St. Juan Diego

BORN 1474; DIED 1548 Juan Diego was among the CONFESSOR relatively few native Ameri- �t.FEAST DAY: JDECEMBERuan 9 �i ego �u auhtlatoatzincans who had accepted the faith. Although the original ROM THE WOMB of a hum- conquerors had been de- ble woman, the Word vout and faithful Catho- Fof God came to save lics, many of the Span- the world. And from ish who came later the obedient witness were rapacious and of a humble man, cruel, treating Juan St. Juan Diego Diego and his Cuauhtlatoatzin, countrymen as the indigenous peo- little better than ple of Mexico received slaves and alienat- the salvation gained by ing those who might that Word and, with their otherwise have accept- Spanish conquerors, ed with open hearts the became a single na- Word of God. tion under the man- The great event tle of the Mother of with which Juan God. Diego will ever Cuauhtlatoa- be linked began tzin, “the talking early on the morn- eagle,” was born ing of December 9, in a town about 1531, then the date fourteen miles from of the Feast of the Tenichtitlan, predecessor Immaculate Con- to today’s Mexico City. He was a ception of Mary (it is member of the Chichimeca people St. Juan Diego, now December 8). Fifty-seven- by Timothy Schmalz of Mexico, and was already forty- year-old Juan Diego was on a five years old when Hernán Cortés and his small journey of some nine miles, probably to morn- band of Spanish soldiers came and overthrew the ing Mass, when Our Lady appeared to him on Aztec empire and its religious practices of massive Tepeyac Hill near Mexico City. Mary revealed human sacrifice. Little is known of his life. He to him her identity, and asked him to go to the was a prosperous member of the middle class, a bishop to request that a shrine be built there citizen of the Aztec empire, received some educa- as a place of pilgrimage, consolation, and heal- tion, and was given to reflection on spiritual and ing. He did as she asked, but Bishop Juan de philosophical matters. In 1524, when he was fifty, Zumárraga did not believe Juan Diego. He he was baptized and took the name Juan Diego. asked Juan Diego to return at a later time, and His wife and other members of his family were that in the meantime he would give the matter probably also baptized then. His wife’s Christian thought. Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac that name was Maria Lucia and his uncle’s Juan Ber- afternoon and again encountered Our Lady, nardino. Maria Lucia died in 1529, and Juan Di- begging that she send a more worthy person ego then moved to his uncle’s town. than his own unimportant self to carry her mes- The Association for Catechumenal Ministry (ACM) grants the original purchaser (parish, local parochial institution, or individual) permission to reproduce this handout. sage to the bishop. This request Our Lady she, herself the humble handmaid of the Lord, gen- tly refused and, instead, asked him to return to the bishop. Sunday, December 10, Juan Diego first went to Mass and then to the bishop, who this time did indeed spend more time inquiring about the vi- sions, and concluded by asking Juan Diego to bring a sign to convince him of the truth of the vision. Juan Diego hastened to Tepeyac, where Our Lady instructed him to return the next day to obtain the sign the bishop had requested. On returning home, he discovered that his uncle was critically ill, so he instead spent the next day car- ing for his uncle who, that night, asked Juan Di- PAUL KERRIS ego to go for a priest to hear his last confession and anoint him for death. He set off immediately and, approaching Tepeyac hill, went around the other side to avoid Our Lady so that he might not be delayed in fulfilling his uncle’s need for the sac- raments. Of course, he was met by Mary anyway, and he apologized for not meeting her because of his uncle’s mortal illness. She reassured him that in Spain — the way Our Lady chose to commu- his uncle had been cured — she had appeared to nicate that Mexico was one nation, native and him after Juan Diego had already left on his jour- Spanish, not two. ney — and then told him to go to the top of the hill The exchanges between Our Lady and Juan to gather the flowers blooming there. (The record Diego are among the most tender and intimate of the apparitions indicates that there was a frost ever recorded. Following the apparitions, Juan that night, and the hill had never been known to Diego lived for another seventeen years in a small grow anything but acacias and mesquites.) He room built onto one wall of the new chapel at Te- brought gloriously fragrant roses down in his til- peyac, as the tilma’s guardian and as a living wit- ma (a cloak-like garment made of plant fiber), and ness for the pilgrims to the holy site. Eight mil- Our Lady sent him to the bishop. As he opened lion of Juan Diego’s countrymen were baptized his tilma before the bishop and allowed the flowers in the seven years following the apparitions, the to fall to the floor, on the tilma appeared a nearly greatest number of conversions in such a short life-size image of the vision he had seen on Tepey- period of time in the history of the Church. Mil- ac. When Juan Bernardino described his own vi- lions now visit the basilica of Our Lady of Gua- sion of Our Lady, he testified that she had given dalupe annually, reverencing the tilma which him the proper title for the image on Juan Diego’s still exists there as a sign of this unique ap- tilma: The Per- pearance of Our fect Virgin Holy Lady to a humble Mary of Guada- “The exchanges between Our Lady man. From hum- lupe. “Guadal- and Juan Diego are among the most ble beginnings, upe” is the name God builds great of a Marian shrine tender and intimate ever recorded.” things. St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin ~ Page 2.

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