December 12 Our Lady of Guadalupe

Thommy and John

Good morning
I love you

It’s 12/15/07, 1327 and I’m typing in the middle of snow and sleet, crinkling sounds of precipitation. Fool that I am, I went to Mass this morning. No snow falling yet – a winter storm watch for today was announced two days ago. After Mass, it was a spritz of snow coming down. I had on my list of things to do – go by hospital, do rounds, pick up computer and materials to work with [planning on snuggling with work all afternoon and night. I did that. When I came out, it was still a spritz of snow and no accumulation on our parking lot. So, go back to my place or make a run to the barnes and nobles and pick up waiting gifts – about a ten minute drive from hospital to there, all main roads. Sure why not? What could change so much in oh say thirty or forty minutes? See, fool that I am…. I got to the B& N and there was no snow accumulated on their parking lot either. I bounded in, picked up times, got to the check out counter and had a clerical snafu about the pick up but the manager fixed that. The snow was falling faster, thicker, - I saw through the window at the check out. I went and got a venti white mocha. Got the car started and the snow off the windshield. There was snow on the parking lot. Here I am with a mustang and not bad but not new tires; well, maybe a bit more worn than not new! See, a fool!.... I got to the side street exit ok, recognizing the slickness under me. And seeing the incline to the main road, not or than twenty five yards, smushed down snow. I got maybe two car lengths into the right turn onto the incline and the back end went left, the front end went right and I did a threesixty bumped the rear left wheel into the curb and bumper car-ed back into the B&N parking lot. I then tried to skid my way across that long incline to the exit that came strainght out onto the main road. up one leg to the exit lane intersection thank God no cars coming from any direction because in first gear I gunned my way up the incline toward the shoot to the main road, which was, by the way, bumper to bumper traffic moving slowly but moving steadily. If I stopped at the top of the incline no telling where I’d end up. I gunned onto the shoulder and was given a space to move into the traffic by a drive who must have known me to be an idiot! Having out of state plates I’m sure elicited a smidgen of forgiveness: maybe; not that I deserved any. I made it to the main road and a left onto the hwy, which was well salted and black top at that intersection. All downhill for the next two miles. I was optimistic. For maybe three minutes; probably it was only one. When I got to the next light, the only black top was in the track lanes the cars were leaving. And it was down hill, fortunately a straight down hill. In lowest gear, leaving lots of space, maybe five car lengths, between me and the car in front, holding speed at twenty mph, cars going by on the left lane at maybe thirty mph. one slip of the rear to the left for maybe five or gosh ten seconds, I lost my breathing and my heart stopped, with a mantra of please God help please please. The car straightened itself out – my guardian angel? Thomas? Or any of the Williams? Probably Joseph? It was not me. The car made it to the bottom of the hill without slipping again, without changing lanes. I was three miles from my place, a half mile from the hospital; and run out of confidence in me or the car to make any progress. So, I pulled into the shopping center parking lot and called for a cab. That was 1030. I’ve read the Times, drunk the venti, finished the puzzles in the local paper, verified on the hour that I’m still on the cab company’s call list – yes, getting closer, we’ll get to you. I’ll get back to the place, even if I have to take the bus – which is scheduled hourly by here – I’d have taken that if I didn’t have any of the stuff I want to take home to work with. As long as they feed me the line that I’m on their list and they will be coming to get me, I’ll wait on the cab to bring all this stuff back. Cards to write. Presents to wrap. I had such a great plan for the day. And was such a fool. ….
I am a bad weather fool.

