QUEEN
OF ROSES – MARY, THE EARTH’S SACRED CLOAK
No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre? Am I not here, I who am your mother? – San
Juan Diego of Guadulupe
Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
A
young woman appeared in the sixteenth century to Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill.
As
the story is told she was radiant with light and he was overcome by awe and
fear. She asked the Aztec man to return
to his bishop and to tell him that she asks for a chapel to be built in the
place that she appeared. She also told
him to climb to the top of the hill and pick of the roses that is growing there
and to bring them back to her. This was
in the middle of December in the heart of winter!! It would surely be
impossible for roses to be flowering on the top of the hill? He however did find roses growing on the top
of the hill, picked them and brought them back to her.
She arranged the roses inside his cloak made of rough fibre. He took these roses to the bishop hoping to prove to him the miracle of the Lady and Her roses that magically appeared in the middle of winter. When he opened the cloak, the roses spilled out at the bishop’s feet and an image of the woman herself covered the inside of the garment. An even greater miracle than the roses themselves!
A basilica was built for her on the spot where she appeared and the same image that appeared on the inside of his cloak, is still hanging in the church. Not only does this image still hang in the church, but the cloak that Juan Diego wore, made of rough cactus fibre, is still intact and also still on display.
The Lady of Guadalupe’s cloak is dark like the night sky and covered in stars. Her robe is a rose colour, similar to a new dawn, and as in all the apparitions of Our Lady, her robe is in the style worn by pregnant mothers. Our Lady of Guadalupe, standing on the moon, upheld by the angels of creation, surrounded by the radiant rays of the sun emanating from her, is once again ‘the woman clothed in the sun’ Rev. 7:12. She is the Cosmic Mary Herself cloaked in the constellations and matter of Earth.
Without the earthly cloak of the Cosmos she would be invisible as each one of us would be invisible. And she was not the only one wearing a cloak. Juan Diego also wore a cloak made of the plants of the Earth and this cloak is also miraculously still intact and part of the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The cloaks of earthly matter demonstrate that Juan Diego’s existence is related to the manifestation of the Cosmic Mary. Both are made of star dust and earthly soil and green plants. She tells us that there is no separation between spirit and matter and that the one cannot exist without the other.
blessings
Hettienne
