Happy Feast Day Of Our Lady Of Guadalupe!

[geetarplayer]

Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of my favorite incarnations of Mary, because she isn't the white-as-snow caucasian Mary that everybody's used to. Today literally thousands of Mexican people are walking barefoot, backwards, and crawling on their hands and knees towards the Bascillica of Our Lady of Guadalupe! Now that's devotion.

-Mark

[foundsheep]

Happy feast day to you! :ph34r:

[littleflower+JMJ]

HAPPY FEAST DAY OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE!!

VIVA MARIA!!!

O, VIRGEN DE GUADALUPE....RUEGA POR NOSOTROS!!

[littleflower+JMJ]

bump

im soo excited!!

we're all going to the cathedral tonite for the big celebration and mass.

its going to be soo beautiful! the procession around town and then mass!!

i remember since very little going and adoring and bringing roses to Our Lady!! :wub:

:wub: :wub: :wub: and we bought some very pretty roses today for Her!!

[littleflower+JMJ]

Remember, O Immaculate Virgin, the words you spoke to Juan Diego,

"I am a merciful Mother to you and to all people who love me and trust in me and invoke my help. I listen to their lamentations and solace all their sorrows and their sufferings."

I beg you to be a merciful Mother to me, because I sincerely love you and trust in you and invoke your help.

~O Virgen de Guadalupe, PRAY FOR US!!!

[VeraMaria]

wow, flowery, that sounds so amesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

awwww, how i wish i could be there!!!

please pray for us!!

Guadalupe, pray for us!!!

[Seven77]

Happy Feast day everybody!!!!

yo geetarplayer, i love Our Lady of Guadalupe too....one thing though---it is not an 'incarnation' of Mary. She appears like the people She appears to. Incarnation is the term used for God becoming man, God taking on human flesh.

--

What i love about Our Blessed Mother under Her title Our Lady of Guadalupe is:

that She bears Jesus in Her womb!

while the Reformation was going on in Europe and many fell, across the ocean in the New World, 8 million were brought into the fold!

this is Her face... vera icon, true image not made by human hands----i mean this is what the Mother of God looks like! She left Her children a real picture of Herself! WOW! and in 'Rosarium Virginis Mariae' the Pope points out the face of Jesus in a real way belongs to Mother Mary! Her features are His features!

the tenderness and the love on Her face everytime i see Her fills me with hope and i can almost hear Her words:

"Listen, my son, to what I tell you now: do not be troubled nor disturbed by anything; do not fear illness nor any other distressing occurrence, nor pain. Am I not your mother? Am I not life and health? Have I not placed you on my lap and made you my responsibility? Do you need anything else?"

that She always appears to the humble, the little ones who in the eyes of the world are nothing.

that She is the Woman of Revelation 12

the symbols on Her image (http://www.ewtn.com/jp99/image.htm)

like in the song----She is so amazing to me!

check out

www.sancta.org

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mystical Rose, pray for us!

In Jesus and Mary, Peace!

[geetarplayer]

Thanks for clearing that up, Seven :)

[Ellenita]

Well, I don't know if she is the patron saint of travellers, but I visited the Basilica when I was in Mexico and while there bought a little card with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on one side and a prayer on the other. Then 9/11 happened and I had to fly home a couple of days after that - I was very thankful to God for a safe journey as you can imagine. Since then, I've carried the card when I travel on public transport and I know there is no logical reason, and probably no Biblical reference for it either, but somehow I always feel safer!

Incidently, I only recently realised how miraculous the real image is!

From Catholicism for Dummies:

'To this day, science can't explain how that image got onto the tilma. It's not painted, dyed, sewn, printed, sealed, or the product of any man made process, nor is it a natural phenomenon'

Now that's miraculous! :D

[VeraMaria]

Well, I don't know if she is the patron saint of travellers, but I visited the Basilica when I was in Mexico and while there bought a little card with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on one side and a prayer on the other. Then 9/11 happened and I had to fly home a couple of days after that - I was very thankful to God for a safe journey as you can imagine. Since then,  I've carried the card when I travel on public transport and I know there is no logical reason, and probably no Biblical reference for it either, but somehow I always feel safer!

Incidently, I only recently realised how miraculous the real image is!

From Catholicism for Dummies:

'To this day, science can't explain how that image got onto the tilma. It's not painted, dyed, sewn, printed, sealed, or the product of any man made process, nor is it a natural phenomenon'

Now that's miraculous!  :D

:D

did you know that they did a study and the eyes reflect the image of a short man kneeling before her?? the image's eyes!! and scientists are baffled because they can see it works like a human eye works, perfect reflection!

i'll try to dig up the link for ya! :D

[cmotherofpirl]

Our Lady: Not Just for Catholics

Latinos' long-revered Virgen de Guadalupe, whose feast day is today, now occupies a place in other denominations.

