Last year, we experienced the grace of being able to spend Christmas in Mexico with dear friends.  While there we came upon a beautiful image of our Lady of Guadalupe.  Watching the framed image wrapped and lying on the tarmac in Puebla, we worried that it might not make it back to the U.S. in one piece.  It did and now hangs in the living room of our home.  It is a consoling and often challenging experience to gaze upon her image, which captures and includes inexhaustible imagery and truth about our God of justice, peace, and inclusion and what this means in our world and universe.

As we celebrate her feast day today, she can seem a stark contrast to what we see going on in our world.   Violence, oppression, and injustice stare at us from all corners of our world it seems, and yet the wealth of meaning in Our Lady of Guadalupe reminds us in a powerful and challenging way that we are called to journey into the darkness that confronts us in our world and be in this darkness as an inclusive light beaconing transformation and healing.

I have always found in the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe how interesting it was that Juan Diego, who had 3 prior apparitions from our Lady, sought to evade seeing her again on account of the illness of his uncle.  Rather than following up with the bishop’s request for a “sign” from Our Lady, Juan Diego tends to his dying uncle.  Our Lady does appear to Juan Diego at this point and gently chides him with these words, which are in fact found over the main entrance of the Basilica outside of Mexico City, “Am I not here, I who am your mother?”

Our Lady of Guadalupe has much to tell us about the meaning of the Incarnation.  As Luke recounts in today’s Gospel (Lk 1:26-38), the Annunciation story wherein the angel Gabriel informs Mary of that wonder which shall issue forth from her, the Feast of our Lady of Guadalupe underlines the responsibility that we have in fully participating in the Transformative Newness, the ‘Child’ to be born into the world.  As much as the young virgin Mary in the Lucan account is perplexed, confused and uncertain, she is also accepting of that which is being asked of her.  The trust came from somewhere, perhaps that mysterious power of the Most High that ‘overshadowed her.”   The end result is that she chose to be ‘mother’ to the Child of humanity and Divinity!

In a way, Our Lady of Guadalupe is telling us how we can all be ‘mothering.’ This entails our full participation in confronting the darkness of our world and bringing into the light the hope and justice of our true connectedness with each other and our God.  Our Lady of Guadalupe is a symbol beyond gender – an image of nourishment, care and healing that is the cornerstone piece of Jesus’ mission and the Christ journey.  When we look at Mary, we can perhaps begin to see how our own lives – many times experienced as uncertain, confused, painful, and even frightening – have the possibility of becoming so much more, when we can accept the responsibility that we have for each other, to truly respond in a ‘mothering’ way, nourishing and caring for one another with the assurance that we are ‘in this’ together.  And in this community of healing solidarity we can show the face of Christ, the Advent of God, in our prayers and actions, trusting and holding one another!

The theologian, Virgil Elizando[i], describes how destruction and darkness in our world results from the failure to recognize our own inner and outer dignity, beauty, and infinite worth.  He speaks of the ‘way of Incarnation’ as an approach to Life that starts from inclusivity and reverence rather than domineering darkness.  Is this not divine human healing, i.e., a bringing together all that is as good and holy and worthy? Life then can become an honoring of a brilliance in enfleshment that really is Divine.   This is a manner in which we experience our world within a mode of living that is a gift bringing with it joy and pain, difficulty, misunderstanding, hope, consolation, and a whole slew of other things.

We need to be nourished, cared for, and healed many times – i.e., we need to be ‘mothered.’  And such is the case that the reverse is true.  We are all called to ‘mother’ each other at times.  This is not the ‘doting’ image of motherhood, but instead the gentle strength that en-genders communal responsibility.  It’s not so much a gender issue as much as it is a human one.

As Our Lady of Guadalupe tells us, this ‘mothering’ can be expressed as the embracing of diverse cultures even amidst oppression and injustice wherein we can begin to see and become the Truth (Cantos Y Flores) Real Light of Life.  The Advent Light travels in and through darkness, and many times that is the only way we will encounter its healing rays.  How scandalous would it be if our God was a ‘Mother’ in the dark lighting the way for all Her children?  Dare we follow her as yet another Incarnation of the Christ in the universe?

“Silence, all mankind, in the presence of the LORD! For he stirs forth from his holy dwelling.”
(Zec 2:14-17)

[i] Elizando, Guadalupe: Mother of the New Creation (New York: Orbis Books, 1997), p. 86.

Peace,

Thomas