So, on the 8th we had the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Holy Day of Obligation in the US, as she is our National Patroness. Today, we have the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which oddly enough gets rather more attention these days than the Immaculate conception.
The disparity of attention between these two stems, I think, from several sources. The first is that the Immaculate conception is a rather intellectual Feast, grounded in some difficult theology, without an emotional hook. The second is that Our Lady of Guadalupe has a wonderful back story, a Marian Apparition, the incredible Icon which She herself has given us, and it's key role in converting the Indians of Mexico and Meso-America. The third is rooted, in my mind, in the politics of the 1960s. There was a real push on, which we still experience today, to erase the idea of American Exceptionalism, and to denigrate and downplay American Patriotism. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the Patroness of the Americas--north and south--and I have had people tell me that we should move to repress the Feast of the Immaculate Conception because Guadalupe is for everyone. Politics so often seems to intrude into our devotional life, that I have come to despise such utterances. But that's my response, I will not say that in this matter I am correct, I will only say that Patriotism is a virtue and a duty, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
That being said, these two Feasts are important to me. One of the books that I read when I was finding my way into Catholicism for the first time was The Song of Bernadette. I was very affected by the healings at Lourdes, being at the time quite sickly. I was also quite affected by the phrase "I am the Immaculate Conception". It has stayed with me. When I was a catechumen, I was exposed to the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It affected me as well. The out of season roses, and the Icon Our Lady furnished us was amazing. (I have always found the multiple media used in this icon, and their essential incompatibility, to be so convincing! Not to mention the way in which this Icon violated the conventions of Western Iconography, yet spoke profoundly to the Nahuatl mind.)
The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe also helped me in my return to the Church. Her standing on the moon was clear and personal message, I felt, showing the essential deception of the "Triple Goddess" of Wicca, and the foolishness of worshiping a creature, or creation, rather than the Creator.
These two Feasts mean a lot to me. With the Immaculate Conception, my understanding of it anyway, I am drawn into the realms of Christian Anthropology and Ontology. It goes back to the very basic lessons of old school catechesis. Why were we created? To be happy. Of what does our happiness consist? It consists of knowing God, Loving God and Serving God in this world and the next. God created us out of his ineffable goodness and love, and gave us the gifts of Grace, Great Knowledge, Control of Our Passions by Reason, and Freedom from Sickness and Death. Satan, through the temptation of Eve, brought into the world, against the plan of God, Original Sin, Ignorance, Inclination to Sin, and Suffering and Death. This was possible because God gave us Free Will. But in the Immaculate Conception, God preserved Mary from Original Sin, through the anticipated merits of Jesus Christ, so she had these original gifts, and at the Annunciation, she had the opportunity to declare her own non serviam. She didn't--of her own free will she declared "Let it be done to my according to thy word". In the beginning of my learning the Faith, I was taught that this preservation from Original Sin was so that Mary could be a "House of Gold", a fitting Tabernacle for Our Lord. With time and reflection, I see it as even more. Mary, through her preservation from Original Sin, was enabled to be something else as well: She was enabled to become the embodiment of the Promises of Christ. Her Immaculate Conception is implicit in her Assumption--She was assumed bodily into Heaven. In the East this is called the Dormition--a great sleep overcame her when her time here was finished, and she was assumed bodily into heaven. She did not undergo death and decay.
Just as Mary and the Church are mystically identified, so too are Mary and the individual linked. Just as Christ was her child, we have been given to her as her Children, and she to us as Our Mother. Mother Church, Mother Mary. Her example of how to be a Christian, and her embodiment of the ideal and reality of being filled with grace and obedient to the Lord are dependent on the merits of Christ, which are the same merits that free us from sin and lead us to everlasting life.
Mary's motherhood is so explicit in the Image of Guadalupe! She is depicted pregnant. There is no mistaking the Motherhood she offers to exercise for us, as commissioned by her Son. More than her being pregnant, she wears both the iconographic insignia of motherhood in the Nahuatl culture, but the royal insignia as well. In this image, created as all good iconographic images to teach those who cannot read or write, or who have trouble understanding concepts that are alien, she shows forth her motherly care for all of God's children. This at a time when the ethnocentrism of missionaries was an obstacle to evangelization of native peoples almost as profound as their ruthless exploitation by the secular powers, anxious for wealth and power. Yet she also wore the symbols of royalty. She was revealed at once to Juan Diego as Mother and Queen, and her Queenship is dependent upon her Motherhood--as with the Queens of Ancient Israel, her Queenship is dependent not on who she married, but on whom she gave birth to. Her image preached, more effectively than the words of missionaries, the Kingship of Her Divine Son. More than that, it showed to a simple peasant that he too, was an inheritor of the Royal priesthood in which all Christians share. Our Lady of Guadalupe showed forth to a conquered and oppressed people that they too held the essential dignity of humankind--made in the image and likeness of God, with an immortal soul, despite how the conquerors treated them.
In many ways, Our lady of Guadalupe reiterates the Promises embodied by the Immaculate Conception, and stretches them beyond the limits of ethnicity and culture rooted in the Roman Empire, showing them forth to the whole world, and to all Peoples.
