Our first full day in Mexico City. We got up to be down
to breakfast in the dining room for 06:30, to be at the bus by 08:00. Anne and
I had breakfast with Arsenio and Gemma, another spread of a variety of foods,
both familiar and unfamiliar. I had fried cactus leaf for the first and only
time in my life. I also had a “tamale” that was unexpectedly filled with a sort
of white cheese; it was not really to my liking either, and there was never a
“real” tamale on the buffet. In fact, there was little if any of what we
Americans consider “Mexican” food (of course, really “Tex-Mex”). But there were plenty of good things to eat, including abundant desserts. We did not go
hungry. Some veterans of cruises likened it almost to the experience there.
In any case, once everyone assembled at the bus, we set
off. I haven’t yet mentioned our other Mexican guide, Pablo, because I do not
specifically remember him from the first afternoon and evening. He may well
have been there; I just do not remember and cannot find him in any of the
pictures I have (which includes some shared by other pilgrims in a common
Dropbox folder). Just as was Roberto, Pablo was perfectly suited to his role –
knowledgeable, eager to help, with a hilarious sense of humor that made him our
“resident comedian.” We grew very fond of both of them very quickly. We also
first met our driver, Mario, at that time. He spoke no English that we could
tell, and we did not really get to know him but he grew to be a familiar face
to us.
Along the way to our first destination we began the
spiritual exercises that would consistently open and close our days’
excursions, praying the Angelus and
Morning and Evening Prayer (in the abbreviated forms that appear along with the
day’s Mass in the current issue of Magnificat,
provided to us each as part of our package from 206 Tours). Most days we also
prayed the Rosary.
If Roberto mentioned the most tragic event to happen on
this site in recent memory, the Tlatelolco Massacre of 1968 [LINK] as part of
the Mexican government’s brutal suppression of political opposition on the eve
of the 1968 Summer Olympics, I do not remember it. There was so much to take
in, and at times the “Whispers” radio units by means of which the guides
communicated with us did not work that well (especially before I switched out
the cheap earbud they provided with my own higher-quality pair).
We walked around the plaza and the church for perhaps an
hour before getting back on the bus and continuing on to our first visit to the
central destination of our pilgrimage, the great Shrine of Our Lady of
Guadalupe. Along the way, I believe, Taylor began the teaching that was an
integral part of this pilgrimage, giving us a historical time-line of the
events in and surrounding December 1531. I did not specifically take notes nor
did I record his or any other presentations, which I now regret. In my
smartphone I had the capability, and I’d cleared out plenty of memory for
pictures,[1]
video, and audio, if only I’d thought
of the latter.[2]
But in this case it is a well-known story that I will attempt to summarize
briefly (actually based on today's and tomorrow's talks, combined):
As he had done on a recent “webinar” I logged into back
around the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (12 December), Taylor began at the
very beginning, with the small statue of the Blessed Virgin allegedly carved
from life by St. Luke the Evangelist before the year 50, a statue which
ultimately (through several intermediaries) made its way to Spain about the
year 600 – only a century or so before the Muslim conquest between 711 and 719.
At that time, the statue was hidden away and vanished from history … until ca.
1300, when, during the period of the Spanish Reconquista (ca. 1000-1492), a humble cowherd named Gil Cordero
claimed to have been led to the site along the Guadalupe River in Extremadura
by an apparition of the Virgin and ordered to have priests dig. When they did
so, they found the statue, and built a shrine around it which became the focus
of a great royal monastery [LINK].
It so happens that many of the conquistadores
of the 16th century, including Hernan Cortes, were from Extremadura
and had a great devotion to this earlier “Our Lady of Guadalupe”; Christopher
Columbus had earlier received the commission of Ferdinand and Isabel at that
monastery before setting out in his three ships, the Santa Maria, the Nina,
and the Pinta (which may be
rearranged as “pinta nina Santa Maria”
or “the little painted lady holy Mary”), and subsequently made pilgrimage there
to offer thanks to God for a safe voyage.
The Spanish conquest of the central part of the great New
World which Columbus unwittingly discovered understandably left bitter feelings
on the part of the native American Indians. When Hernan Cortes encountered the
Aztecs in 1519, he found a local empire across central Mexico that was built
upon brutality and human sacrifice on a scale the Spaniards could not
comprehend and could only attribute to the devil himself, and which drove the
Spaniards’ brutal efforts to rid the earth of the darkness. Compounded with the
diseases that the so-called “Columbian Exchange” brought – by which the Indians
were far more devastated by the Europeans – the Aztec Empire collapsed almost
overnight. But the survivors were not very receptive to efforts by the first
Franciscan missionaries accompanying Cortes, nor those of their successors, to
convert them to Christianity. Only a handful had converted in the first dozen
years after the conquest.
