Guadalupe Day

(Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe Dec. 12)

St. Juan Diego heard no voice of God,
he saw no burning bush, he wasn’t Moses,
but heard and saw God’s Mother, and what’s odd,
she filled his tilma with a bush of roses.*

Yet more than flowers he’d to the bishop carry,
who with his aides saw stamped upon that robe
an Aztec image of the Virgin Mary,**
from then a work of art seen ‘round the globe.***

She there appeared in fifteen thirty one,
ten years since Spain had conquered Mexico,
led then eight million Indians to her Son,
and millions more to her great shrine would go.

Americas’ sweet Patroness, we say,
and honor her on Guadalupe Day.****

* A tilma was a cactus cloak; no roses in Dec.
** His miraculous tilma still hangs in the shrine
of O.L. of Guadalupe in Mexico City today.
The image shows Mary as an Indian girl, pregnant
with Jesus, and she spoke in the Aztec tongue.
*** Scientists cannot identify the substance
of the picture embedded in the tilma.
**** Catholics worship God alone, but honor
Christ’s Mother just as He does in heaven.
Pope St. John Paul II named her the
Patroness of All the Americas.

by Pete Voelz     12/12/13