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| Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain |
In my hometown, there's a huge (about 50 foot) wooden image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
She's towered over the parking lot of the local Catholic parish hall for as long as I can remember. She's repainted every few years, so for some years her face seems severe and drawn, other times it seems gentle and mild. It's amazing what a few lines drawn differently can do.
I've been thinking more and more about her as our country struggles yet again with its perennial struggle with racism. Though the people at the focus of the conversation this time around aren't Spaniards or Native Americans, I think her visit to them still has a lot to say to us in our current predicament, and to any area of the world where two different groups of people struggle to live together.
The world that she visited, the land that would become Mexico, then newly conquered by the Spaniards, was a land fundamentally divided. Native Americans were seen as sub- human by the Conquistadors, good for slave labor and not much else. They had lost their culture as well as their freedom- horrified by the spectacle of human sacrifice that they saw, the Spaniards went about destroying any facet of Aztec culture and religion that they could. They succeeded in bringing about an end to the human sacrifices, but at the very real cost of depriving an entire people their moral and cultural context. In many ways, the Aztec were a people adrift and lost.
When Our Lady appeared to a poor Native American man named Juan Diego, she was appearing to a man many of the Spanish considered less than a person. The choice she made to choose him as her messenger, and the choice to speak to him in his own native language, was, by itself, a very strong statement about his humanity.
She chose to appear on his tilma, giving the world an image that everyone could see. The image itself was coded in such a way that both Spaniards and Native Americans could understand. She was very clearly the Virgin Mary and the woman from the book of Revelation, clothed in the sun, standing on the moon and wreathed in stars, but also sent a very clear message to the Aztec. She was in front of the sun (one of their most powerful gods) and thus more powerful than the sun, standing on the moon and thus more powerful than the moon, the flower on her dress symbolizing the Earth and its seasons, the symbols around her showing divinity, yet her demure glance downward, her knee bent in dance (the language of prayer to the Aztec people) and the sash around her belly showing that it was not her that was divine, but the child she carried.
When Our Lady appeared to a poor Native American man named Juan Diego, she was appearing to a man many of the Spanish considered less than a person. The choice she made to choose him as her messenger, and the choice to speak to him in his own native language, was, by itself, a very strong statement about his humanity.
She chose to appear on his tilma, giving the world an image that everyone could see. The image itself was coded in such a way that both Spaniards and Native Americans could understand. She was very clearly the Virgin Mary and the woman from the book of Revelation, clothed in the sun, standing on the moon and wreathed in stars, but also sent a very clear message to the Aztec. She was in front of the sun (one of their most powerful gods) and thus more powerful than the sun, standing on the moon and thus more powerful than the moon, the flower on her dress symbolizing the Earth and its seasons, the symbols around her showing divinity, yet her demure glance downward, her knee bent in dance (the language of prayer to the Aztec people) and the sash around her belly showing that it was not her that was divine, but the child she carried.
She chose to depict herself as a mestizo, or a person of mixed Native American and Spanish heritage. She managed to speak equally eloquently to both sets of people, not denying or reducing one set of people or the other, but calling them both to live together giving glory to the same God who created them all. She was, in effect, making a very clear statement that both peoples had human dignity and were human beings, and that their futures were intertwined. There was a need for forgiveness and a need for healing, for moving forwards.
As I consider this image and consider the current conversation about race and living together in our own country, I think her message those hundreds of years ago still resonates now. We have a similar history to those of the Spaniards and Aztec in that historically one group of people in our country were enslaved and treated as less than human by another. Yet our fates lie together, and we need to learn to live together as equals, equal in human dignity and worth.
Our way forwards lies, in pursuing our future together in peace. She speaks to us still, challenging each of us.
Our way forwards lies, in pursuing our future together in peace. She speaks to us still, challenging each of us.
Some of us are challenged to make sure that we are treating those who are different than us, African Americans yes, but any 'stranger', as full human beings, with needs, hopes and dreams that are unique, valuable, and unrepeatable. To treat them as we would want to be treated, and to make sure that they have a fair chance to have their needs met in our society. Some of us are challenged to identify those structures in society that don't treat people with dignity, and to take the steps we need to take in order to change them.
I think she challenges others to make sure that we don't do this by reducing or denying the human dignity of those who were the oppressors. Our Lady challenged the Spanish to recognize the Aztec as people equal in human dignity to them, but she did not do so by denying their humanity, nor by saying that they were inherently incapable of loving their fellow man. She encouraged them to change and to love, she didn't go out of her way to shame them for not loving thus far. The way forward doesn't lay in tearing others down, in saying that they by their very nature, by attributes about themselves that they were born with and can't change, are participating in evil and can never not participate in that evil and thus ought to be subjugated. It lies in challenging those with more power and in higher positions to lift others up, to choose to see those that are different than them and not born with the same attributes and advantages as human beings who deserve to be treated as equal in human dignity.
I think she challenges others to make sure that we don't do this by reducing or denying the human dignity of those who were the oppressors. Our Lady challenged the Spanish to recognize the Aztec as people equal in human dignity to them, but she did not do so by denying their humanity, nor by saying that they were inherently incapable of loving their fellow man. She encouraged them to change and to love, she didn't go out of her way to shame them for not loving thus far. The way forward doesn't lay in tearing others down, in saying that they by their very nature, by attributes about themselves that they were born with and can't change, are participating in evil and can never not participate in that evil and thus ought to be subjugated. It lies in challenging those with more power and in higher positions to lift others up, to choose to see those that are different than them and not born with the same attributes and advantages as human beings who deserve to be treated as equal in human dignity.
The way forward does not lie in retribution or in tearing down and destroying-- in lies in building up those who are at a disadvantage and in recognizing their human dignity.
Our Lady of Guadalupe came not as the mother of only the Spanish or only the Aztec. She came as the mother of all the living, as the mother of both their peoples, calling them both closer to her Son.
May she do the same for us.
May she do the same for us.
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