Cosmic dignity

On a hill overlooking Mexico City, there is a large basilica to which millions of people go in pilgrimage. They pray to the Virgin Mary whose picture is painted on a large rectangular piece of cloth. The cloth is made of very coarse fiber, like that of abaca or maguey. That kind of cloth disintegrates after several decades. This one has lasted more than four centuries.

That piece of cloth had been the mantle of a poor illiterate Mexican Indian named Juan Diego. On Dec. 9, 1531 he was walking near that hill when a Lady appeared to him and told him to tell the Bishop to build a church on that site. When Diego told the bishop, he was dismissed as a fool with a lively imagination.

Fearing further humiliation, Diego avoided going near that hill. But the Lady appeared again and repeated her request. Diego said, "Lady, I would be laughed at unless I could produce proof that I had really seen you." The Lady told him to go and gather roses. Roses? In December? In this cold climate 7,000 feet above sea level? But there were roses, and Juan Diego gathered them and wrapped them up in his mantle. When he opened the mantle before the Bishop, there was a picture of the Lady as Diego had seen her.

The interesting thing is the picture. It is of a woman dressed in white with bright rays enveloping her. She is standing on a cloud and under her feet is a crescent moon.

Juan Diego spoke no Spanish. He knew only his Indian language. He had not read the Bible. There were none in his language. Yet what he had seen, and what is depicted on his cloak, is the picture described in Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation (or Apocalypse).

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. – Rev. 12.1-3.

Originally, that passage was probably intended to refer to the Chosen People, the Israelites. But the words of the Bible, like any written literature, acquire a life of their own, and the words can have a meaning besides the one intended by the human author. Theologians call this sensus plenior – a fuller meaning. Mary, appearing to an illiterate Indian, appears to him as described long ago in the Apocalypse.

That picture is, of course, symbolic. In real life, Mary was an ordinary housewife who had to cook meals and wash clothes and keep the house clean. She did not have the wealth nor the special rank of a Queen or a Princess or a Madame President or a First Lady glittering with jewels wearing a tiara of sparkling diamonds. But Mary, a humble woman, had a dignity far greater than that of any queen. For she became the Mother of the Redeemer, the Son of God, "the image of the invisible God".

So, symbolically, she is like the woman described in the Apocalypse: a woman clothed in the splendor of the sun, with the moon under her feet, and above her a crown of stars.

Today, December 8, the whole Catholic world celebrates the feast of Mary’s Immaculate (i.e. sinless) Conception. Meaning, from the first moment of her existence in her mother’s womb, Mary was never tainted by original sin nor by any personal sin. This column joins the millions who revere this humble housewife who had a dignity of cosmic proportions.