Our Lady: Not Just for Catholics

By William Lobdell and Jennifer Mena, Times Staff Writers

In some Catholic parishes it's a bigger day than Christmas or Easter: the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Beginning well before dawn, worshipers today will gather to celebrate the brown-skinned mother of Jesus who, legend says, appeared before a poor Mexican peasant in 1531.

But the celebration isn't just for Catholics anymore. Increasingly, the pregnant Virgen de Guadalupe is turning up in other Latino-dominated churches as a way to make worshipers feel at home while honoring the mother of Christ and champion of the downtrodden.

Any church wanting to attract Latinos "that doesn't take into account how deeply that message [of Our Lady of Guadalupe] is rooted in the Latino identity … is pretty well doomed," said Father Francisco Schulte, a scholar at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn.

The trend is particularly noticeable at Episcopal and Lutheran churches, whose liturgical traditions are closest to Catholicism. Parishioners at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in National City, south of San Diego, will gather this evening to sing and bring roses for Our Lady of Guadalupe. During the service, eight children will have their first communion. "Mexicans identify with her because she looks like them," said the Rev. Patricia Andrews-Callori, rector of the parish. "She's been a consolidating force for Mexicans."

In Berkeley, theology students and faculty at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, a major West Coast seminary for Episcopalians, honored her Thursday evening with a service that mixed Catholic readings into the standard liturgy.

"The students have decided to do [a liturgy with] Our Lady of Guadalupe," said the Rev. Lizette Larson-Miller, dean of the school's chapel, adding that the class consists mostly of white and Asian American students. "They jumped wholeheartedly into it. They want to bring this to their parishes" after they are ordained.

In San Clemente on Sunday, St. Clement's by the Sea Episcopal Church will have mariachis as part of its morning service devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Afterward, parishioners will parade through a nearby park for a picnic of tamales, enchiladas and homemade regional specialties of Mexico.

"Some people don't understand it because these things are Catholic," said Margarita Farias, a 33-year-old parishioner and mother of two who lives in San Clemente. "But I felt that [the Virgin of Guadalupe] is the mother of us all. I feel we can have her, celebrate her and be a part of this church too."

Our Lady of Guadalupe's appearance in non-Catholic services has scholars and others wondering whether the beloved apparition that has united Mexicans for nearly five centuries can bring together Christian denominations.

"If we can come together through her, then thanks be to God," said hot stuff Soto, auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. "It makes a lot of sense that the mother in a dysfunctional family keeps everyone together."

Many scholars doubt the Virgin Mary's appearance in the hills just outside present-day Mexico City, or even the existence of Juan Diego, the Aztec whose rough cloak is said to have miraculously carried the imprinted image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

But the hope given to oppressed Mexicans by the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe was real. Spanish missionaries spread the story of her apparition — and her Indian features — to convert Mexico's indigenous tribes from their devotion to the Aztec mother-goddess, Tonantzin, to the Virgin Mary.

Today, there's a saying that 90% of Mexicans are Catholic but 100% are guadalupano. So to connect with Latino congregants, especially Mexicans who've strayed from the Catholic Church, Protestant leaders find themselves grappling with what to do with her.

Traditionally, Latino Protestants, especially conservative evangelical pastors, have barred Our Lady of Guadalupe from their churches. Since its early years, the Catholic Church has had a special devotion to Mary and the saints, putting up statues of them in churches and praying to them as intermediaries of God. With the Reformation, Protestants drastically reduced their status, believing that any prayer to Mary or the saints was a sign of idolatry.

Arelis Torres recalls celebrating the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe in her native Dominican Republic. But now, as one among the 700 who attend services at Iglesia de Dios (Church of God) Pentecostal in Santa Ana, she has abandoned the tradition.

"You begin to understand the word of God, which is the Bible, and that does not include this sort of celebration," Torres said. "We recognize Mary as the mother of Christ, but we do not give any honor. We do not believe in saints, just God."

Some Protestants are reconsidering whether the banishment of Our Lady of Guadalupe has been too harsh — if there's a way to celebrate her work without seeing her as an intermediary to God.

"Even the original reformers of the church still honored Mary as a model of faith and a unifier," said Jesse Miranda, president of the evangelical group AMEN, believed to be the nation's largest Protestant Latino organization. He argues that Protestant churches have gone too far in downplaying the significance of Mary.