Laudate Dominum!
The disparity of attention between these two stems, I think, from several sources. The first is that the Immaculate conception is a rather intellectual Feast, grounded in some difficult theology, without an emotional hook. The second is that Our Lady of Guadalupe has a wonderful back story, a Marian Apparition, the incredible Icon which She herself has given us, and it's key role in converting the Indians of Mexico and Meso-America. The third is rooted, in my mind, in the politics of the 1960s. There was a real push on, which we still experience today, to erase the idea of American Exceptionalism, and to denigrate and downplay American Patriotism. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the Patroness of the Americas--north and south--and I have had people tell me that we should move to repress the Feast of the Immaculate Conception because Guadalupe is for everyone. Politics so often seems to intrude into our devotional life, that I have come to despise such utterances. But that's my response, I will not say that in this matter I am correct, I will only say that Patriotism is a virtue and a duty, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
That being said, these two Feasts are important to me. One of the books that I read when I was finding my way into Catholicism for the first time was The Song of Bernadette. I was very affected by the healings at Lourdes, being at the time quite sickly. I was also quite affected by the phrase "I am the Immaculate Conception". It has stayed with me. When I was a catechumen, I was exposed to the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It affected me as well. The out of season roses, and the Icon Our Lady furnished us was amazing. (I have always found the multiple media used in this icon, and their essential incompatibility, to be so convincing! Not to mention the way in which this Icon violated the conventions of Western Iconography, yet spoke profoundly to the Nahuatl mind.)
The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe also helped me in my return to the Church. Her standing on the moon was clear and personal message, I felt, showing the essential deception of the "Triple Goddess" of Wicca, and the foolishness of worshiping a creature, or creation, rather than the Creator.
These two Feasts mean a lot to me. With the Immaculate Conception, my understanding of it anyway, I am drawn into the realms of Christian Anthropology and Ontology. It goes back to the very basic lessons of old school catechesis. Why were we created? To be happy. Of what does our happiness consist? It consists of knowing God, Loving God and Serving God in this world and the next. God created us out of his ineffable goodness and love, and gave us the gifts of Grace, Great Knowledge, Control of Our Passions by Reason, and Freedom from Sickness and Death. Satan, through the temptation of Eve, brought into the world, against the plan of God, Original Sin, Ignorance, Inclination to Sin, and Suffering and Death. This was possible because God gave us Free Will. But in the Immaculate Conception, God preserved Mary from Original Sin, through the anticipated merits of Jesus Christ, so she had these original gifts, and at the Annunciation, she had the opportunity to declare her own non serviam. She didn't--of her own free will she declared "Let it be done to my according to thy word". In the beginning of my learning the Faith, I was taught that this preservation from Original Sin was so that Mary could be a "House of Gold", a fitting Tabernacle for Our Lord. With time and reflection, I see it as even more. Mary, through her preservation from Original Sin, was enabled to be something else as well: She was enabled to become the embodiment of the Promises of Christ. Her Immaculate Conception is implicit in her Assumption--She was assumed bodily into Heaven. In the East this is called the Dormition--a great sleep overcame her when her time here was finished, and she was assumed bodily into heaven. She did not undergo death and decay.
Just as Mary and the Church are mystically identified, so too are Mary and the individual linked. Just as Christ was her child, we have been given to her as her Children, and she to us as Our Mother. Mother Church, Mother Mary. Her example of how to be a Christian, and her embodiment of the ideal and reality of being filled with grace and obedient to the Lord are dependent on the merits of Christ, which are the same merits that free us from sin and lead us to everlasting life.
Mary's motherhood is so explicit in the Image of Guadalupe! She is depicted pregnant. There is no mistaking the Motherhood she offers to exercise for us, as commissioned by her Son. More than her being pregnant, she wears both the iconographic insignia of motherhood in the Nahuatl culture, but the royal insignia as well. In this image, created as all good iconographic images to teach those who cannot read or write, or who have trouble understanding concepts that are alien, she shows forth her motherly care for all of God's children. This at a time when the ethnocentrism of missionaries was an obstacle to evangelization of native peoples almost as profound as their ruthless exploitation by the secular powers, anxious for wealth and power. Yet she also wore the symbols of royalty. She was revealed at once to Juan Diego as Mother and Queen, and her Queenship is dependent upon her Motherhood--as with the Queens of Ancient Israel, her Queenship is dependent not on who she married, but on whom she gave birth to. Her image preached, more effectively than the words of missionaries, the Kingship of Her Divine Son. More than that, it showed to a simple peasant that he too, was an inheritor of the Royal priesthood in which all Christians share. Our Lady of Guadalupe showed forth to a conquered and oppressed people that they too held the essential dignity of humankind--made in the image and likeness of God, with an immortal soul, despite how the conquerors treated them.
In many ways, Our lady of Guadalupe reiterates the Promises embodied by the Immaculate Conception, and stretches them beyond the limits of ethnicity and culture rooted in the Roman Empire, showing them forth to the whole world, and to all Peoples.
Laudate Dominum!
