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Two Feasts in a week in Advent for the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary

By Fr. Philip Sandstrom


Kraainem (11 December 2006).- The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary: Friday, 8 December & Our Lady of Guadalupe: Tuesday, 12 December 

The first of these Solemnities, the Immaculate Conception, appeared on church calendars as far back as the 7th century, and was commonly celebrated by the 12th century in the Western Church. It was originally called ‘the Conception of Mary by St. Anne’. Whether Mary was conceived ‘without original sin’ in the womb of her Mother, St. Anne, in view of the place she was to hold in bearing Jesus, the Christ and the Son of God, was the subject of long and complicated theological argumentation over an number of centuries up till 1854 when Pope Pius IX infallibly declared this to be a dogma of our faith. 

Historically, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many Dominicans and others following him, were against any special ‘gift’ to the Virgin Mary before her birth, emphasizing that she is just like the rest of us, a human being. The Franciscans, with Duns Scotus, and many other theologians, and those who followed their prayerful reasoning, emphasized the special role of Mary. She, they said, was the ideal Christian, and that as we ourselves are re-born sinless in Baptism into Christ’s Body, the Church, Mary in view of bearing Christ’s Body in her womb had this special gift of sinlessness from her first moments. 

Mary during her apparition to St. Bernadette at Lourdes in 1858 insisted ‘I am the Immaculate Conception’. After the declaration of the dogma the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception was made to be the National Feast of the Virgin Mary for the United States of America. And at the foundation of The American College at Leuven/Louvain this title became the official name of the College. 

The second of these Solemnities is connected to the first, since according to the legend the Virgin Mary first appeared to St. Juan Diego, a newly baptized Indian, when he was hurrying down Tepeyac hill for Mass in Mexico City on 9th December 1531. She asked him to speak to his Bishop Zumarraga to have a church built on the spot she appeared. The Bishop asked for some proof from the Virgin for this request and she told Juan Diego to gather roses among the rocks where the chapel was to be. This was strange enough, but though it was wintertime, the roses were there to be gathered. She then told Juan Diego to carry them in his tilma (a sort of Indian poncho or cloak) and present them as a sign to the Bishop. When he did this, showing the roses held in his tilma to the Bishop and others with him, there was on the cloak itself an image of the Virgin Mother as she had appeared. This image is known as Holy Mary of Guadalupe. The news of the heavenly event spread rapidly, especially in Hispanic American and in Spain itself (there was already a much older shrine of the Virgin at the city of Guadalupe in Spain too). It is said that in 1571 the Mexican image of Mary of Guadalupe was carried on the ship of the Admiral of the Fleet, Don Juan of Austria (a son of the King of Spain) who led the gathered Christian armada at the battle of Lepanto to victory against the Turkish naval power. This victory is commemorated in the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on 7th October. 

The influence among Mexicans and other Spanish speakers of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is enormous and still growing. It is practically omnipresent in the devotional life of the Hispanic Church and the cause for the continuing pilgrimage to the shrine where the image is on display outside Mexico City on the hill of Tepeyec. One of the many signs of the growing presence of Mexican Americans in the Church in the United States is the spread and increasing honor given to this Solemnity recalling an apparition associated with the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary which made it possible for Native Americans conquered by the Spanish to convert to Christianity peaceably and wholeheartedly. 

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