Guadalupe's Day 2024.

This day is the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico. With the help of the Augustinian Recollect Tomás Ortega (Ciudad Madera, Chihuahua, 1984) we get into the skin of a Mexican to find out what and how the people who venerate her as their patron saint experience it.

It may seem like a cliché for a Mexican to talk about the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and in a certain way it is: this date is a special moment for millions of Mexicans, and although it is not lived with the same intensity by everyone—in Mexico this day is only a religious precept without being a civil holiday—it never goes unnoticed or ignored by anyone.

From childhood, the love for the Virgin of Guadalupe is taught and learned. Being a Guadalupan is almost equivalent to being Mexican. Mexico is a country where veneration of national symbols (the flag, the anthem and the coat of arms) is instilled from the beginning of school.

Likewise, the Virgin of Guadalupe becomes one of those symbols that give identity: in fact, the insurgents’ flag was the banner of the Virgin, and the national colors come from her image. In a well-known song that everyone in Mexico will sing or hear today, it says:

— “Since then, for the Mexican, being a Guadalupan is something essential.”

And it’s not a lie… Being a Guadalupan can be synonymous with being Mexican. I remember the years of children’s catechism; we made a pilgrimage twice during the novena from the chapel in my neighborhood to the sanctuary; on the 11th, at night, we participated in the vigil and in the Mañanitas; and, the next day, in the great pilgrimage and the mass. Some years with snow or almost always with temperatures below zero, you couldn’t miss that day in the visit to the Virgin.

As the years go by, the practice is somewhat abandoned, but not the devotion. Thousands of experiences of any kind can be linked to devotion to La Lupita. There is no house in which there is not an image of her, nor a person who does not know the famous song of La Guadalupana, nor a sanctuary where there is not an offering in her name.

Among the experiences that have most caught my attention in the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, I would like to recall three.

First experience. The evangelical and… Guadalupan community

In a community near my town, whose patron saint was the Virgin of Guadalupe, a miracle occurred; it was made up of about 30 evangelical families and five Catholic ones, but that day no one was missing from the Catholic church; the usual twenty faithful grew to more than a hundred.

When the priest asked some of them if they came from a neighboring community, one of them, who was the evangelical pastor, replied that they were from there, that they were evangelicals, but that they had always believed in the Virgin of Guadalupe and that day they were going to her feast.

It is said that about 80% of Mexicans declare themselves Catholic, but almost 100% declare themselves Guadalupans.

Second experience. At the Basilica

Another of my experiences was going to the Basilica of Guadalupe on the day of the feast. It is estimated that between December 11 and 12 more than seven million people visit the basilica.

One year, together with another colleague, we wanted to do the experience. It is moving to see the number of simple and humble people who that day fill the sanctuary with flowers and candles, with their images behind them, people paying oaths walking barefoot or walking on their knees to the door, people crying and singing…

Thousands of people, like an anthill, enter and leave throughout the Villa. A human tide that goes to visit the little house of their little brown girl, their little mother… Many go to ask her, others to thank her, others to greet her and many others to fulfill the promises they have made to her.

A couple of seconds on the electric band under the image can change a person’s life. In this ordered chaos, one perceives a reciprocal love, that of the children for their mother, and that of her for all those who visit her.

Third experience. The life of a priest on the Guadalupe’s day

The third is rather a collection of various small experiences in the years of pastoral service as a priest: I have celebrated the Virgin of Guadalupe in hospitals, factories, schools, courtyards of houses, taxi stops, luxury restaurants, neighborhoods, prisons, in the open field, in wooden chapels or beautiful sanctuaries…

In all these places there is a common denominator: the desire to celebrate the little mother of heaven. The Virgin of Guadalupe has the power to convert even the most skeptical; I once heard a friar very involved in evangelization say that in order to open houses, buildings and neighborhoods, the Virgin of Guadalupe had to go first, she is the one who opens the doors, even for those who have distanced themselves.

I even celebrated the Virgin of Guadalupe in Rome (Italy) for several years, both at the Mexican School and at St. Peter’s Basilica. Of the two, I preferred the one at the Mexican School: in Spanish, with the same songs I sang as a child, through the streets of Rome carrying a candle in my hands, praying the Rosary and singing along with priests, religious and lay people from Mexico, Latin America and all over the world the love and affection that is felt for the little brown girl from Tepeyac.

Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!