December 3, 2023

The Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan Advent 1B

“Our Lady of Guadalupe, An Advent Saint”

Restore us, o God of hosts. Show us the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.

On a cold winter’s day in Mexico in 1531, the Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego and asked him to build a church in her honor. Everything about this situation was preposterous, not to say impossible. Juan Diego was a poor indigenous man, a peasant really, and of all the things that astonished him about the encounter, perhaps the most astonishing was that the Mother of God spoke to him in his own native language. Nahuatl was not a language used by the church, nor by the great and powerful. This was, after all, only a decade after the armies of Spain had succeeded in taking his country by force, and indigenous people, people like him, were devastated. They had no leverage against the ways their once- proud culture and language were now being dismantled, de-legitimized, and destroyed.

Perhaps the other most remarkable thing about the way the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego was that she was brown, again like him. She did not look like the invaders, the conquerors. She looked like one of his people, could have been a cousin or a sister even, except that she was clothed with the sun, as dazzling as any queen, as radiant as any angel in heaven. And she wanted him, a poor man, to do her a favor. What could this mean?

If you know the story of our Lady of Guadalupe, you know what happened next. You know that Juan Diego did his best to obey her outrageous request, that he build her a church on the hilltop where he walked. You know that the powers that be, the rich and arrogant forces of the church hierarchy, did not believe him and demanded proof. You know that his uncle’s illness got in his way and shamed him into trying to avoid seeing the great lady again. And you know that she continued to appear to him, meeting him even in his fear and shame, and continued not only to ask for his assistance but to call him by name, “Juanito,” little Juan, and to reassure him, to comfort and encourage him.

And when all his efforts seemed to be failing, Our Lady stepped in as perhaps only a mother can. She cured his uncle and gave Juan Diego a sign that even the Archbishop of Mexico could not ignore. She placed miraculous, out-of-season flowers on a hilltop for him to gather in his cloak and give to the archbishop as a sign. When he opened his cloak and the flowers fell out, what remained emblazoned on the humble fabric was an indelible image of Mary herself, clothed like an Aztec princess with the sun’s rays pouring out from behind her, her hands positioned in a gesture of offering.

In her own quietly resplendent way, the humble virgin had reconquered the land for her people, restoring their faith and fulfilling the prophecy she had proclaimed in the days before the birth of her son.

Her appearance to Juan Diego and all that followed demonstrated that it was still possible for God to show the strength of his arm and scatter the proud in their conceit.

It was still possible for God to cast down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly.

It was still possible for God to fill the hungry with good things and to send the rich empty away.

All it took was a pregnant, unmarried, brown-skinned girl and her friend, an impoverished, oppressed man named Juan Diego.

There is no getting around the fact that the land we call the Americas has suffered through as much violent colonization and rampant extractivism as any place on earth. We must never forget that indigenous peoples here and around the globe have been the victims of greed, racism, and exploitation. And yet, we must also remember that domination and conquest are not the whole story.

Indigenous peoples continue to live, to thrive, and to reclaim their voices, their stories, and their ways of knowing and being in the world. And if they have one undisputed champion in the church, a church that has its own history of injustice and violence, that champion is Our Lady of Guadalupe. After all, she didn’t just love and care for them, but through Juan Diego she asked for their help, acknowledging the myriad gifts they brought into the world. I believe this story is a perfect parable for Advent, as we prepare for the coming of Christ in his most humble appearance, as a newborn child.

In the collect for the first Sunday of Advent, we ask for God’s grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. At the time that Jesus first came to earth, the powers of darkness were doing their best to extinguish the light of peace, hope, faith, and joy. The same was true in 1531 and it is true still today. Our world is engulfed in wars and rumors of war, in disasters brought about by climate change and the greed and selfishness that lies behind it, and in global economic disparities greater than in any prior period of history.

And yet, we still believe that there is an armor of light available to us and a cloak of justice much like the cloak that Juan Diego wore all those centuries ago—an ordinary thing that became a miracle. We know that when God chooses to reveal Godself, or to send an intercessor and mediator like Our Lady of Guadalupe, it is almost always to the poorest and least powerful among us. And if that is where God chooses to show up, it is where the church and all Christians must show up as well.

Advent is a time for us to mend any patches that have appeared in that cloak over the past year, and to polish our armor of light until it shines forth for all the world to see. It is a time to welcome the light back in, seeking it out like a lost treasure, and to be awake to all the signs that God is still with us, still among us, still present wherever and whenever we are most in need.

In the Advent prayers and readings we will share over these next few weeks, there is a sense of longing as well as hope and expectation. Many of us long for times past, for traditions and people no longer with us. We long for the innocence and tenderness that is represented to us in the Christ child, whose coming we await with eager anticipation. And we long for Christ to come again, in power and great glory, because we know that there are many things in this world that are not as they are meant to be. Not yet. As writer and priest Julia Gatta says, “When our dreams coincide with God’s, when we are dissatisfied with present violence, when we can imagine the shape of justice, we live in an Advent spirit, no matter the time of year.” May these next few weeks be an advent of hope, of longing, and of renewed faith for all God’s people.

Restore us, o God of hosts. Show us the light of your countenance and we shall be saved. Amen.