Mañanitas for the Morenita

Brothers and Sisters,

With exams finished and papers turned in, this blogger is officially ready for Christmas! We will not, alas, be spending Christmas amongst the snow-covered splendor of Michigan. As in years past, we will be spending this Christmas with our good friends (my sister's godparents) in Savannah, Georgia. Though we will miss the winter wonderland that is the (ahem) Spartan State, we will have a chance to golf, wade along Tybee Beach, and attend the always beautiful Midnight Mass in Savannah's historic Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist.

In preparation to celebrate the Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord, I had the privilege to join (if in spirit only) with our brothers and sisters south of the border in honoring the woman who made it all possible. Readers might not be familiar with the beautiful customs associated with the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, affectionately known amongst Mexicans as "la Morenita" or "the Little Dark One" (my very rough translation). This feast, which commemorates the appearance of the Blessed Mother to Saint Juan Diego in 1531, is the patronal feast of Mexico and, in a sense, of all the Americas. In fact, Venerable John Paul the Great (i.e. Pope John Paul II) named her "Queen of Mexico and Empress of America" in 2002. The reason is simple: she achieved by love what waves of Spanish Conquistadors could not achieve by force, the conversion of the native peoples of Mexico to her divine Son. In a startling turn of history, an entire nation was converted to Christ by the sole intervention of the Mother of Christ. She is the "misionaria celestial", the "heavenly missionary"!

To honor the "Morenita", millions of devout Christians flood churches across Mexico to sing songs of love before replicas of the "Tilma" (the cloak of Saint Juan Diego on which an image of the Virgin miraculously appeared) or, at the Basilica in Tepeyac, the Tilma itself. These festivities, called "Las Mañanitas a la Virgen de Guadalupe" and televised annually by Univision, begin at midnight and carry on into the wee hours, culminating with the Holy Mass. Often, in a moving display of national devotion, they are led by Mexican celebrities:



I'm thinking that staying up late to watch "Las Mañanitas" might well become a personal tradition!

Here's a helpful link to the Catholic Education Resource Center regarding the science and symbolism of the Tilma.

Virgen de Guadalupe, reina de México y emperatriz de América, ruega por nosotros!