The more I learned about the sixteenth-century apparition to the Indian Juan Diego in Mexico, the more I quietly fell in love with the details. Two dozen years later, I had become a monk and my community decided to celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe with greater solemnity. This translated into an outdoor procession with our donkey Lupe!

Mother of the New Creation

In preparation for the feast, I read Virgil Elizondo’s Guadalupe: Mother of the New Creation and was struck by the creatively subversive, revolutionary aspect of the Virgin’s appearance. In case you don’t know the tale, here it is: In 1531, Juan Diego, a native living near Mexico City, left home before dawn on his way to church. He heard some extraordinary music, like beautiful birdsong, coming from above him on the hill of Tepeyac. Then he heard himself addressed. He climbed the hill and met a beautiful lady who asked him to deliver a message to the bishop: she wanted the bishop to build her a “hermitage,” a chapel, on this hill sacred to the natives. Juan reluctantly went to the bishop’s palace, where he was peremptorily dismissed.

Juan returned to the lady, reported his failure and suggested she find a better messenger. She sent him back. After a thorough interview, the bishop dismissed Juan a second time, insisting he needed a sign that would confirm the truth of Juan’s outlandish claim.

The Aztec symbols on Mary’s robe announced the dawning of a new age with an infant sun.

Dejected, Juan returned home to find his uncle gravely ill. So the next day before dawn, he headed to Mexico City to get a priest. He skirted the hill to avoid the lady. But she saw and intercepted him. She assured him that his uncle was already cured and told him to climb the hill and pick the flowers he would find there. It was December 12. He found the impossible Castilian flowers, filled his mantle, or tilma, with them, and brought them to the lady, who sent him on to the palace.

There he met a cold reception and waited a long time. Finally, the bishop saw him. Juan knelt and told his tale. He opened his tilma and out poured the flowers. But they were nothing compared to the lightning bolt that struck the bishop: the emptied tilma bore a radiant image of the beautiful lady. The bishop was converted.

Fr. Dave and Lupe celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Nada Hermitage in Crestone, Colorado.

An Indigenous Mother

Elizondo’s commentary places this event in its historical context and describes the Aztec background of the story. Although the Spaniards brought the Christian faith, the lady made it clear that the indigenous Mexicans were the Spaniards’ equals. Elizondo sees the Virgin’s message as a mandate for missionaries that would not be fully embraced by the Church until recently. Current teachings renounce evangelization through destruction of native cultures. The timing for this intervention was uncanny. The conquest of Mexico began in 1519. By 1531, the native population was devastated by warfare, disease, and persecution.

The Virgin’s features and dress are Aztec, not Spanish. This was unprecedented. Elizondo describes the Aztec hieroglyphic symbols on Mary’s robe. Illiterate natives may have “read” the message encoded there: a new age with an infant sun had dawned. No one knows why the tilma has not disintegrated after four and a half centuries. No one knows how the haunting image was made. Even if we discover natural causes that account for these anomalies, how account for the miracle of the message, the flower and song of its truth?

Earthy Mysticism

I love the earthiness of Christian mysticism and the warm humanity of Jesus. Rather than “intervening” in a “godless” situation, it seems more accurate that God is present and works from within the creation God loves, especially through human instruments. But when someone oppresses a community, God may erupt in dramatic ways. Justice requires challenging authorities for the sake of the poor, the underdogs, and outcasts. Aztec sages claimed that flor y canto, flower and song always clothe truth. The heavenly music and the presence of flowers at the crest of Tepeyac in December are not only miracles, but confirmation that what Juan saw and heard there was true.

In our celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe, we decked our donkey Lupe with paper flowers, and we attached a New Mexican bulto carving of the Virgin on Lupe’s packsaddle. Beginning at our garage, we processed down our gravel road to Lupe’s corral. When the feast fell on a Sunday, we invited neighbor children to join us. They strewed dried flower petals in front of Lupe as we sang our way to the corral. Once there, we started a campfire and read the Guadalupe story aloud.

We decked our donkey Lupe with paper flowers and put a New Mexican santo on her packsaddle.

When we reached the climactic moment when Juan Diego opens his flower-filled tilma, we unfolded a brightly colored Mexican blanket that hung on the corral fence. Paper and felt roses tumbled out on the ground, revealing a poster of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It was more like a grammar school skit than a grand liturgical drama. But in the chilly December light, as the sun set over the San Juan Mountains, I felt profound gratitude. Sometimes we lingered at the fireside with hot chocolate or adjourned to the dining room for a meal of huevos rancheros.

Just because you don’t have a donkey doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate this feast! And while reveling, it is good to remember the source of the joy. The New World, says Elizondo, gave birth to a new race, the mestizos, once shunned by both European and native cultures. Our Lady of Guadalupe proclaims herself their mother, our mother. She is the New World’s New Eve, mother of a diverse human ecology that rejects the monocultures of European imperialist hubris and Aztec human sacrifice, subordinating them to flor y canto, the liberating truth and celebration of God’s love here and now.

Detail from “Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe / Our Lady of Guadalupe (Tonantzin)” art by Netanel Miles-Yépez. Used with permission.

A version of this article appears in Season of Glad Songs: A Christmas Anthology.