When Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred-ninety-two, his patron - the Spanish monarchy - no doubt hoped the voyage would expand its empire. And he himself hoped the enormous dangers he took on might return profits from the spice trade that could develop with India should he succeed in finding a sea passage to that land. But Columbus' venture was about much more, and modern educators are guilty of malpractice when they depict him as a Machiavellian out to exploit people he would encounter.
A middle-aged man does not set off across an uncharted ocean in three wooden vessels of questionable seaworthiness, not knowing exactly where his destination even is, unless his spirit is fired by things grander than a long-odds chance at commerce.
Columbus was a devout Christian who wrote about the faith, felt duty-bound duty to introduce indigenous populations to it, and, unlike most sailors, refrained from swearing... His first expedition's largest ship, the Santa Maria, was named after Jesus' mother... While at sea his crew sang evening vespers, and each time they turned the half-hour glass to keep track of time, they recited: "Blessed be the hour of our Savior's birth / blessed be the Virgin Mary who bore him / and blessed be John who baptized him"... After being shipwrecked on Christmas morning on the north coast of present-day Haiti, he established a settlement and named it La Navidad ("the Nativity") before sailing back to Europe in the remaining vessels.
Christopher Columbus died still believing the lands he had reached were the eastern fringes of Asia. It was those who came after who realized this was an unknown New World, one whose continents would eventually be named after another Italian-born explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. Their early ventures writ large are a topic for another time, however - for the focus of today's post centers on what happened in one particular location a quarter-century after Columbus passed away.
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In 1519, Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez arrived at the Yucatan Peninsula and became the first European to set foot in what is now Mexico. By then the Aztec Empire was two centuries into its domination of that part of the world and its culture was notoriously violent, with human sacrifice - including child sacrifice - serving a central role. The sacrifices were carried out frequently and often done by the tlamacazqueh (priests) cutting the living victims' hearts out of their chests; other times, the more "humane" method of decapitation was employed. The tlamacazqueh ate the hearts of the victims and sometimes wore their skins as costumes.
With conquistadors arriving in waves, the numbers ultimately favored the Spaniards and the battles between them and the Aztecs were brutal and bloody to an extent they never saw coming. Afterwards, getting Aztec people to adopt the beliefs and customs of those who had shown themselves savage enough to conquer even their warriors was a seemingly impossible task. When Christian missionaries arrived in the conquistadors' wake and spoke of a god who was loving and merciful, your everyday Aztec knew the missionaries came from the same country as the conquistadors and saw no reason to trust them. Early attempts to evangelize met with determined resistance.
One of the Aztecs who was receptive had been born circa 1475 and named Cuauhtlatoatzin (Talking Eagle). As an adult he adopted the "Spanishized" name Juan Diego and regularly walked from his home to a mission station to receive religious instruction and perform religious duties. The route of his walk took him past Tepeyac Hill, which is today surrounded by Mexico City..
While making his commute early on the morning of December 9, 1531, Juan Diego encountered a beautiful young woman who spoke to him in his native language and identified herself as "Mary, mother of the true God from whom all life has come." She instructed him to ask the bishop, on her behalf, to construct a church atop the hill.
The acting bishop, Juan de Zumarraga, was a not-yet-consecrated Franciscan of Basque lineage from northern Spain. When Juan Diego told him about his encounter with the woman and the request she asked him to relay, de Zumarraga was understandably skeptical and told him to come back another time.
Mary appeared again to Juan Diego on his return home, at which time he reported his lack of success and claimed that he was of too low a station to act on her behalf. However, she insisted he was the correct person and asked him to repeat the task. When he did so the following day, December 10th, de Zumarraga did not rebuff him but instead asked him to bring some sign of proof next time. Mary appeared on that afternoon's return home, and when he told her of the bishop's request, she responded by saying she would provide a sign the following morning. Unfortunately, when December 11th dawned, Juan Diego's uncle was very ill so he stayed home to tend to him.
On December 12th his uncle was still sick but noticeably better, so he opted to resume his daily trip. Not wanting to be delayed getting to the station, where he intended to request prayers for his uncle, and embarrassed by having seemingly "skipped" December 11th, he chose an alternate route around Tepeyac Hill hoping to avoid a fourth encounter with Mary.
He did not succeed, for she appeared and (pardon my vernacular) basically asked "what gives?" After hearing his explanation and assuring him that his uncle would be fine, she asked Juan Diegoo to go to the top of the hill and collect what was there.
What he found were blooming Castilian roses, a cultivated species unknown in Mexico that would have been out of season in December anyway. He gathered them in his tilma (a cloak made of agave cactus fiber) and transported them to the mission house, where he presumed they would serve as the promised proof. When he opened the tilma in front of the bishop, those roses cascaded to the floor and the bishop reacted with awe - not only because he knew they should not be there and not be blooming, but because a large and stunning image had been imprinted on the underside of the tilma, unbeknownst to Juan Diego.
Up to now it might be easy to dismiss this as a fanciful tale of fiction. But we can't, for what's described above is just the tip of the iceberg.
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Athough agave fiber decomposes within 15 to 25 years, Juan Diego's tilma survives incorrupt to this day, 494 years later, despite a notable lack of preservation efforts having been made.
For its first 115 years the tilma was kept in the open air and subjected to soot, dust, incense smoke, candle smoke, candle wax, insects, moisture, touching, and who knows what else. If anything, that should have caused it to decay in less than the usual 15- to 25-year time frame, however, when it underwent its first scientific examination in 1789 (i.e., 258 years after after Juan Diego encountered Mary) the examiners were shocked that it showed no signs of decay at all, not even basic wear and tear.
