"She Who Conquers the Serpent"

After following with awe and wonder the festivities surrounding the December 12 celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe--both north and south of the border--I realized that I knew next to nothing about the Morenita, her appearance to Saint Juan Diego or the miraculous tilma imprinted with her image. So, when I happened upon Paul Badde's María of Guadalupe: Shaper of History, Shaper of Hearts in a Catholic book shop in Savannah, I leaped at the chance to learn more. Badde, a German journalist and former papal aide (to John Paul the Great), weaves together the history and science of the tilma with his own journey of discovery, which takes him from Germany to Mexico and from Jerusalem to Rome, in the footsteps of the Morenita.

Perhaps more amazing than the miraculous qualities of the tilma itself (which continue to confound modern science) are the conversions that the encounter with the Morenita has occasioned, from the day of Juan Diego to today. Badde recalls how the Spanish conquistadores, the worst possible missionaries, "were incapable of evangelizing the Aztecs" (145). That came with the appearance of the Blessed Mother to a poor Indian man on Tepeyac Hill (just outside modern Mexico City) in December 1531. She came in the guise of an Aztec princess, proclaiming the Gospel of her divine Son, whom she bore in her womb. As proof of her visitation, she left behind her miraculous image on Juan Diego's tilma (a kind of cloak woven of agave fibers). A shrine was soon built in her honor.

What occurred thereafter is something wholly unique in the annals of world history: not only were the Aztecs converted to the religion of their often brutal conquerors, but the conquerors themselves were inspired to lay down their swords and live in peace with the Aztecs. Badde observes:

After the apparition, both military cultures, people who before were seeking to annihilate each other, literally began to embrace each other like lovers before this picture! ... There are no more Spaniards or Amerindians. From that moment there was a radical new beginning: the Mexicans have been shaped into a new people. (146)

Badde observes further:

Evangelization went very deep, with colossal speed, for both Aztec and Spaniard. Eight conquistadors of Hernan Cortés' inner circle became churchmen, Franciscan, Dominican or hermit. No one campaigned as passionately and boldly for the rights and defense of the Aztecs as the mendicant orders. (148)

Never has such a reconciliation of peoples and cultures occured in recorded history.

A final, interesting fact: it is likely that the Spanish title Guadalupe is a corruption of the Nahuatl (the language spoken by the Aztecs) Coatlaxopeuh, which means "she conquers the sepent" (Cf. Genesis 3:15, wherein "he" has also been interpreted as "she").

Let us pray that Mary, the Queen of Peace, might reconcile all her children to each other and to her divine Son, especially in her own Land.