Juan's Mom
by Sarah Reinhard in Faith on Monday, December 14, 2009 6:00 AM
It was a cold day in December when she came to an unlikely fellow. She had a retinue of songbirds and flowers, but I think that’s because she can’t help it. Just as my daughters can’t resist adding a tiara or sparkly shoes to their everyday outfits, so it is with Mary.
Maybe it’s because she was once a little girl, not so different from the ones who decorate my refrigerator with pictures of rainbows and castles. Maybe it’s because, when a Queen is around, the world can’t help but react with song and bloom.
At the halfway point in Advent, it’s fitting that we just celebrated the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12. This is about the time when I start to realize that my Advent resolutions and ideas are too ambitious, when I face the reality of candles and little kids at dinner, when I accept that Advent as a countdown to Christmas is a start, if not an ideal.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, who I’ve come to think of as “Juan’s Mom” in my devotions, reminds me that Mary doesn’t often appear to the rich and powerful. She doesn’t come with a message exhorting humanity to greater domestic success or higher multi-tasking triumph.
Juan Diego, a peasant widower and convert to Catholicism – the lowliest of the lowly in his time and place – was on his way to Mass. It was just another day in his life, and maybe he was reflecting on the chill in the air, his own Advent preparations, or the errands he needed to run after Mass and catechism class.
As he passed the hill of Tepayac, he heard songbirds. Mexico City isn’t as cold as central Ohio, but songbirds still aren’t common in mid-December.
Then he saw her. Imagine him stopping, resisting the impulse to run up to her and hug her. She wasn’t a distant image at the front of the church anymore. In fact, she didn’t look like the Mary at the church at all – she was mestiza, with a tan complexion and Aztec features. Juan was looking at a woman who really could be his mother.
Her encouragement to him, after giving him the nearly impossible task of convincing the bishop to build a chapel at the hill of Tepeyac, must have seemed more plausible. He must have thought of her face – so much like his own – when he was rejected by the bishop and told, basically, “Thanks for stopping by. Have a nice day. Come back soon.”
Juan might have been a poor Aztec Indian, but he wasn’t stupid. He could tell the bishop had blown him off, and he was discouraged.
Mary knew just what to say when Juan asked her to find someone else, someone more important and influential. I think she must have reached out to him and touched his shoulder as she reassured him that he was, in fact, the perfect person for this assignment.
When he got home that night, still discouraged by the bishop’s response but bolstered by Mary’s confidence in him, he found his uncle deathly ill. He missed his appointment with Mary the next day, and then, trying to get to the church for a priest to administer the sacraments to his uncle, he skirted around the hill to avoid Mary.
She found him, though. Juan must have looked as guilty as he felt, and he immediately apologized. When he told her why he couldn’t help her that day, instead of chastising him for not trusting in God and her ability to help him, she reached out to him.
“Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything.”
There are plenty more details to the story, but I always stop here. Mary’s not speaking to Juan; she’s speaking to me. She’s asking me to look at the difficult projects, the impossible moments, the challenges that are bigger than I am. She isn’t chastising me for trying to do too much, for biting off ambitious dreams, for forgetting my priorities.
Instead, she’s empathizing with me and offering to help.
Are you feeling the pressure of the holiday season, or maybe just of life in general? I encourage you to crawl into Mary’s arms with a novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe or a prayer for her help. After all, it can’t hurt … and it might just help!
—Sarah Reinhard writes and blogs about Mary, motherhood, and more at Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering.
Resources:
- Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love, by Carl Anderson and Eduardo Chavez – an excellent examination of all things Guadalupe, with relevant applications to modern life
- Nican Mopohua, the earliest written account of the Guadalupan apparitions translated from the Aztec language
- Our Lady of Guadalupe resources at Sancta.org (I highly recommend the novena)
- Our Lady of Guadalupe: Historical Sources from L’Osservatore Romano – an examination of the history and controversies about accuracy
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