Move forward to 1921, when the Mexican Revolution was in full swing and a terrorist tried to destroy the tilma by detonating a bomb hidden beneath it in a flower pot. The explosion broke windows in the church and other buildings as well, made ruins of the marble steps to the altar, and bent backwards this brass cross now known as Santo Cristo del Atentado - yet the tilma and thin plate of glass that was the only thing covering it remained unscathed.
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As stunning as the tilma's longevity and indestructibility are, the image imprinted on it is even more stunning, and that only starts with the fact that (cue the Shroud of Turin comparisons) science has no clue how the was image was made or what it was made of. There is no paint, no dye, no brush strokes, no sketch arks, no interwoven "other" materials. Instead there's an image where none should be - colors and details where nature would place nothing but a blank surface of beige. And how breathtaking those details are!
The image is of a pregnant woman, with obstetric proportions indicating she would be about two weeks shy of her expected delivery date. That detail should cause eyebrows to raise when you consider that the image was imprinted 13 days before December 25th.
On her belly is the constellation Leo (a lion) and by her heart the constellation Virgo (a virgin) - which should cause eyebrows to raise when you consider that Mary was a virgin and Jesus was called the Lion of Judah.
Her hair is parted in the middle and worn loose below her mantle, which in Aztec culture was symbolic of virginity. Plus, she wears a black tie at her waist, which in Aztec culture was a noblewoman's maternity girdle. Thus the image broadcast to natives the otherwise unthinkable concept of a virgin with child, and her child being born with authority to boot.
Also appearing on the virgin's tunic, directly overlying her womb, is a four-petaled jasmine flower, which in Aztec culture symbolized divinity. Thus the image conveyed to natives that her child was actually a (the) god (God).
The image further shows the woman standing in front of and largely obscuring the sun - which in Aztec culture was the symbol of their chief god, Huitzilopochtli. Thus so it conveys to natives that their until-then exalted figure was being supplanted by the fruit of the virgin's womb.
All of which demonstrates that Aztecs would have swiftly grasped the Mother of God imagery that felt automatic even to non-Christian Europeans. But as you might have guessed, there's more.
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That same image which communicated so well to people of the sixteenth century also communicates us twenty-first century humans in ways that could not have worked with our forebears.
The virgin is depicted draped by a blue mantle decorated with gold stars, which sit in the precise positions each of the constellations would have appeared above Mexico City in the morning hours of December 12, 1531 when Mary appeared to appeared to Juan Diego - if they were being viewed not from our vantage point of Earth, but from the sun, a vantage point visible only to God.
Further, her held is tilted forward at angle of 23.5 degrees, the precise angle at which Earth tilts toward the sun on its. Being forced to nod to the sun because of its gravity, versus feeling moved to nod to the Son because of his glory - could a comparison be more obvious, especially given the fact that the simple fact of her head being tilted and with eyes turned down conveys submission and prayer?
Then there is this, which only became possible in the modern age of magnification: The realism of Mary's eyes. So stark are they that when renowned photographer Ivan Esther - an agnostic - was hired to photograph the image and zoomed close in on them, he stumbled from the ladder and exclaimed: "She's alive!" Shortly afterwards he became Christian.
Mary's eyes are barely open, with slight spaces under her drooping lids providing only a scant glimpse of anything that would be presumed to represent her eyes themselves. At first glance they are almost imperceptible, and anyone looking at the tilma is likely to assume there is nothing there for eyes except a pair of minuscule, monochromatic dabs. Under magnification, however, microscopic details spring forth. The pupils contract when light is shined on what is visible of Mary's eyes, then re-dilate when it is removed, and the Purkinje shift - a triple refection of light that occurs in the structure of living, human eyes but not on flat, dead, 2D images - is shown to be active. This has been confirmed by multiple ophthalmologists who have studied it, and denied by none.
Also confirmed and not denied by ophthalmologists is the presence of an scene which appears on both eyes, confirmed to be a natch because it displays the exact proportions and inversions from one eye to the next that would occur when human eyes look upon a scene. When it comes to the virgin's eyes on the tilma, the scene contains 13 people, a figure that is especially noteworthy when you consider that tradition has long claimed there were 13 people in the room when Juan Diego opened his tilma in front of the bishop. Presumably, the scene visible microscopically in her eyes shows us exactly what living eyes in their location would have seen (did see) at the exact moment those December miracles of the image and the roses were unveiled.
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The image on the tilma is known as Our Lady of Guadalupe. The tilma hangs on a wall, on public display, in this Mexico City basillica at the foot of Tepeyac Hill, near (if not at) the spot where Mary first appeared to Juan Diego. It is the most visited pilgrimage site in the world.
After word of her appearance and the miraculous image spread, millions of Aztecs converted to Christianity on a scale that was previously unthinkable and probably unprecedented. And other natives converted in the wake of the mass Aztec conversion, so that Christianity gained a powerful foothold in the New World. And as we know, from there it only grew.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the strongest evidences for God's existence that he has given us. It spoke directly to both of the cultures immediately present when it was first presented five centuries ago, and likewise it speaks to modern cultures who are able to use science and technology to discern things from it that sixteenth century people never knew about. Who knows what other secrets it holds, waiting to be unlocked in the years to come?
Our Lady of Guadalupe shows that those of us who aren't Catholic should be open (dare I say wide open?) to Catholic claims that God uses Mary to draw humans to him and that her role in salvation history is both active and integral.
Note: The prior posts in this series are as follows:
Part I: Introduction
Part II: The New Eve
Part III: Genesis to Revelation
Part III-b: The Ark of the New Covenant
Part IV: Historical Perspective
Part V: Perpetual Virginity
Part VI: Prayer
Part VI-b: Worship
Part VII: Involvement and Femininity
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