In a book about the spreading influence of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Maxwell E. Johnson, a Lutheran minister and Notre Dame professor, points to Lutheran churches in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Texas that honor the Brown Virgin. In his book, the pastor of a church in Carpentersville, Ill., writes about her parish's celebration: "The feast of Guadalupe is one of the ways in which we … express both our 'catholic' heritage and our Hispanic culture."

Since 1997, a Lutheran liturgical planning book has suggested ways to celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12.

Bishop Soto said he has some concern that Protestant churches could use the icon only as a kind of advertising to attract Latino congregants. In past years, storefront churches have lured Latinos into worship with Our Lady of Guadalupe, only to denounce the image as idolatrous.

"[They say it] needs to be removed not only from their churches but from their lives," said Father Schulte, the Minnesota scholar.

Soto said Our Lady of Guadalupe is available to everyone. "It would be wrong for the institutional church to assume that we control this like a trademark," he said. "I hope as other Christian churches learn to understand the evocative power of Our Lady, they too will learn that you do not use her; she uses you."

Edited December 13, 2003 by cmotherofpirl

[cmotherofpirl]

The Mystery in Our Lady's eyes

"Bearded man" image in the right eye.

According to many scientists who have inspected the image we can see reflected in her eyes, in both of them and in the precise location as reflected by a live human eye, many figures that have been extensively analyzed and seem to correspond to the shape and size of human figures located in front of the image.

In 1929, Alfonso Marcue, who was the official photographer of the old Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, found what seemed to be a clear image of a bearded man reflected in the right eye of the Virgin. Initially he did not believe what was before his eyes. How could it be? A bearded man inside of the eyes of the Virgin?. After many inspections of many of his black and white photographs he had no doubts and decided to inform the authorities of the Basilica. He was told that time to keep complete silence about the discovery, which he did.

More than 20 years later, on May 29, 1951, Jose Carlos Salinas Chavez, examining a good photograph of the face, rediscovers the image of what clearly appears to be a bearded man reflected in the right eye of the Virgin, and locates it on the left eye too.

"Bearded man".

Since then, many people had the opportunity to inspect closely the eyes of the Virgin on the tilma, including more than 20 physicians, ophthalmologists.

The first one, on March 27, 1956, was Dr. Javier Torroella Bueno, MDS, a prestigious ophthalmologist. In what is the first report on the eyes of the image issued by a physician, he certifies the presence of the triple reflection (Samson-Purkinje effect) characteristic of all live human eyes and states that the resulting images are located exactly where they are supossed to be according to such effect, and also that the distortion of the images agree with the curvature of the cornea.

The same year another ophthalmologist, Dr. Rafael Torrija Lavoignet, examined the eyes of the image with an ophthalmoscope in great detail. He observed the apparent human figure in the corneas of both eyes, with the location and distortion of a normal human eye and specially noted a unique appearance of the eyes: they look strangely "alive" when examined.

Many other examinations by ophthalmologists have been done of the eyes of the image on the tilma after these first ones. With more or less details all agree with the conclusions of the ones mentioned above.

According to Dr. Tonsmann, from left to right we can see "the Indian", "bishop Zumarraga", the "translator", "Juan Diego showing the tilma" and below "the family".

But a new and fascinating kind of analysis of the eyes started in 1979, when Dr. Jose Aste Tonsmann, Ph D, graduated from Cornell University, while working in IBM scanned at very high resolutions a very good photograph, taken from the original, of the face on the tilma. After filtering and processing the digitized images of the eyes to eliminate "noise" and enhance them, he made some astonishing discoveries: not only the "human bust" was clearly present in both eyes, but another human figures were seen as reflected in the eyes too!

Dr. Aste Tonsmann published his last studies on the eyes on the tilma in the book "El Secreto de sus Ojos", with complete details and photographs of his work . Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of the studies is his conclusion that Our Lady of Guadalupe not only left us her miraculous image as proof of her apparition but some important messages too. These messages were hidden in the eyes on the image until our times, when new technologies would allow them to be discovered, when they are most necessary.

That would be the case with the image of a family in the center of the Virgin's eye, in times when families are under serious attack in our modern world. The image of various human figures that seem to constitute a family, including various children and a baby carried in the woman's back as used in the 16th century, appears in the center of the pupil, as shown in this great image of the right eye highlighting the family, generously provided by Dr. Tonsmann.

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[cmotherofpirl]

http://www.guad.org/

[Ash Wednesday]

I just got back from an authentic mexican dinner at our parish.

:banana:

[cmotherofpirl]

I just got back from an authentic mexican dinner at our parish.

So what did you eat?