Notre-Dame de Guadalupe
En 1531, la Sainte Mère de Dieu apparut à Juan Diego sur la colline de Tepeyac, près de Mexico, et lui demanda de transmettre à l'évêque son souhait de voir construire une église à cet endroit. En guise de signe pour l'évêque, la Vierge Marie imprima miraculeusement une image grandeur nature d'elle-même sur le manteau de Juan Diego.
Les apparitions
Juan Diego et son oncle Juan Bernardino avaient été parmi les premiers Indiens du Mexique à se convertir au christianisme. Le 9 décembre 1531, Juan Diego se rendait à la messe du samedi matin pour honorer Marie lorsqu'une symphonie soudaine et inattendue de chants d'oiseaux l'arrêta net. Alors qu'il s'arrêtait pour écouter, les chants cessèrent brusquement. Dans le silence, une douce voix l'appela par son nom.
Juan Diego gravit la colline gelée qui lui cachait la source de cette douce voix et, au sommet, il aperçut une jeune fille mexicaine d'une beauté rayonnante. Elle semblait avoir environ quatorze ans. Des rayons de lumière dorée émanaient d'elle dans toutes les directions. Tout ce qui touchait sa beauté rayonnante était baigné d'une magnificence éthérée. Les rochers, les arbres et les cactus scintillaient comme des joyaux et de l'or. Élevé par la gloire dont il était témoin, Juan Diego regarda calmement la jeune fille qui lui dit : « Je suis Marie, toujours vierge, Mère du vrai Dieu. » Marie expliqua qu'elle voulait qu'une église soit construite sur la colline d'où « je montrerai ma compassion à ton peuple et à tous ceux qui demandent sincèrement mon aide dans leur travail et dans leur chagrin ». [1]
Transmettant la demande de la Sainte Vierge, Juan Diego rendit deux fois visite à l'évêque de Mexico, qui lui demanda un signe authentifiant. Marie promit de donner ce signe à Juan le lundi matin suivant. Juan manqua son rendez-vous avec Marie car il s'occupait de Juan Bernardino, qui était tombé malade d'une fièvre mortelle. Juan Diego passa devant la colline sacrée le mardi matin alors qu'il se rendait chez un prêtre pour que celui-ci administre les derniers sacrements à son oncle. La Vierge Marie descendit de la colline et le rencontra sur la route. Elle lui dit que Juan Bernardino était guéri et que, comme elle avait effectivement accompli sa mission, il pouvait désormais s'acquitter librement de la sienne.
Marie demanda à Juan Diego de gravir la colline gelée et de cueillir les fleurs qui y poussaient. Et là, parmi l'herbe recouverte de givre et les rochers gelés, Juan trouva de magnifiques roses castillanes, parfumées et fraîches de rosée. Juan remplit sa « tilma », ou cape, de ces merveilleuses roses et retourna vers la Vierge, qui arrangea soigneusement les roses dans sa tilma, noua le bas du vêtement autour de son cou et l'envoya vers l'évêque.
Plusieurs membres du personnel de l'évêque étaient présents. Juan Diego rapporta fidèlement à l'évêque tout ce que la Sainte Vierge lui avait demandé de dire, puis, levant les bras, il détacha de son cou la tilma qui contenait le signe demandé. Les roses tombèrent en tas sur le sol. L'évêque se leva brusquement de sa chaise et s'agenouilla devant Juan Diego. Tous les autres occupants de la pièce se joignirent rapidement à l'évêque et semblèrent prier Juan.
This confused him until he looked down at his tilma and saw what the bishop and his staff saw. The Blessed Virgin had indeed given them a sign, for there emblazoned on his tilma was the image of the Virgin as he had first seen her three days earlier, wonderfully radiant and beautiful. The bishop finally rose and removed the imaged tilma to be enshrined first in his chapel, then in the first little church built on the holy hill.
Several of the bishop’s advisers traveled with Juan Diego to see his uncle. When they arrived at Juan Bernardino’s dwelling, they found him relaxing in the sun. He told them how he had been on the edge of death when the darkness that had been engulfing him was dispersed by the light of a young lady who suddenly stood beside him radiating peace and love. She informed him that he would be well, that she had intercepted Juan Diego and that she had sent him to the bishop with a picture of herself that would be enshrined on the rocky hill. “Call me and call my image,” she told him, “Santa Maria de Guadalupe.”[2]
After the apparition
Through the intercession of beloved Mother Mary, and galvanized by this miraculous sign, in the course of seven years her image was responsible for the conversion of eight million Aztecs and the disappearance of the pagan religion of the stone serpent, the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, to whom the Indians had offered human sacrifices.
