By From a young age, I can remember attending a late-night Catholic celebration mass with my parents on December 11. The celebration was in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe’s Feast. Every year it began with Matachines (Mexican Native Dances), then a mass, and finally Mariachi at midnight, to sing Las Mañanitas (a traditional Mexican birthday song) to La Virgen de Guadalupe.
Even as an adult now, my faith in La Virgen de Guadalupe continues to be present and strong. I continue to attend the mass for La Virgen de Guadalupe’s Feast because it’s my way of honoring her and thanking her for all the blessings she has bestowed upon me and my family. On December 11 of each year, I buy roses to take with me to church, to place at her feet at midnight, as a gesture of gratitude.
We celebrate La Virgen de Guadalupe on December 12th because in 1531 she made her most symbolic appearance before an indigenous man in Mexico named Juan Diego. Throughout December 9-12, La Virgen de Guadalupe appeared a total of four times to him. She would appear a fifth time in Juan Diego’s home and heal his uncle of all his fatal illnesses. In her first apparition, La Virgen de Guadalupe requested that a church be built in her honor on the hilltop where she appeared to Juan Diego.
Although Juan Diego gave the Bishop La Virgen’s message, the Bishop asked Juan Diego to ask La Virgen de Guadalupe for a sign to prove her identity. On December 12, Juan Diego returned with roses not native to Mexico or in season as proof of the apparition.
When Juan Diego presented the roses to the Bishop on December 12, they found an image of La Virgen on his cloak (tilde) where he had carried the roses. The roses, the image on the cloak, and La Virgen’s act of healing Juan Diego’s uncle where all considered miraculous signs and, as a result, a church was built in her honor on Tepeyac Hill in the area of modern-day Mexico City
To commemorate the events in 1531, La Virgen de Guadalupe is celebrated on December 12 by Mexican Catholics in the Americas. But it is important to note that her image has come to symbolize the beauty of womanhood and motherhood for many, non-Catholics included. La Virgen de Guadalupe is undeniably one of the most recognized, beloved, and mass distributed images in Mexican and Mexican-American culture.
Below, I share photos from the La Virgen de Guadalupe’s Feast I attend:
Source: Facts regarding the apparitions of La Virgen de Guadalupe referenced from an article in The Catholic Times on 29 May 1999 by then Bishop Raymond Leo Burke.
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