Guadalupe as Christmas story - Mexico - Christmas

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 24, 1993 by Bill Coleman, Patty Coleman

CUERNAVACA, Mexico--Early in December, 10 ragged men and women met as they do each week in the open space next to the tar-paper shack of their community's leader. Their children played nearby as the adults talked about Mary, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

"She is Tonantzin, the mother of all mothers," says Juana as she recalls the Indian roots of the Guadalupe apparition. "When she comes to my house in December, I feel secure and loved like I was a child again. My children, too, feel her presence. I can see it in their happy faces."

"And the Virgin said, |I am the protector of the people that are being eaten by the powerful.'she is with us when we occupy the zocalo or march to the governor's palace," adds Chonita. "I hear her saying her Magnificat prayer when I am frightened and want to turn back."

"She is the virgin, a woman alone without a man," says Gloria timidly. "She knows what the long nights are like when Pedro must work for months at a time in the U.S. and I have no one with me but the children."

"Guadalupe is pregnant, too. She wore the Aztec sash only pregnant women wear," says Maripaz, the mother of six little ones. "When I am pregnant, I know how close she is to me."

"She is ours, a poor Indian woman," adds Juan, the leader of the group. "She was dressed in Indian garb covered with Aztec symbols and appeared on a hill sacred to our mother goddess Tonantzin. She spoke Nahuatl, our language, not Spanish. She spoke not to a bishop but to a humble Indian, Juan Diego."

"She is a poor widow, too," adds Juanita, now in her 70s. "She had her baby in a stable with dirt floors and animals all around, just as we do. Then her husband died and the government killed her son. She is always at the side of us poor widows."

Across Latin America, men and women like these are reflecting on the legend of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the stories of Mary in the Bible. Their reflections are enough to give a Vatican-approved theologian apoplexy and set in motion yet another witch-hunt for the theologians responsible for these deviations from Roman orthodoxy.

What is happening in these tens of thousands of base communities is the birth of a way of understanding religious truth very different from our own. The stories of Mary, whether in the Bible or in apparitions, are both history and myth.

Theologians, historians and most of us with roots in today's scientific culture want to know the historical facts--the geography, the language, the social structure, the theologies of the time and their historical setting. For us, myths are no more than quaint relics of the past or entertainments for childish imaginations. Without admitting it, many of us believe that the more information we have about religion the more religious we will become.

The Mexican poor in the base Christian communities leap over our anxious questions and revel in the mystical meaning of religious events. For them, past, present and future are all one. They savor and relive the stories and through them understand the here-and-now realities of their lives. Their search is not for information but for enlightenment, wisdom and courage and they find these in symbols and ritual, not in abstract ideas and carefully chosen words. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Christmas season.

On Dec. 2, for example, the long, symbol-rich, Mexican winter ritual begins when the people carry a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe from one house to another so she can "spend a night with the Virgin's resting place." Beds are moved outside and the kitchen table pushed to the wall to become an altar filled with lighted candles and fragrant flowers. Even the tattered walls are decorated in Guadalupe blue with intricate paper streamers.

Each night, elderly men and women, who stumble in the darkness, adults, teens, little children and babes in arms escort the Virgin to another house. With candles blazing, they march along the unpaved paths singing songs of praise for Mary and of protest against their poverty and oppression.

The poor live these rituals with little comment and only when they reflect on them in their base communities is their meaning dear. Mary is one of them, poor, oppressed and outraged at the injustice that marked her life and today marks theirs. She is a comforter and a companion who understands what it is to carry water on her shoulders, to worry about children's food, to watch helplessly as babies die. She does more than merely comfort them, however. She struggles with them against these injustices and her Magnificat has become their special prayer.

Jesus, too, is poor. This they know for they were present at his birth, celebrated his arrival in the streets of their barrios and rejoiced that the kingdom of God has at last begun. They kissed his statue but it was he they touched and his presence was as real to them as that of any other child.

These are insights stored away for the year to come, to protect them from despair when babies die and husbands are forced to immigrate, when water is cut off and food is in short supply, when the poor are tortured and murdered by police and some bishops lash out against their base communities.