Mexico's Mary

By Sara Burnett Daily Herald Staff Writer

MEXICO CITY, Mexico - She is everywhere in Mexico - on pendants hanging from children's necks, on the walls of homes, in roadside shrines and on virtually any kind of trinket imaginable, from magnets to pens to cigarette lighters.

In most of Mexico's Catholic churches, she holds the position of honor above the front altar, while Christ hangs off to her side. Even here in the United States, she holds a special place - often in some kind of shrine - in most Mexican homes and churches. But on no day is Our Lady of Guadalupe - the Mexican Virgin Mary - more celebrated than on her feast day, Dec. 12. Locally, Mexican Catholics will begin festivities tonight, carrying into Friday morning with special masses and music.

"She is our Mary," said Diana Rojas of Palatine, a volunteer who organizes the annual Feast Day for Our Lady of Guadalupe at Mission Juan Diego Catholic Church in Arlington Heights. "She is of our color, she appeared in our country. She is very popular."

Between 300 and 500 people attended each of three services held for the feast day in Arlington Heights last year, and at least that many are expected this year.

Other suburban churches - including St. Joseph's Catholic churches in Elgin and Addison - also will host mass at 7 p.m. today and Friday and "las mananitas," or traditional singing, in honor of the virgin beginning at 5 a.m. Friday.

In Addison, the church expects as many as 800 people for Friday night mass and a play about Our Lady of Guadalupe. According to the church, the virgin appeared to Juan Diego as he walked to worship early one Saturday morning in 1531. She told him to go to the city and ask the bishop to build a temple in her honor.

The bishop, however, did not believe Juan Diego and sent him away on three different occasions. After the third rejection, the virgin told Juan Diego she would provide a sign for him to take to the bishop.

She sent him to the top of a hill where beautiful roses were suddenly growing among the dirt, weeds and thorny bushes. Juan Diego brought the roses back to the virgin, who placed the petals in his "tilma," a cloth made from cactus leaves.

When Juan Diego arrived at the bishop's office and opened the tilma, the petals fell to the floor and a drawing of the virgin appeared on the cloth. Almost immediately, work began on a temple. It was named the Basilica of Guadalupe because the virgin identified herself as Our Lady of Guadalupe when she appeared to Juan Diego.

Some say she chose the name after the Spanish city of Guadalupe, where a cowherd in 1326 found a statue of the virgin that had been lost for more than 600 years. Others say Guadalupe is an inaccurate translation of an Indian word that meant "crush the serpent," meaning she wanted to stamp out the Aztec religion.

It was more than 100 years before that first basilica was completed on roughly the same site where Catholics believe Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared. Though its foundation has since begun to sink, and visitors are no longer allowed to enter it, the stone structure still stands near the current - and massive - Basilica of Guadalupe, which was completed in 1976. The tilma on which the virgin appeared hangs amid gold bars against a high wall in the new basilica. Its existence, believers say, is itself a miracle: The cloth made from this particular cactus plant normally lasts about 20 years. Juan Diego's tilma has endured more than 400. An estimated 10 million people visit this basilica each year.

They come in droves, some entering the basilica on their knees, rosaries in hand, making their way up the aisles and toward the image. They bring the lady offerings of flowers and money - a way to ask the virgin for a miracle or thank her for one that's already been granted. Deposited into collection plates during an hourly Mass, the coins amount to so much money that when they are transferred into the large metal boxes at the entry of the church, the sound echoes like a slot machine paying out big.

Passing before the framed image on a moving walkway, the visitors take pictures and pray. Some put their face in their hands and weep. Mass is celebrated every hour on the hour, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. The 20,000-seat sanctuary often is filled to capacity. Visitors also line up outside a small room about 100 feet down the hallway from the framed image to see a parish priest. He is here all day, giving blessings with holy water to any number of people or objects.

Gustavo Rodriguez Mendoza and Rosario Jiminez Matagon of Veracruz brought their 2-month-old son, Gustavo Eduardo, here because he has not yet been baptized. They asked the priest to bless the pendant with the virgin's image that hangs around the child's neck. "So he will be protected," the boy's father explains.

In July 2002, Juan Diego was canonized by Pope John Paul (news - web sites) II during a Mass at the basilica. He was the first Mexican saint. About 80 Catholics from Chicago and the suburbs traveled to Mexico City for the three-hour Mass. The night before the canonization, parishioners filled a special Mass at Mission Juan Diego in Arlington Heights. The next day, a mariachi band played at Maryville Academy in Des Plaines. Fireworks exploded on the campus after the Mexico City Mass ended.

Diana Rojas and three other people from Mission Juan Diego were seated outside the basilica in Mexico City. The experience, Rojas says, was "incredible." "It was something we'll never see again," she said. While there, Mission Juan Diego's priest bought two replicas of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, as well as a smaller portrait of Juan Diego.

The portrait and one of the images hang to the side of the altar at Mission Juan Diego. At the center is a statue of Christ. The arrangement is different than most churches in Mexico, where the virgin holds the position of prominence. Some people have criticized this Mexican devotion to the virgin - a devotion some say has crossed the line into adoration, an emotion that should be reserved only for Christ.

But Rojas defended the sentiment, saying it is because of the virgin that Christ - and man - exists at all. "She's our mother, and it was through her that Jesus was born," Rojas said. It is for that same reason that Our Lady of Guadalupe's image can be seen in virtually every corner of Mexico, as well as in the homes of most Mexicans living in the United States.

What's more, there is a sense of pride among Mexicans - about 85 percent of whom are Catholics - that the virgin chose to appear in Mexico and to an Indian peasant, not the bishop or other members of the ruling class. It is as though Mexicans were hand-picked to become Catholics. "There would not be a home without her," Rojas said.

Originally posted at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cdh/20031211/lo_cdh/mexicosmary