Among those who did were a fifty-odd-year-old nondescript
Indian named Cuauhtlatoatzin, baptized Juan Diego; his wife, baptized Maria
Lucia; as well as his aged uncle who was baptized Juan Bernardino. Maria Lucia
had died a couple of years before her husband would become one of the most
important individuals in early Spanish American history.
On Saturday 09 December 1531, Juan Diego was traveling
afoot the ten or so miles from his home southward toward Tlatelolco for his
customary religious instruction. Passing Tepeyac Hill just before entering the five-mile
causeway from the northern shore of the great lake to the island-city of
Tenochtitlan, Juan Diego heard the sound of beautiful birdsong. Climbing the
hill, he encountered a young maiden who identified herself as the Ever-virgin
Mother of God and requested that the Bishop erect a chapel in her honor on that
spot. Continuing onward to his destination, Juan Diego requested and ultimately
received a brief meeting with Fray Juan Zumarraga, who was skeptical and
requested that Juan Diego return in a day or so. The next day (Sunday 10 December),
encountering the Virgin again, Juan Diego reported his failure but was told
that he must be the one to carry the request to the Bishop. Having had time to
reflect on the tale he’d heard, the Bishop was less skeptical, but requested a
sign which Juan Diego immediately requested of the Virgin. She consented to
give him such a sign on the morrow.
But by Monday morning, 11 December, uncle Juan Bernardino
was ill, compelling Juan Diego to care for him through the day and night as his
condition worsened to the point that death was imminent. Early on Tuesday the
12th, Juan Diego set out to bring a priest to administer the Last
Rites. He tried to avoid the Virgin and the delay it would entail by taking a
different route around Tepeyac – but she intercepted him and asked where he was
bound. Juan Diego explained and received her mild rebuke for having doubted
her: “¿No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?”
– “Am I not here who am your mother?”
She assured him that his uncle was well, and directed him to go to the top of Tepeyac hill and gather the flowers he would find there – on its bare summit near mid-winter where nothing normally grew except a few cacti and shrubs. Juan Diego did indeed find an abundance of roses, which he gathered into his open tilma, a sort of poncho woven of maguey cactus fiber, two ends tied around his neck, the others gathered in each hand to make a sort of sack. The Virgin arranged the flowers in the tilma and told him to present them to the Bishop. Eventually gaining entrance to the prelate despite the efforts of minor clerics who considered the Indian’s tale a fraud, Juan Diego let drop the ends of the tilma so that the roses poured onto the floor leaving the image of the Virgin herself. The Bishop and his aides immediately venerated it.
She assured him that his uncle was well, and directed him to go to the top of Tepeyac hill and gather the flowers he would find there – on its bare summit near mid-winter where nothing normally grew except a few cacti and shrubs. Juan Diego did indeed find an abundance of roses, which he gathered into his open tilma, a sort of poncho woven of maguey cactus fiber, two ends tied around his neck, the others gathered in each hand to make a sort of sack. The Virgin arranged the flowers in the tilma and told him to present them to the Bishop. Eventually gaining entrance to the prelate despite the efforts of minor clerics who considered the Indian’s tale a fraud, Juan Diego let drop the ends of the tilma so that the roses poured onto the floor leaving the image of the Virgin herself. The Bishop and his aides immediately venerated it.
Returning to his uncle the next day, escorted in honor by
the Bishop’s men, Juan Diego found Juan Bernardino cured, just as the Virgin
had said, in fact at the very instant she had said it, when she had appeared to
the uncle even as she spoke with the nephew. She had, moreover, told Juan
Bernardino that she wished to be known as the Lady of Guadalupe – a name that
would resonate with the Spanish.
And so began a miraculously quick reconciliation of the
two hostile peoples, conquered and conqueror, with the conversion of nine
million Aztecs to Catholicism within seven years – less than a generation after
a comparable number of northern Europeans had separated themselves from Holy
Mother Church in the early years of the Protestant Reformation. The tilma became the unofficial banner
uniting the new Mexican people that would evolve from the merging of the
Spanish and Aztec. The tilma itself,
in addition to its origin, exhibits a host of characteristics beyond human
explanation. It has endured for almost 500 years, when comparable maguey-fiber cloth typically
disintegrates after only a decade or so – and has survived at least two
incidents that should have destroyed it outright, an accidental acid-spill in
the 18th century and a deliberate attempt to obliterate it by means
of a bomb during the Mexican government’s persecution of the Church in the
1920s. Maguey-fiber is the most
unsuitable material imaginable for painting, and there is no evidence of brush
strokes or pigments of any kind … the image just is. It remains as bright and vibrant as ever, and exhibits several
characteristics in common with a living human body, including a constant
temperature equivalent to that of a living person, 98.6ºF, no matter what the
ambient temperoature, pupils that seem to dilate and contract in reaction to
light, within which can be seen, under high magnification, what seems to be a
snapshot of the instant Juan Diego revealed the image.