There was the trip from Tuscaloosa to NYC to Eugene – the morning in Boise. I woke up at the usual time, having traveled steadily for a week. My body was already going 65 mph. It was rain and sleet outside. I had a comet then. The morning traffic was in full swing. I just had to glide onto the interstate and head northwest. And the weather man, the drive time guy, kept repeating that the weather was going to break mid morning, be well above 32 – maybe even forty; a heat wave near Christmas in Boise. If you don’t have to be out, stay in. Fool that I was, I headed out. Made it out of town just a-ok! Got maybe twenty plus miles out of town and was cruising along in the left lane of the interstate, the clearest lane, the steadily moving lane. And oops, oh shit, oh my God, the rear end went left and the front end veered right and I went with the skid, almost [well who knows how close to almost really?] regained control and went into the interstate median at a 45 degree angle to the highway. Sloshed the grass an came to a muddy thud stop. The front right wheel was bent so I was going nowhere fast, or slow…. So, maybe another kind guardian angel move – a tow truck was coming along behind me, saw the not so swift driving acrobatics, and pulled up on the left shoulder and offered to help. A lanky guy. Warmly dressed in tow truck attire. Long hair [I’m wanting to say a beard too but I doubt it.]. He took my car and me to his gas station mechanic shop just off the next exit – an exit that seemed to be in the middle of no where [guardian angel with a sense of humor and no subtlety in the lesson to be taught – and obviously not yet learned.]. The rod that holds the wheel on was bent and needed replacement; a part he did not have in stock – his garage looked as much like his barn as his garage; not much stock in this Mr. Fixit Mechanic’s barn. Being Friday [maybe Saturday] with Christmas on Monday, he’d be able to get the part and have me on my way on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. He must have seen the forlornness on my face! Well, let me try to straighten it out for you – it may take a while but it’s worth the try. … he tried. We spent the day together – no one else stopped there for gas or for garage services. He was a rancher who leased 25,000 acres of government grazing land about a day’s horseback ride from the nearest road. No way could I get my mind around that! Nor could he picture a one hundred story building. This Irish Catholic boy from NYC meets Jack of All Trades, cattle rancher, all around saintly guy in somewhere Idaho, NW of Boise. I was off to my next stop, when I got tired again, by about four pm. ….

It’s 1434, I just got into my place from the cab, a short four miles from where my car will wait out the snow and sleet and return to snow and more tonight…. Through noon tomorrow. It’s about a two mile walk to church in the morning. Maybe another cab ride? The cab driver gave me a great suggestion – put a couple of one hundred pound sacks of salt over the rear tires. Of course! That’s what Dad did when we lived in Maine – he probably did it in Albany and Buffalo too, but I remember Maine. I am a forgetful fool, too!

One reason God gives you two parents is so you can learn many more what nots to do! You have the foibles of two people to show you what to avoid if you can. My list is so long you are missing so much to learn, I am sorry for your loss – and mine; and all the Nolans; because you are prevented from being son and grandson and nephew and cousin and all the greats and seconds before those roles…. That’s why Monica gives me so much hope….



Our Lady of Guadalupe
December 12
Patron of the Americas

Our Lady. So many Our Ladies “of”! Stay with “Our Lady”. Mary. Our devotion to Mary, Moira, Brigid, the Mary of the Gaels. Mary’s place in our lives – blocked from yours? Taken from yours? Absent from yours? I pray not! A Statue of Mary? The Rosary? Celebrating her holy days of obligation with Holy Mother Church? [Mary as Mother; Church as Mother. Mary to teach you what the ideal for Mother is. And, thus, the ideal for Spouse first then Mother. And, as Jesus’ Mother, Our Mother, too. But, I digress  ] references to Our Lady, to JesusMaryJoseph routinely? Our Lady a part of our lives now, then, for always.

How is Our Lady a part of our lives? That’s why we have these feasts, one reason why. To educate us about how Mary has been part of our lives already and how we bring her into today. To us. To make her Ours. And, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patron of the Americas, this Our Lady is of particular import to us, more integral to us, more personal to us, much closer to us.

Reflect upon Our Lady of Guadalupe. Learn a lesson about faith. Learn a lesson of understanding. Put yourself, do the gestalt thing, in the place of Juan Diego; the local priest; the bishop; his family and community. Put yourself in the hands of Our Lady.

Since Juan Diego was a regular of our Saints of the Day prayers; and because Juan Diego was highlighted by our Dominican sisters; and with your celebrating through grammar school at least the feasts of Guadalupe and Juan Diego, you, I pray, remember the story…. As I read a couple of google referred sights, I learned a couple of facts I don’t think I knew before.

