OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE

Our Lady of Guadalupe, also called the Virgin of Guadalupe (Spanish: Virgen de Guadalupe) is a 16th century Roman Catholic icon depicting an apparition of the Virgin Mary. It is Mexico's most beloved religious and cultural image. Our Lady of Guadalupe is known in Mexico as "La Virgen Morena", which means "The brown-skinned Virgin". Our Lady of Guadalupe's feast day is celebrated on December 12, commemorating the account of her appearances to Saint Juan Diego on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City from December 9 through December 12, 1531. The Virgin of Guadalupe is a cultural symbol of significant importance to the Mexican identity. The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City is the second most visited Roman catholic shrine on the world afther the Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican.

According to traditional accounts of the Guadalupan apparition, during a walk from his village to the city on December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw a vision of a Virgin at the Hill of Tepeyac. Speaking in Nahuatl, Our Lady of Guadalupe asked him to build an abbey at that site. When Juan Diego spoke to the Spanish bishop, Fray Juan de Zumلrraga, he asked him for a miraculous sign to prove his claim.The Virgin asked Juan Diego to gather flowers, even though it was winter when no flower bloomed. He found Castillian roses, gathered them on his tilma, and presented these to bishop Zumلrraga. When he presented the roses to Zumلrraga, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe miraculously appeared imprinted on the cloth.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is often read as a coded image. Miguel Sanchez, the author of the 1648 tract Imagen de la Virgen Marيa, described the Virgin's image as the Woman of the Apocalypse from the New Testament's Revelation 12:1: "arrayed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." Mateo de la Cruz, writing twelve years after Sلnchez, "argued that the Guadalupe possessed all the iconographical attributes of Mary in her Immaculate Conception". Likewise, a 1738 sermon preached by Miguel Picazo argued that the Guadalupe was the "best representation" of the Immaculate Conception.

A number of documents support the apparition account. In 1648 Miguel Sanchez, a diocesan priest of Mexico City, published the book Imagen de la Virgen Maria, Madre de Dios de Guadalupe. This version was written in Spanish and contains the first presently known account of the Mexican appearances of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Sanchez's story was written mainly for Mexican-born Spaniards and contains long sections of biblical analogy. However, the most important version of the apparition account may be the Nahuatl-language Huei tlamahuiçoltica ("The Great Event") which contains Nican mopohua ("Here it is recounted"), a tract about the Virgin which contains the aforementioned story. It also includes two other sections: Nican motecpana ("Here is an ordered account") which describes fourteen miracles connected with Our Lady of Guadalupe and Nican tlantica ("Here ends") which gives an account of the Virgin in New Spain. Huei tlamahuiçoltica closely mirrors the Sanchez narrative, but contains no biblical analogies. It is also composed of a more fully developed dialogue due to Nahuatl custom and manners in speech patterns. Huei tlamahuiçoltica is said to have been written by Antonio Valeriano in 1556; it was printed in Nahuatl by Luis Lasso de la Vega in 1649.

The Virgin of Guadalupe has symbolized the Mexican nation since Mexico's War of Independence. Both Miguel Hidalgo and Emiliano Zapata's rebel armies waged war underneath Guadalupan flags, and Nuestra Seٌora de Guadalupe is generally recognized as a symbol of all Mexicans. Guadalupe's first major use as a nationalistic symbol was in the writing of Miguel Sلnchez, the author of the first Spanish language apparition account. Sanchez identified Guadalupe as Revelation's Woman of the Apocalypse. In 1810 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla initiated the bid for Mexican independence with his Grito de Dolores, yelling words to the effect of "Death to the Spaniards and long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!" When Hidalgo's mestizo-indigenous army attacked Guanajuato and Valladolid, they placed "the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which was the insignia of their enterprise, on sticks or on reeds painted different colors" and "they all wore a print of the Virgin on their hats."

When Hidalgo died, leadership of the revolution fell to a zambo/mestizo priest named Jose Maria Morelos who led insurgent troops in the Mexican south. Morelos was also a Guadalupan partisan: he made the Virgin the seal of his Congress of Chilpancingo. He inscribed the Virgin's feast day, December 12, into the Chilpancingo constitution, and declared that Guadalupe was the power behind his military victories. One of Morelos' officers, a man named Felix Fernandez who would later become the first Mexican president, even changed his name to Guadalupe Victoria. In 1914, Emiliano Zapata's peasant army rose out of the south against the government of Porfirio Diaz. Though Zapata's rebel forces were primarily interested in land reform "tierra y libertad" (land and liberty) was the slogan of the uprising when Zapata's peasant troops penetrated Mexico City, they carried Guadalupan banners. The Virgin of Guadalupe has also symbolized the Mexican nation since Mexico's War of Independence. Both Miguel Hidalgo and Emiliano Zapata's armies traveled underneath Guadalupan flags.

Guadalupe is often considered a mixture of the cultures which blend to form Mexico, both racially and religiously Guadalupe is sometimes called the "first mestiza" or "the first Mexican".

One theory is that the Virgin of Guadalupe was presented to the Aztecs as a sort of "Christianized" Tonantzin, necessary for the clergymen to convert the Indians to their Faith.

