Our Lady of Guadalupe

December belongs to Our Lady of Guadalupe. In December of 1531 the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian on a hill outside of Mexico City. Spanish conquistadors had vanquished the Aztec empire, and soon all of Mesoamerica would become a Spanish colony. In the midst of this maelstrom of change, Catholic clergy struggled to convince the native population that God the Father and his Son were love, since the only face of Christianity and the Church up to that point had been male, aggressive, and militaristic. When Mary appeared to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, God revealed a side of himself that rejected the violence of the conquest and colonization of Mexico by exposing the motherhood of Christ and his Church. According to popular tradition, the Guadalupe event became a key moment in the birth of a society with one foot in the old and new world.