love, in God, existed before all creation, but in human form, it began in the womb of Mary.
Today, as we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, we celebrate the love that brought Christ into our world, not because Mary loved us then, but because Mary loves us always.
The feast today celebrates her appearance to Juan Diego and his uncle, Juan Bernadino, in 1531, in what is now central Mexico, and the enduring image of her presence, imprinted on the tilma that Juan Diego wore, that remains there to this day. It reminds us that her love for us is not a mere abstraction or symbol. It is a force with which she actively reaches out to us and touches us in our lives, with the power to transform us, helping bring us to her son, as she first brought her son to us.
Millions of Aztecs converted to Catholicism in the years that immediately followed her appearance to those two peasants. Her saving work, like her love, and like her Son’s love, as humble as it is exulted, is intended to be universal, for all of us, even as it is deeply personal, for each of us.
The readings today are filled with love for Mary. Since Jesus is not only the Son of God, but also the Word of God, they are filled with His love for His mother. The Word of God is with us to help us more fully love Christ, but also to more fully love Mary, just as Jesus does.
In more fully loving Mary, we come to better love as she loves. We more fully love God, and we more fully love all of our brothers and sisters for whom her Son entered into this world, and gave His life.
The image of Mary, still present on Juan Diego’s cloak after almost half a millennium, is miraculous and beautiful. But even greater is the miracle in the beauty of the image of herself that she plants in our hearts—the image of her love.
John Manley
Young Adult Board
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