'Our Lady of Guadalupe'
Patroness of
the Americas.
"Then the uncle manifested that it was true
that on that occasion he became well and that he had seen her in the
same manner as she had appeared to his nephew, knowing through her
that she had sent him to Mexico to see the bishop. Also, the Lady
told him that when he would go to see the bishop, to reveal to him
what he had seen and to explain the miraculous manner in which she
had cured him, and that she would properly be named, and known as
the blessed Image, the ever-virgin Holy Mary of
Guadalupe."(Nican Mopohua)
Why should the Virgin Mary
appearing to an Indian in recently conquered Mexico and speaking to
him in Nahuatl call herself "of Guadalupe", a Spanish name?
Did she want to be called de
Guadalupe because of the statue of 'Our Lady of Guadalupe' in
Estremadura, Spain?
In all
apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary she identified herself as the
Virgin Mary and phrases like Mother of God or another of her titles,
and was later usually known by the name of the place or region where
she appeared (Lourdes, Fatima).
So why should Mary, when appearing to an Indian in
recently invaded Mexico and speaking in the local language, want to
be named with the Spanish name of Guadalupe?
Was she talking about the miraculous statue of 'Our Lady of Guadalupe', that was given by Pope Gregory the Great to the
Bishop of Seville, was lost for 600 years and was found in 1326 by a
cowherd named Gil Cordero guided by an apparition of Our Lady? The
statue was named Guadalupe for the village located near the place of
discovery.
The origin of the
name Guadalupe has always been a matter of controversy. It is
nevertheless believed that the name came about because of the
translation from Nahuatl to Spanish of the words used by the Virgin
during the apparition to Juan Bernardino, the ailing uncle of Juan
Diego.
It is believed that Our
Lady used the Aztec Nahuatl word of coatlaxopeuh which is pronounced
"quatlasupe" and sounds remarkably like the Spanish word
Guadalupe. Coa meaning
serpent, tla being
the noun ending which can be interpreted as "the", while
xopeuh means to crush
or stamp out. So Our Lady must have called herself the one "who crushes the serpent."
We must remember that the Aztecs
offered annually at least 20,000 men, women and children in human
sacrifice to their gods. In 1487, just in a single 4 days long
ceremony for the dedication of a new temple in Tenochtitlan, some
80,000 captives were killed in human sacrifice.
Certainly, in this case She crushed the
serpent, and few years later millions of the natives were converted
to Christianity.
"Let not your heart be disturbed. Do not fear that sickness, nor
any other sickness or anguish. Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you
not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within
my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by
anything."
(Words of Our Lady to Juan Diego)
Used with permission of www.sancta.org
Links
to other interesting pages in my 'Our Lady of Guadalupe'
series
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