Of all the reported apparitions of the Blessed Virgin
Mary through history, this one is unique, Taylor concluded. It is a continuing apparition; Our Lady remains
present for each of us to see with our own eyes.
 |
| From Sacred Destinations [LINK] |
 |
| Map posted at Guadalupe |
It was constructed in the 1970s, which tells you all you need to know.
Absolutely, diametrically in contrast to the beautiful churches that we saw
otherwise, including the nearby Old Basilica. But it houses the tilma behind the altar. Masses are said
there constantly, every hour on the hour. We walked around the outer periphery,
then made our way from the side below the altar where a bank of parallel
people-movers allow the people to view the tilma
from fairly close below. 
Then, once Fr. Juan Diego had vested himself,
we made our way up a winding flight of stairs to a mezzanine level around the body of
the Basilica where a number of chapels all face toward the high altar. We heard Mass in Chapel 8, all facing the tilma, including the celebrants ad orientem.[3] As for his order, and indeed in Mexico and Latin America in general, 05 February is a the Feast of St. Philip de Jesus, a native Mexican martyred as a missionary in Japan in the 17th century as part of the "companions" commemorated in the wider Church on 06 February as "St. Paul Miki and Companions," Fr. Juan Diego's homily was on martyrdom -- "in odium fidei" as the Japanese martyrs versus martyrdom "in odium veritatis" as was St. John the Baptist, whose death was the subject of the Gospel reading. Again, Fr. Peter concelebrated, and Taylor Marshall read; notably, his nine-year-old son Jude, one of two of his and Joy's eight children accompanying them, served at the altar for his very first time. (Their other child with them was their four-month-old daughter Margaret; the other kids were at home with grandparents but will accompany them to Italy in the summer.) After Mass, a short period of further picture-taking included a few group shots
around the altar.
Then it was hurry-hurry-hurry, very reminiscent of Rome
in 2014 – such is the life of a pilgrim. So much to see and do in a
limited amount of time. We exited the Basilica, then worked our way around
between the base of Tepeyac hill and the back of the Old Basilica, into the
little Templo del Pocito where once
flowed a spring, then a well which is now dry, on around to the site of Juan
Diego’s latter-day home once the first chapel requested by the Virgin was built
within two weeks of her appearance in December 1531. The chapel that exists
there now, the Antigua Parroquia de
Indios, was unfortunately closed, I believe for preparations for Pope
Francis’ imminent visit (within days of our own departure). Since the museum
behind the Old Basilica will not be open on Monday when we return to Guadalupe
for a more extended visit, we opted to put off lunch and go through it for a
rushed half-hour visit. No pictures were allowed, and frankly it’s all a blur
to me now, except for the constant direction of docents “this way” up – up – up
flight after flight of stairs.
Altitude
started bothering me at that time. I had not really felt it yet, but the fact
is that Mexico City is located at about 7300-ft. elevation and the air is
thinner than our own 100-ft. at home in Natchitoches. I looked it up – each
breath takes in only about 75% of the oxygen as compared to sea-level. Luckily,
only that first full day did it really ever bother me significantly, but for that day it did so increasingly
especially given our next excursion.
Assembling
back by the statue of Pope St. John Paul the Great between the two Basilicas,
we went back to our bus and headed out toward San Juan Teotihuacan, about an
hour and a half northwest of the city – far enough to actually get outside the
city. Along the way, Roberto expounded on the differences between the pre-Aztec
people who built the pyramids we would see there – amazingly, only discovered a
little more than a century ago – and the Aztecs themselves. He insisted they
worshipped “good gods” who did not demand human sacrifice. That's not my understanding, but who am I to say?Before we went to the pyramids themselves, we had lunch and a show – another excellent buffet with a mariachi band as well as a man and woman dressed up in neo-Aztec garb greeting, playing instruments (drums), and dancing. It was a very interesting experience. I had a beer.
Then it was off to the site of the pyramids. In consideration of the sun, Roberto had passed out a “surprise” gift from 206 Tours – sombreros for the ladies, straw cowboy hats for the men. I hardly ever wore mine. It just is not me.
