Remembering Our Lady of Guadalupe in Cabanglasan

[Homily.  First Day of the Novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Parish Church, Cabanglasan.  Dec 3, 2023] 

Not long after the conquistador, Hernan Cortez, had conquered the Mexican native Aztecs,  he welcomed 12 Franciscan Friars to help in the evangelization of the indigenous peoples of Mexico.  In this context of foreign conquest and the start of serious evangelization in Mexico, Our Lady appeared to Juan Diego, a native, four times in 1531.  On Dec 9, a Saturday, she appeared to him speaking his native Nahuati (the Aztec language); she asked that a church be built where she appeared.  After the apparition, Juan Diego went immediately to the archbishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumaraga, and relayed to him the message of Our Lady.  As could be expected, he did not believe him.  Why would our Lady, Queen of Heaven and Earth, be appearing to such a simple man as Juan Diego?   

So that very same afternoon, Juan Diego goes back to the spot where Our Lady appeared to him.  In her second apparition, he tells her the reaction of the archbishop.  But our Lady does not change her wish.  She instructs Juan to go back to the archbishop and tell him that the instruction for the building of a church is coming for Our Lady Herself, the mother of Jesus.   It is Saturday afternoon; she tells Juan Diego she will meet him again on Monday.  So, the next day, Sunday, Juan Diego returns to the bishop with the Lady’s message.  This time, the archbishop tells him:   ask her to give you a sign to prove that she is really who she says she is. 

On Monday, however, Juan Diego is distracted by the sudden illness of his uncle, Juan Bernardino.  He has to care for him.  Because of this, he does not show up for his meeting with Our Lady.  He misses his appointment with her!  Instead, he takes care of his uncle.    

The next day, Tuesday, Juan Diego, still concerned for his uncle’s health, actually tries to avoid meeting our Lady.  He takes another route, avoiding the place where he’d met her.  But Our Lady follows him, and appears to him on his alternative route.  Huli!  “Where are you going?” she asks.  Embarrassed, he explains to her his predicament, how his uncle was taken ill, and how he had to take care of him.  She understands, of course, but in the message of her fourth apparition, she chides him for not having taken recourse to her in his need, “Am I not here?” she asks, “I who am your mother?”  Then she assures him that his uncle has already been restored to health; she has in fact already appeared to him.  

So Juan Diego is now able to tell her what the Archbishop has said.  He wants a sign.  So Mary instructs Juan to go to an isolated hill.  Go there and gather the flowers that are there, she says.  “Flowers?” he wonders.  “In winter?”  But he obeys.  When he arrives on the hill, he is totally dumbfounded.   Where normally only thorns and thistles grow, especially now, in winter, there are beautiful roses growing – and not just ordinary roses, Castilian roses, which were not native to Mexico.  He gathers them and bring them to her.  

When he does, she herself arranges them in his tilma or tunic.  On her instruction, he now brings them to the archbishop.  When he unravels his tilma, the flowers fall; and there, permanently impressed on the tilma, is the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  The image of the Lady is described in Revelations 12:1:  she is “clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.”  But her facial features are not European but native Mexican, her garments that of the native people, her language not that of the conquering Spaniards but that of the conquered Aztecs.  To the native Mexicans looking at this image, the rays behind her are the rays of the Aztec sun god, which Our Lady now eclipses.  At her feet is the image of the Aztec moon god of life and fertility, which Our Lady now overpowers.  It is the 12^th of December, the day we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe,

Our Lady of Guadalupe is an image of Our Lady identifying herself with the new Christian community in Mexico whose people Pope Pius III insisted were “not savages but had souls and were intelligent enough to understand and accept the faith” (Pope Paul III, Sublimis Deus, 1537).  Because of this, they were not to be enslaved, not to be oppressed, but respected.  Appearing to them as one of them, dressed like them, speaking their own language, and looking like them, was Our Lady’s way of encouraging the young church in Mexico in their Christian beliefs, even as they had to struggle, on the one hand, against the European conquest and  exploitation that had beset them in their land, but also, on the other hand, against old Aztec beliefs of ancestral worship and ongoing worship of traditional gods.  

For Mary, the true Savior was her Son giving himself to the Mexican people to lead them to his Father,  and she was Our Lady of Guadalupe to help bring the Mexican people to her Son.  

Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of your community in Cabanglasan, as she is also the “Heavenly Patroness of the Philippine Islands”  as decreed by Pope Pious XI in 1935.

As we begin a new liturgical year in the hope of the Second Coming of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ as King and Judge of Heaven and Earth, let us pray that our Our Lady of Guadalupe, specially present in our community, bless the church – this church of Cabanglasan – that she appreciates has been built in her name, this community of Cabanglasan that worships God through her intercession – so the Church may come closer to its people, speaking their own native tongue, living the faith in their own native traditions – just as what happened under her guidance in Mexico.  Let us take special consolation in Our Lady telling us when we have urgent concerns, when we have loved ones who are sick or no longer know how to make ends meet, “Am I not here?  Am I not your mother?”  Perhaps with this we can remember what we often pray in the Memorare, “Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession was left unaided.” 

Through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, when the Son of Man comes again as the King and Judge of Heaven and Earth, may we be prepared because we have allowed ourselves in this life to be helped and guided by her.  May we hear the Lord say, “Come you blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom that has been prepared for you since the foundation of the world.”