In Mesoamerica, in 1521, the Spanish capture the capital city of the Aztec empire. In less than twenty years, 9 million, who had centuries of adherence to their polytheistic and human sacrificing religion, were converted to Catholicism. Sowhathappened? How did this historically unprecedented conversion happen?


1474. thee hundred and thirty three years ago toadyish, Quauhtlatoatzin was born in Cuautitlan – maybe twenty miles of today’s Mexico city.

1475. Juan de Zumarraga was born in Spain

Irvin Shaw has written several books that start at time A, e.g., 1531, in a remote place, e.g. Cuautitlan, Mexico, wherein two people converge their uniquely different lives, e.g., Quauhtlatoatzin and Juan de Zumarraga, into some miraculous collaboration or eternal conflict. And then the novel meanders back to their beginnings and how the day before, maybe the month before, the two men met, no one, no how, would have, could have predicted their trajectories merging even for a moment. These two men whom God brought together on our behalf, under the auspices of Our Lady, could not have imagined their meeting, never mind the miracles their coming together would produce for us….

1492. Columbus landed in ‘San Salvador’.

1519. Herman Cortez arrived in Mexico and two years later he takes the Aztecs’ capital city, Tenochitlan for himself; well, for Spain.

1524. The first twelve Franciscans arrive in Mexico City. [12, a magic number for us?]. Some might say that the Franciscans came as Catholic/Christian Conquistadors for the faith. They came under the protection of and with the power of Cortez’s army. As fervent to capture souls and Cortez was eager to acquire treasure. And, if the Franciscans did their job successfully, the good Christian peasants and defeated warriors would know their proper place subservient to their new Spanish masters – newly masters of their land, their treasure, their people, and, to squelch any resistance, also masters of their souls.

The Franciscans converted maybe a few hundred native Mexicans [that’d be Indians] in the first dozen or two years they were here. [As Our Lady of Guadalupe is the Patron of the Americas, then there in Mexico is also here for us anywhere in the Americas, yes?] It might have something to do with having been enslaved by the Spanish, good Catholic conquerors that they were. Maybe it was their pride of civilization, their collective unconscious, their righteous grounding in their own religion – no reason to abandon the gods of our fathers and grandfathers and greatgrandfathers back to the beginning of time. A civilization and religion that predated the Spaniards…. Not only did very few convert, Christianity was distinctly unpopular among the Indians.

1525. Quauhtlatoatzin is baptized by a Franciscan missionary; given the Christian name Juan Diego, John of God, a bit redundant given the meaning of John. [What do the marketing people call those who are first to try something new? Quauhtlatoatzin was apparently one of these. We don’t have much on the conversion story of this Indian; a story noteworthy in its absence – a story that I am sure would be inspirational to each of us.

1528. Friar Juan de Zumarraga arrived in the New World

1529. Quauhtlatoatzin’s, now aka Juan Diego’s, wife dies. He’s fifty five when his wife dies. In the sixteenth century, 55 is pretty old. I was only forty five when I learned that I didn’t have a wife. Being wifeless isn’t the end of the world but it is detrimental to one’s equilibrium when he thought he’d been married for a dozen years. It was and always will be [increasingly] detrimental to the lives of our children. Annulment is not the death of a spouse but has comparable consequences, especially for the children – probably worse effects. For all involved. Family and community rally around for the widower and his family; not so for the effluence of annulment and [necessarily in this country in our church] divorce. To learn a bit about the family and culture of Juan Diego, especially for a rare converted Catholic. I don’t remember his having children of his own but it makes sense to assume he did have adult children by the time he was an elderly 55 [at a time when 40 was old! And there was a time I thought forty was old. Notsomuchanymore!] ….