Although it had been my intention from the beginning I
ultimately could not make the climb up the Pyramid of the Sun. It was just too
high – both absolute altitude above sea level as well as relative above
ground-level – too steep, with steps too large, and preceded by an even
steeper drop-off that, as I told Anne, “I don’t even want to climb down this, much less up that.” 
I’m too old, too fat, and a heart patient to boot, already having
shortness of breath that day from mild altitude sickness. That latter got
better by a couple of days into the trip, but I don’t think the other factors,
both personal and inherent in the climb, would have let me make the climb – nor
do I think Anne would have let me. Many others of our group did go to the top,
including Joy Marshall with baby Margaret strapped to her chest – how many
other people will ever be able to say they were atop the Pyramid of the Sun
when they were four months old? Fr. Juan Diego heard a number of confessions,
from what I hear, and later remarked that at one pronouncement of the words of
absolution a goth-looking girl within earshot gave him a look of sheer hatred
that reminded him that there are indeed those who hate God, His Church, and His
ministers. Anne and I opted to walk the length of the Avenue of the Dead (part
of the way with an Australian named Neil who had come the furthest to join this
pilgrimage) to the slightly smaller Pyramid of the Moon – which I did attempt
to scale at least up to the lower level. 
About half-way up I decided I really
didn’t need to do even that, a conviction that was reinforced only moments
later when I witnessed this young buck bounding up the steps slip – and if he’d been going down there
could have been a tragedy. As it was, he just went down on all fours, got his
balance, and continued on his way. I gingerly made my way back down to terra firma. But Anne and I both climbed
atop a platform at the center of the plaza facing the Pyramid of the Moon, where
I overheard a conversation about a cool phenomenon I was able to duplicate. If
you stand at the very center of that platform and give a loud, solid CLAP, echoes will resound off the
surrounding pyramid and smaller temples. How many from our group did that, huh?
We made our way back to the bus – through gauntlet of
vendors hawking geegaws – and made a short trip to a souvenir shop where a lady
demonstrated the various products that can be derived from the agave cactus
that the Aztecs called maguey –
besides the rough cloth from which the tilma
was made, and even a ready-made needle-and-thread from the spines which connect
directly to lengths of the fiber, those products include a mildly alcoholic
drink called pulque as well as a more
potent form of tequila (yes, there
were samples). I’m sure there were more – it seems Roberto mentioned shampoo,
but anything beyond that escapes me. We did some souvenir shopping there, then
set out back to the hotel. Along the way, we prayed Evening Prayer and a
Rosary.
Back at the hotel, Anne and I had supper with Fr. Juan
Diego and a lady named Pat. We consciously tried to vary our table partners as much
as possible. These, indeed all of the pilgrims proved to be very nice.
Frankly, everyone on this pilgrimage were nice. Sure, some irritated us a bit
at first, but we grew fond of them; others we grew more irritated at due to
little personality quirks or mannerisms; but overall we quickly formed a group
bond that made it hard to leave them all
in the end. As I would tell Anne on the way back, we knew none of them before
last Thursday, but by Tuesday evening I was missing them all.
After supper, Anne and I replenished our supply of
bottled water across the street, then retired to our room and vegged. Every
night I downloaded the day’s pictures from my phone to my computer and thence
to an external hard drive, and made some kind of notes regarding the day’s
activities. The latter was a good thing, because very quickly everything
started blurring together.
+ + +
More Pictures from the Day
More Pictures from the Day
[1] Although I ended up being somewhat disappointed by my Moto X
smartphone camera this trip. It performed flawlessly a year and a half ago in
Italy, but for some reason this time it would go through periods when the
pictures would come out blurry or with strange auras or lens flare. It was
quite frustrating. I think something
may have been fogging the lens for some reason. I never determined what, but I
did eventually find that if I periodically cleaned the lens gently with my
shirt sleeve it would better ... until it didn't. There also seemed to be a lot more
high-contrast shots this trip, which the camera did not handle very well.
Luckily, Anne was taking pictures most of the time as well, and as mentioned
above a common Dropbox folder has been established that other pilgrims are
uploading their shots into that I am then able to download.
[2] I did, however, use the audio recorder to take summary notes at the
end of almost every day which have been extremely helpful – even if the
exhaustion that kept me from making written notes also made those audio notes
rather frustrating to listen to given numerous pauses, “ums” and “ers,” and the
like.
[3] An amusing incident from our second Mass in the Basilica, on
Monday: The native sacristan setting up the altar insisted on doing so ad populum, despite Taylor’s insistence
otherwise. But as soon as the sacristan left, Taylor turned it around as it
should be and in accordance with our priests’ preferences.
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