Blessing the New World with her appearance and intercession, Mary plainly demonstrated the universal love of the Divine Mother for her children. Our Lady of Guadalupe is known as the Patroness of the Americas. On her feast day countless numbers make the pilgrimage to her shrine, the site of many miracles of healing. Some have noted that in the image imprinted on Juan Diego’s cloak Our Lady wears her belt high on her waist as an indication that she is enceinte (pregnant). Many now pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe to overturn abortion, just as she ended the practice of Aztec human sacrifice centuries ago.
The meaning of “Guadalupe”
Guadalupe is a Castilian word of Arabic origin said to mean “river of light” or “river of love.”
In 1981, Pallas Athena spoke of the significance of Mary’s appearance:
The perpetual prayer of the righteous will avail much, but the prayer must be given and given as a continuing stream—a river of light, a river of love, a flowing river, a moving river! This is the message of the Virgin of Guadalupe. This word Guadalupe refers to the flowing river of light—the descending light of the I AM Presence and the ascending light of the ascension flame.
The Virgin of Guadalupe came, then, to proclaim the proclamation of the virgin birth of every son of God, of the divine sponsorship of the Mother of all peoples of the earth, and the dispensation of the Aquarian age of the individual path of the ascension through the river of light flowing—flowing perpetually out of the Mother’s heart of love.[3]
The miraculous image
Today, more than four hundred years later, the perfectly preserved image of Our Lady of Guadalupe remains displayed and venerated in the new basilica, completed in 1976. In 1950, it was discovered that the Virgin’s eyes reflect the bust of a man, standing about a foot away, believed to be Juan Diego.
Researchers are unable to explain why paint on the portrait has remained fresh and crisp. In 1936, scientific examination of cloth fibers revealed that the paint could not have come from pigments used in the 16th century.
On November 14, 1921, the tilma was preserved from government persecutors. A bomb was hidden in flowers at the altar of the basilica where the image was enshrined, timed to explode during a High Mass. It shattered an altarpiece and twisted a heavy bronze cross. No one was injured, however, and the glass in front of the tilma did not crack.
In 1981, Kuan Yin spoke of these miracles:
Have you thought as to why the Blessed Virgin gave to the people of Mexico her image upon the tilma that has lasted, lo, these four hundred years? I tell you, beloved, it is because of the Nephilim who have hoarded the wealth, the education, and the control of power throughout South America! They have given nothing to these poor and impoverished peoples! And therefore, the Mother of God, in the name of all who represent the image of Omega, went forth to give a physical and tangible gift to this people. And though the Communists attempted to destroy that tilma at the very altar of the former basilica, yet the exploding of the bomb did not touch the glass, though it bent the cross itself (the cross of brass) and threw it at a distance.
Realize that the protection of Almighty God through the Virgin Mary is a tangible presence. And that gift of that piece of cloth—materialized with paints that have not faded, with the miraculous figure of Juan Diego in the very eye of the Virgin—demonstrates the mission of the Divine Mother in you all, holding in her eye the immaculate concept of the child of God in devotion to her flame. It is the reassurance to all of the impoverished souls of this hemisphere that the Virgin Mary, the Divine Mother, is present and is continuing to nourish their souls and to sustain them in the hour of persecution of World Communism and of the power elite!
They have nothing, yet they have the Virgin Mary. They have the tilma at the altar. They have the promise that she is the Queen of Angels and that, at will, she may enter the physical octave and materialize herself or any thing that is needed. By this faith, they have endured this poverty, this persecution, lo, these hundreds of years![4]
Sources
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Mary’s Message of Divine Love
Holy Days Calendar, December 1993.
Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 25, no. 1, January 3, 1982.
- ↑ Michael S. Durham, « Miracles of Mary: Apparitions, Legends, and Miraculous Works of the Blessed Virgin Mary » (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), pp. 102–3.
- ↑ Ethel Cook Eliot, “Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico,” in A Woman Clothed with the Sun: Eight Great Appearances of Our Lady in Modern Times, ed. John J. Delaney (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, Doubleday and Co., 1961), p. 54.
- ↑ Pallas Athena, “A Christmas Proclamation of the New Birth,” Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 25, no. 2, January 10, 1982.
- ↑ Kuan Yin, “The Doors of the West Are Opened unto Me!” Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 25, no. 1, January 3, 1982.