1531. The miracles of Our Lady of Guadalupe….
Saturday, December 9, 1531. Juan Diego crossed Tepeyac, a barren hill, to attend Mass. Sudden blinding light, heavenly music, and the appearance of a beautiful dark skinned woman calling him ‘my son’ said she was the Virgin Mary. She spoke to him in his native Nahuati [duh. How else was he to understand anything she might say to him?] Mary told Juan Diego that she wanted a church built on Tepeyac and told him to pass on the message to Bishop Juan de Zumarraga. [ok, if you were told to bring an apparitional message to Bishop Peter Jugis, how would you go about it? Imagine some peasant farmer or illegal immigrant getting an audience with a bishop – though today, such a person might have a better shot at it than you or I. Certainly infinitely more likely than Juan Diego’s getting in to see the bishop.

But, Juan Diego got an audience with the Bishop. And the bishop’s response? Like Thomas?!. Incredulous. He demanded his own personal proof.

Juan Diego, defeated – how could the Bishop believe him, a poor Indian, even if he were Catholic? – and afraid – what would the vision do to him? Were it really the Virgin Mother? Juan Diego avoided Tepeyac.

December 12, 1531, Juan Diego traversed Tepeyac again – hurrying to get help for a sick uncle. The Virgin re-appeared to him on the hill. Juan Diego explained the bishop’s demands – as if Mary, the Mother of God, wouldn’t have known? Our Lady told Juan Diego to pick roses from the hillside – in winter, from a barren hillside – and bring them to de Zumarraga.

The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe is turning into the saga of Juan Diego and the part even more reluctantly played by Bishop de Zumarraga. Juan Diego delivers the roses to the Bishop. Miracle enough, you think? Well, Our Lady goes over the top and leaves an image of herself on Juan Diego’s cloak.

[This cloak has been carefully preserved. And skeptically and extensively analyzed. It is doubtful that the pigment could have been produced in 1531, or even today. Rendering the design then or now is also unlikely. And, ohbytheway, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe remains uncorrupted to this day! So there! Go figure! Faith and reason; both boggle the mind, not to mention the soul of faith.]

What was Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Our Lady, doing on Tepeyac? How coincidental is it that this hill, the site of the Aztec temple of Tonatzin, the earth goddess, protector of humanity? A temple that Bishop Juan de Zumarraga had ordered destroyed? The site upon which he had built the church, now basilica, to Mary, Virgin Mother of us all. The good Franciscan taking something for Francis Xavier’s playbook?


“Let not your heart be disturbed. Do not fear that sickness, nor any other sickness or anguish. Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything." (Words said by of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego)


From 1519 to 1521, the Spanish conquered the Aztec powers and destroyed their religion – a religion of warfare and human sacrifice on a wholesale scale. In 1487, during the four day dedication of a new temple in Tenochtitlan, 80,000 men, women, and children were sacrificed. The Aztecs could no longer feed their sun god; but the world did not end. In the midst of constant sacrifice, how did the goddess Tonatzin actually protect her people? By 1531, the Aztec religion had been effectively suppressed. Christianity replaced it. And with that, the Christian icons replaced the Aztec gods? Oh ye of wavering and skeptical faith! 

Why, by the way, did Our Lady asked to be known here as ‘of Guadalupe’, a Spanish city? Not her usual modus operandi – she usually comes to be known by a title and then ‘of the city where she appeared.’ What’s this story about? Maybe, just maybe, something was lost in translation from Nahuati to Spanish. Maybe she said “coatlaxopeuh”, pronounced ‘quatlasupe’ which sounds like the Spanish word Guadalupe. The Nahuati word means ‘the one who crushes out snakes.’ Not an inconsequential reference to the Aztecs. The snake was the mighty symbol of their power and religion; the power to whom the people were sacrificed.

Maybe it is really not coincidental. Maybe, likely?, Mary and God decided to step into our time and place, knowing full well what they were doing, how they were trying to help the conversion of the Aztecs, the stopping of the human sacrifices, the resilience of the newly converted faithful.

In 1999, Pope John Paul II entrusted the cause of protecting the innocent lives of children, especially those in danger of not being born. Woven into the collective unconscious of the Indians, the Mexicans, the Aztec sacrificial religion and the protectress Tonatzin. JPII touches that centuries old strain and seeks to replace it fully with Our Lady of Guadalupe on the hill at Tepeyac as Patron of the Americas, especially the innocent.


I love you
dad