The Right Man for the Job
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - December 7, 2007
God has always called unlikely candidates to great missions. Abraham was too old to be a dad and David and Jeremiah too young to be heroes. Moses and St. Paul both had speech impediments and were guilty of other's blood. Peter was a sinful fisherman and Matthew a hated tax collector. Gideon was the least of his family and his family was the least in his tribe. The list goes on. None of the prophets or apostles had the paper qualifications for the tasks for which the Lord called them, but the Lord chose them anyway, because it was through them that his own divine power could shine most clearly. As we pray in the Preface for Martyrs, the Lord repeatedly chooses the weak and makes them strong in bearing witness to him.
On Sunday, we celebrate one of the most lovable examples of this divine pattern, St. Juan Diego.
When the Blessed Mother appeared to him on Tepeyac Hill on December 9, 1531, he was a simple, humble, 57 year-widower known for walking with his head down and shuffling his feet. He had been baptized only seven years before by the Franciscan missionaries who had arrived in Mexico with Cortés in 1521 and was a fervent believer. Every Saturday and Sunday he would walk 15 miles each way to Mass. As he was journeying one cold Saturday morning, he heard a voice calling from the top of a hill, "Juanito," "Dieguito," "Come here!" He scaled the rocky slope, where at the top he saw the Blessed Virgin Mary arrayed in splendor.
Our Lady announced she was on a mission of mercy and wanted him to be her emissary to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga of Mexico City to have him build a church on Tepeyac Hill. Obeying simply and immediately, he headed in his simple peasant's outfit to the episcopal residence, where he was forced to wait for hours in an outdoor courtyard. Eventually the bishop received him, treated him with kindness, but basically, despite Juan Diego's obvious sincerity, as a little deluded. Juan Diego left feeling like a complete failure.
Returning at once to Our Lady on Tepeyac Hill, he said that he had struck out. "I beg you, Noble Lady," he implored, "to entrust this message to someone of importance, someone well-known and respected, so that your wish will be accomplished. For I am only a lowly peasant and you, my Lady, have sent me to a place where I have no standing. Forgive me if I have disappointed you for having failed in my mission."
The Virgin smiled tenderly on him and said, "Listen to me, my dearest son, and understand that I have many servants and messengers whom I could charge with the delivery of my message. But it is altogether necessary that you should be the one to undertake this mission and that it be through your mediation and assistance that my wish should be accomplished. I urge you to go to the Bishop again tomorrow. Tell him in my name and make him fully understand my disposition, that he should undertake the erection of the teocalli (temple) for which I ask. And repeat to him that it is I in person, the ever Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, who send you."
With trepidation, Juan Diego went again. He feared what the bishop's overprotective servants might do to him. They greeted him with ill-concealed exasperation. He was told the bishop was busy with more important matters. He told them he was willing to wait — and did, for several hours in the frigid outdoor courtyard. When he finally met the bishop again, he repeated, with fervor and tears, the message of Our Lady entrusted to him. The bishop asked some questions. Though moved by Juan Diego's sincerity, he wasn't going to build a church in a desolate spot on the basis of one native's unsubstantiated word. To test the message, the bishop asked him for a special secret sign from Our Lady. Juan Diego left at once to ask for the sign.
Arriving back at Tepeyac, the Virgin told him to return the following day to receive the sign to bring the bishop. That sign turned out to be Castillian roses, which had not yet been introduced to Mexico, growing on the top of a stony hill in frigid December temperatures. Juan Diego was instructed to bring them back to the bishop in his tilma, or outer parka. When he returned to the bishop, as he opened up his tilma, the bishop saw the roses from his native Castille, the sign he was seeking. He and everyone else also saw something even more miraculous: some of the roses had melted into the tilma and produced the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe: our Lady, dressed like a pregnant Aztec princess, was giving witness that she was ready to give birth to Christ among the Mexican people.
Until that moment, there had been relatively few conversions among the Mexican people, who associated Christianity more with the conquistadors than the Franciscans. But in the decade after the appearance of the Blessed Mother as one of them, over ten million Mexicans were baptized.
Juan Diego thought there were others who would have been more fitting emissaries to bring such an important message from so important a person, but the Blessed Mother chose him and she helped him fulfill the mission. She will also help each of us fulfill ours in her Son's plan of salvation.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
