Our Lady of Guadalupe

Today's Feast day is my favorite of the Marian Feast Day's.  Our lady of Guadalupe is the Patroness of the America's both the North and the South.  She is also the Patroness of the unborn.  My mother in-law was privileged enough to see the actual tilma and she was just amazed at the reverence the Mexican people had toward the tilma.
Mary's appearance to Juan Diego as one of his people is a powerful reminder that Mary and the God who sent her accept all peoples.  In the context of the sometimes rude and cruel treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards, the apparition was a rebuke to the Spaniards and an event of vast significance for Native Americans.  While a number of them had converted before this incident, they now came in droves.  According to a contemporary chronicler, nine million Indians became Catholic in a very short time.  In these days when we hear so much about God's preferential option for the poor, Our Lady of Guadalupe cries out to us that God's love for and identification with the poor is an age-old truth that stems from the gospel itself.
In class we are going to have chips and salsa while watching a video of Juan Diego.