The devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico has its origin in the beginnings of its evangelization, when the believers were still very few. Our Lady appeared in those early years to a peasant Indian, Juan Diego, and sent him to the Bishop of the place to express the desire to have a temple dedicated to her on a nearby hill, called Tepeyac. The Virgin told him in the first apparition: "In this sanctuary I will give to the people all my personal love, my compassionate look, my help, my salvation: because I, in truth, am your compassionate Mother, yours and of all men? There I will listen to their weeping, their sadness, to remedy, to cure all their different sorrows, their miseries, their pains "1.
The Bishop of the place, before granting this request, asked for a sign. And Juan Diego, by order of the Lady of Heaven, went to cut a bouquet of roses, in the month of December, on the arid hill, more than two thousand meters above sea level. Having found, to his surprise, the roses, he took them to the Bishop. Juan Diego stretched out his white tilma, in the hollow of which he had placed the flowers. And when they fell to the ground "suddenly appeared the Beloved Image of the Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the form and figure that is now found. "2 That image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was imprinted on the Indian's rustic tilma, woven with vegetable fibers. It represents the Virgin as a young woman with a dark face, surrounded by a radiant light.
Mary said to Juan Diego, and she repeats it to all Christians: "Am I not here, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow? Are you not perchance in my lap? Why should we fear, if she is the Mother of Jesus and Mother of mankind?
With the apparition of Mary on the hill of Tepeyac, an exceptional movement of conversions began throughout the ancient Aztec territory, which spread to all of Central and South America and reached as far as the distant archipelago of the Philippines. "Our Lady of Guadalupe remains even today the great sign of Christ's closeness, inviting all men to enter into communion with Him, in order to have access to the Father. At the same time, Mary is the voice that invites people to communion with one another... "3. Our Lady has always been ahead in the evangelization of peoples. The apostolate cannot be understood without Mary. For this reason, when the Pope, the Vicar of Christ on earth, asks the faithful to re-Christianize Europe and the world, we turn to her to "indicate to the Church the best paths to follow in order to carry out a new evangelization, we implore her for the grace to serve this sublime cause with a renewed missionary spirit. We beseech her to point out to us the way to bring our friends closer to God and that she herself prepare their souls to receive the grace.
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