My favorite thing about Taxi cabs here in St. Louis is this, the red ones have a little sign upon the top of them and all have a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe! I love watching her pop up in front of me while I am driving and I don’t even mind when she “cuts me off”. I only smile and pray thanks to her.
While we celebrate her feast I found this old passage about her from a book on the Google Book search from 1897 which provides an interesting account from over 110 years ago. (We’ll have to be tolerant of the beginning word “legend”. It makes it sound suspicious.)
“The legend runs that in the year 1531 an Indian convert, baptized
under the name of Juan Diego, was thrice blessed with a vision of the Virgin Mary, who bade him make known to the Bishop of Mexico that she desired a church to be built on the spot where she had appeared, and that she would be a kind and loving mother to the poor Indians and to all who should invoke her aid. But when the bishop, doubting, requested the attestation of some sign or miracle, the Virgin on the third day bade Juan fill his tiluui, or homespun blanket, with flowers. And when he took the flower-laden tihna to the bishop and opened it out before him, lo! it was found that the flowers, though visible to the eye, were not palpable to the touch, and moreover that a marvellous picture was limned upon the blanket in colors which partook of no earthly quality and with an art no human hand could equal. And this picture was the portrait of the Holy Virgin as she had appeared to Juan.
The sign was accepted, the church was built, the picture was hung up within the church. And there it has remained ever since during all the successive enlargements from the original chapel to the present imposing edifice, save that at the time of the terrible floods of 1629, when the ordinary road-bed was submerged, the archbishop and his attendants went by boat, in solemn pilgrimage, to Guadalupe, and transferred the venerated picture to his cathedral. Here it was visited by immense crowds of devotees, day by day, until the waters subsided. By common acclamation relief from the
total destruction which threatened Mexico was attributed to Our Lady of Guadalupe. “
After that period,” says Archbishop Corrigan of New York, in anarticle in The Seminary for December, 1895, “devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe spread so rapidly throughout the entire kingdom that it would be worse than useless to adduce proofs to establish its universality. At this day you can hardly enter a shop in the city of Mexico without finding a lamp burning before
a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe. You can hardly enter a church without seeing an altar erected in her honor. Indeed, the Provincial Council of Antequera or Oaxaca specially ordains that no church be built in the entire province without its special altar in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Every diocese in Mexico dedicates the 12th of every month to Our Lady of Guadalupe, and every year sends thousands of devout pilgrims to her shrine. When tlic patriot priest, Hidaliio, who is called the Washington of Mexico, began the fight for independence in 1810, his standard and his battle-cry were ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe.’ The revolution itself, although it despoiled every other church in Mexico, has ever respected this shrine of Our Lady. In one word, the Virgin of Guadalupe has taken such hold on the Mexican people that to attempt to dislodge her from their affections would be to tear out their hearts by the roots.”
Archbishop Corrigan was one of the twenty-two foreign prelates who, with the forty-three bishops of Mexico, and fifty thousand pilgrims of all ranks, were present at the coronation of the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe on October 12, 1895. The crown, which is of gold, sparkling with precious stones, and valued at twenty-five thousand dollars, was lifted up to a level with the head in the picture. A number of interesting details are given by Archbishop Corrigan in the article already quoted from. ”
The material,” he says, ” on which the image is formed is a coarse product of the maguey plant, such as is still used by the Indians for their wraps and for other domestic purposes. The image is painted on this rough canvas, without any sizing or preparation. In fact, the canvas is transparent, the same image
showing on both sides. At various times the picture has been examined by a committee of experts composed of distinguished artists and of scientific men, and they have deposed under oath that they could not account either for its production or for its preservation. The imago exhibits peculiar characteristics of painting in oil, in water-color, in distemper, and in relief. In fact, these four dissimilar kinds of painting arc discernible in
different portions of the same canvas ; and, in addition to this, the gilding, which appears in the stars embroidered on the garment of Our Lady and in the texture of the robe itself, as well as in the rays of light which issue from the figure, is not applied according to any known process, and seems rather to have been woven into the fibre than painted on it. “
Apart from the curious commingling of dissimilar kinds of painting on the same canvas, there is this other peculiarity about the picture, that for years it was exposed, without any covering, not only to the smoke of censers and innumerable candles, but to the damp air, charged with saltpetre, which continually arises from the neighboring lakes and marshes, and which affects and corrodes the hardest substances ; and yet, after a period of more
than three hundred and sixty years, this product of the maguey plant, which ought to have perished long ago, is still in a state of perfect preservation. This is the more remarkable, because experiments have been tried in the same locality with similar material, but with very different results.
An able artist, Don Rafael Gutierrez, took a fine tilma, September 12, 1789, and painted on it a fac-simile of Our Lady of Guadalupe. When finished, it was protected by a glass cover and placed in the neighboring chapel, Del Pocito. The result was that before eight years elapsed it was so discolored and disfigured by the fumes of the saltpetre that it was necessary to withdraw it from public view and relegate it to the sacristy. ”
The great proof of the authenticity of the apparitions,” the archbishop continues, “is the constant and uninterrupted tradition, bearing all the marks of credibility, accepted by all classes of people, and extending from the days of Juan Diego to our own time. This tradition has been twice officially examined and approved by the Holy See. Only last year, after a long and most
searching examination, Pope Leo XIII. granted a new office and mass in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe, by letters dated March 6, 1894. In 1754, Pope Benedict XIV. had already granted a similar favor, although the text relating to the apparition was not so explicit. In fact, hardly a Pontiff has sat on the throne of Peter during the past two hundred and fifty years who has not
accorded special favors to the sanctuary at Guadalupe.”"
CURIOSITIES OF POPULAR CUSTOMS AND OF RITES, CEREMONIES, OBSERVANCES, AND MISCELLANEOUS ANTIQUITIES BY WILLIAM S. AUTHOR OP COPYRIGHT, 1897, •
T J. B. LtPPIHCOTT COMPiHY. t.ibrar\ of Congress Catatog Card Number 66-23951
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