Postales del Paraíso: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

Postales del Paraíso

Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

Just being here is exhausting! If we still have the painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe tucked away in a box somewhere you need to FedEx it to me immediately! This week is the festival of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, patron saint of all of Mexico and we are one of the few houses on the street (and probably all of Mexico) without a shrine set up on the sidewalk outside our house filled with Mexican flags, crepe paper flowers, little statues of Juan Diego and large framed pictures of Our Lady of Guadalupe outlined in Christmas lights!

The feast of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is a nine day festival (Dec 4 – 12) which overlaps with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Nov. 30 – Dec 8) also a 9 day event, and has been celebrated here every year since the apparition of the Virgin Mary by Juan Diego on a mountain top in 1531 near the current day Mexico City, and it makes all the other celebrations here pale by comparison. 

It now takes 45 minutes to walk the three blocks to the corner bodega because you have to stop in front of everyone’s house, genuflect in front of their shrine, bless yourself, mumble the appropriate daily prayer, profess your everlasting devotion, light a candle, and then move onto the next house, or risk all the neighbors staring at you as if you’re the heathen that you actually are.  But I figure this “novena” is probably a gauntlet worth attempting. A novena (from the Latin: novem, meaning nine) is an “act of religious pious devotion often consisting of prayers repeated for nine successive days in the belief of obtaining special intercessory graces”, and I’m sure that at this point in my life I could use with the intercession of all the special graces that I can possibly garner.

Nearly every town in Mexico has a church named in celebration of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe and we’re lucky enough to be a mere two blocks from the one in Ajijic. The roar of Santa Ana’s armies, three thousand strong, and the thundering hooves of two hundred cavalry echo across my bedroom floor each morning at 5:00 AM. My bed lurches from side to side as the earth rattling assault of heavy caissons rumble across my pillow, and when the cannons let loose a colossal fusillade of ear shattering concussions and staccato flashes of light it is both frightening and deafening. As I leap to my feet, gasping frantically, heart pounding, it slowly dawns on me that this is just the wake-up call for the 6:00 AM rosary at the sanctuary down the block and what I thought was a nightmare is simply the hundreds of faithful arriving at the church on foot and on horseback accompanied, as with most celebrations here, by skyrockets and marching brass bands that lead the way to the place of redemption. The difference between this celebration and all the others throughout the year is that apparently this time they’re really serious.

It’s still dark outside, but they arrive from every direction, crowds of people many carrying torches like a town mob scene from a grade-B vampire movie, led by marching brass bands 

and followed by a dozen men on horseback launching skyrockets that invigorate the crowd, fray the nerves of the non-believers, and set the sky (and occasionally a few homes) ablaze. Members of the clergy lead the crowds through the village; the older priests plodding and solemn, fumbling with a rosary in a barely audible mumble as they wind their flock through the cobblestone streets, the younger ones rejoicing with the crowds as the bells on the old mission church ring the voice of God across the village.

The crowds here in Ajijic are amazing for a town this size but they cannot compare to the festivities in Mexico City. The cloak that Juan Diego wore, miraculously still emblazoned with the image of The Virgin Mary after almost 500 years, is on display for a few hours each day at The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and draws 18-20 million people there every year, making it Christianity’s most visited sanctuary, and the third most visited sacred site in the Christian world. The Basilica seats 10,000 people and when mass is celebrated each Sunday the church is filled to capacity. Given the number of faithful here, the Pope really needs to give some serious thought to relocating the Vatican; Rome truly is the old-world, and the contrast with the New World has never seemed so stark. Historically and emotionally the Virgin Mary is deeply woven into the fabric of life of every Mexican and many turn to her for help, for healing, and for guidance throughout their lives. Nowhere is that more apparent than it is here this morning.

The sidewalk shrines attempt to recreate the mountain depicted in the traditional legend, with Mary standing on the mountaintop and the little plastic figure of the pious Juan Diego on one knee, sombrero in hand, gazing up at her. As the story goes, Mary asked Juan Diego to build a church on the very spot of his apparition but the local bishop, skeptical of Juan Diego’s claim of having had a personal conversation with the Mother of God, asks him for a sign. So Mary tells Juan to meet her at the rose bushes. Knowing full well that there are no rose bushes on this mountain, or anywhere else given the winter season, Juan Diego none-the-less trudges back up the mountain and of course finds the bushes in full bloom, gathers all the roses in his cloak and drags them back to the bishop who, faced with the miraculous image of The Virgin Mary now emblazoned on Juan Diego’s cloak, and realizing the obvious, agrees to build the church.

It’s interesting that the mountain in the legend, Cerro del Tepeyec, not altogether coincidentally, is the same mountain that in pre-colonial times was the sacred home of Tonantzin, the Aztec earth goddess. So the current Mother-of-all-Mexicans, although now dressed up in Catholic clothes, owes as much to pre-Columbian traditions as it does to the influence of Rome. So roses are still not available in the village this time of year but with an assortment of cactus, crepe paper roses, poinsettias, and a few leftover houseplants, the sidewalk shrines are improvised and they are as wonderful and fanciful as they are unique. 

There's an evening service tonight at the church that begins at 6:00 PM. It’s still early afternoon here now so if I leave shortly I should be there in plenty of time (if my knees hold out from all the genuflecting). Getting back home again may be a different story.