The origin of the name "Guadalupe" is controversial. According to a sixteenth-century report the Virgin identified herself as Guadalupe when she appeared to Juan Diego's uncle, Juan Bernardino. It has also been suggested that "Guadalupe" is a corruption of a Nahuatl name "Coatlaxopeuh", which has been translated as "Who Crushes the Serpent. Many historians believe that the 1533 Guadalupan shrine was dedicated to the Spanish Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura not to the Mexican Virgin venerated today. Thus, while the name "Guadalupe" would have had certain connotations to Nahuatl speakers, its ultimate origins would be the Arabic-Latin term "Wadi Lupum", meaning "Valley of the Wolf" or "Wad(i)-al-hub", that means "River of Love", name that the Moors given to a river in the Spanish region of Extremadura for the supposedly aphrodisiac qualities of its water."

Guadalupe, or its short version Lupe is a common name among Mexican people or those with Mexican heritage, it is used both for men and women.

At the time of the apparitions in 1531, Zumلrraga was not yet bishop of New Spain, he wouldn't be formally consecrated until 1533 and became an Archbishop in 1547. Zumلrraga had, however, been recommended for the post of bishop by Charles V on 20 December, 1527. Thus, at the time of the apparitions, Zumلrraga was bishop-elect. There is no explicit mention of Juan Diego nor the Virgin in any of Zumلrraga's writings. As early as 1556 Francisco de Bustamante, head of the Colony's Franciscans, delivered a sermon before the Viceroy and members of the Royal Audience. Some historians consider that the icon was meant to syncretically represent both the Virgin Mary and the indigenous Mexican goddess Tonantzin, providing a way for 16th century Spaniards to gain converts among the indigenous population of early Mexico. It may have provided a method for 16th century indigenous Mexicans to covertly practice their native religion, although the contrary was asserted in the canonization process of Juan Diego.

Some consider it miraculous that the tilma maintains its structural integrity after nearly 500 years, since replicas made with the same type of materials lasted only about 15 years before disintegrating. In addition to withstanding the elements, the tilma resisted a 1791 ammonia spill that made a considerable hole, which was reportedly repaired in two weeks with no external help.

Founder's Message

From December 9 through 12, the Church in America commemorates the appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Guadalupe in present-day Mexico City. It was during these days in 1531 that Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to the Native American, Saint Juan Diego. The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared five times as a sign of the infinite mercy and love of God the Father for all His children, most fully and perfectly expressed in the conception of God the Son in her womb. On December 12, she appeared to the local Bishop, Juan de Zumarrága, by leaving her image miraculously depicted on the mantle (tilma) of Saint Juan Diego. The tilma of Saint Juan Diego continues to be venerated today in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Many spiritual favors have been received by those who have come to venerate the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The greatest poverty and suffering of our time is spiritual, the loss of a sense of who we are as children of God and, therefore, the loss of hope and direction in our lives. Our spiritual poverty demands a spiritual remedy. The Coming of the Son of God into the world is the true and lasting remedy of our spiritual poverty, God the Father's perfect act of love for us as His sons and daughters. The Mother of God, Our Lady of Guadalupe, is constantly directing us to the mystery of the Incarnation which gives us unfailing hope and sound direction for our lives. The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe will be a proven means by which the Mother of God can lead us to her Incarnate Son to discover anew our dignity as sons and daughters of God in Him, to be filled with hope and to give hope to our world.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin recalls the appearances of 1531 and proclaims once again her message of God's mercy and love. The Shrine, a place of pilgrimage, announces anew Our Lady's message of God's mercy and love in our personal lives. In April of 1999, in preparation for the celebration of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People published two documents which present the perennial place of shrines and pilgrimages to shrines in the life of God's holy people. These documents illustrate the significance of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and of eventual pilgrimage to the Shrine.

In the preparation of the Great Jubilee Year 2000, Pope John Paul II confirmed the importance of shrines and pilgrimages to shrines for our spiritual life. In my ministry as Bishop of La Crosse and then again as Archbishop of St. Louis, I noted the wholehearted response of the faithful during pilgrimages. It has been my desire to provide a place of authentic devotion to Mary, the Mother of God, to which the faithful may go on pilgrimage. In response to my request, His Holiness, Pope John Paul II gave his Apostolic Blessing to the work of establishing such a place of pilgrimage, the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

A shrine, not a parish The Shrine will not be a parish. Rather, it will be a place of pilgrimage for Catholics and other believers from throughout the United States and beyond. Those who come to the Shrine will recall the pilgrim nature of our earthly existence and ponder our lasting home with God the Father toward which we journey each day. They will come to the Shine to hear again the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe and to draw from it inspiration and strength for their daily living. Thus, the Shrine becomes a parish of pilgrims, whose common journey provides the framework for the spiritual activity of the Shrine.

Time Framework/Schedule
Clearly, as you read a description of the Shrine complex in detail, you will understand why it will take several years to complete the entire complex.   The Pilgrim Center, the Mother of Good Counsel Votive Candle Chapel, the meditation trail, Rosary Walk, outside Stations of the Cross and devotional areas to Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha and St. Joseph the Workman are completed.  The Shrine Church, which began construction on May 13, 2004 was completed and dedicated on July 31, 2008.

Future plans include a Marian Catechetical and Retreat Center as well as several more devotional areas on the over 100 acres of Shrine grounds.

Your prayers and support  are very much needed.  May God reward you abundantly for your sacrifice.