In this coming week, we will have several events in the parish drawing us close to Mary, and as we do so, draw us closer to the celebration of the Birth of Christ.
The feast of the Immaculate Conception is celebrated on the 8th of December, obviously nine months before Christmas. This feast honors Mary without the stain of sin. The beauty of this feast has to do with the all-embracing outpouring of redemptive grace through the death and Resurrection of Christ. The salvific moment of Christ proclaims a love that defines Mary, without sin. This is also what defines the entirety of humanity, from beginning to end, the love of God is what defines us, never any stain of sin.
On several days, this coming week, we will also be honoring Mary, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Among the many texts that history has left, one document has had a preference. This is the Nican Mopohua, a document written in Nahuatl. The title is simply the first words that are used to introduce the narrative of Our Lady of Guadalupe, “this is how it begins”. Not far from the word genesis that means, “in the beginning”.
The Nican Mopohua, in poetic style, gathers the heart-felt experience of death and defeat. The defeat, not only of a native population by the Spanish conquest but was also the death and defeat of the Spaniards themselves. In the atrocity of conquest, the Spaniards had lost their soul. There could be no claim to victory, especially if a native population was massacred in the name of Christ.
Woven with symbols of a profound religiosity and philosophy of life, the story tells of Mary appearing as the all-compassionate presence of “the one who is the origin of all life, the one true God”. The compassion that Mary reveals beckons conversion. The indigenous population are called to honor and with courage uphold their heritage, so much so that they become new evangelists. With increasing faith, as represented by a new John the Baptist, Juan Diego, the Church experiences conversion. The flowers, which should not have been there in the midst of winter, the symbols of beauty that in the ancient thought represented the eternal, become the sign, in Juan Diego’s tilma, of the impossible presence of God.
The outcome, again, framed by ancient thought, is a new creation. A new way of life is proclaimed, a life of pilgrimage, constantly moving towards the Reign of God, and away from the temptations of the status quo. So much like the Galatian passage (3:28), “no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, woman or man, all one in Christ Jesus”. In this pilgrimage life, a new creation, the Reign of God makes itself present.
May these feasts of Mary awaken in us the desire to receive Christ’s summons to recognize our true identity; the beloved of God. May we also recognize our calling to be missionaries, other Juan Diego’s, to awaken others to this shared identity – no one is excluded from God’s love. And then, let it be Christmas.
Father Francisco Gómez, S.T.