Une Minute avec Marie
Faire connaître et aimer Marie
On the morning of November 14, 1921, just outside of Mexico City, a young man by the name of Luciano Perez Carpio entered one of the most important and sacred churches in the world bearing a bouquet of flowers. This was the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the shrine on Tepeyac Hill to which millions of Mexican faithful had flocked since the sixteenth century to see the country’s greatest miracle—when the Mother of God had appeared to a poor farmer named Juan Diego and emblazoned on his coarse poncho her image—cloaked in turquoise, bathed in fire. Despite being made of feeble cactus fibers, the very tilma Juan Diego had worn remained as luminous as ever centuries after it should have decayed to nothing. And there the picture of Our Lady stood in front of Luciano. He placed the flowers several feet before the image, genuflected, and walked away.
And then the bouquet exploded.
A blast interrupted the morning with deafening, savage power. Around the image, windows burst, vases crumbled, and the church’s marble altar was completely destroyed. A large bronze cross nearby was bent 20 degrees. Buildings hundreds of yards away had their glass windows shatter. Then, as the clouds of dust slowly dissipated, and the air in the basilica began to thin out, all eyes turned toward the treasure of Mexico with horrible anticipation and terror.[...]
But the image of La Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, moments after the bouquet of dynamite had exploded underneath, was as pure and unscathed as the Blessed Virgin herself. The glass casing in which the tilma hung was perfectly intact. And no one in the church was harmed. To this day, there is no scientific explanation for its preservation.
That day, she stood there with the same peaceful expression she always had, a look of love so enduring and fiery it could melt a stone. La Virgen stood there that cold November morning, full of grace, defiant of death, and looked at her children as if to say,
Am I not here?
Ricky McRoskey