The single most important event in the western hemisphere

Recently, a friend of mine shared that his young daughter’s intentions for her daily Rosary were that “Flowers would be more beautiful, and the rainbow have one more color.” Like the prayers of all children, this one is particularly perceptive.

The Church has long held that Our Lady can be identified under the poetic image of Enclosed Garden. It’s a picture of both her motherhood and the way that God protects her purity. She is the purest lily of the field and, through her motherhood, all of creation is coming under the fruitful cultivation of Our Lord. This is why, when Our Lady appears, she often trails flowers in her wake. For instance, this is the case when she announces her Immaculate Conception at Lourdes, and it’s also the case when she announces her motherhood of all the Americas at Guadalupe.

In 1531 in December, just outside of Mexico City, St. Juan Diego first meets Our Lady. As the sun is rising, he’s near a hill called Tepeyac. As he passes by, he hears the sound of joyous, delicate songbirds, an unusual event. It’s so beautiful that it seems miraculous, and he asks, “Am I worthy of what I hear? Perhaps I am only dreaming it?” He wonders if he has wandered into a mythical land of flowers and corn that his people often talk about, and as he stands happily with the birds singing and the sun rising over the hill, the song becomes dangerously personal. It begins to call him by name.

He follows the voice and finds at the top of the hill a maiden. Her dress shines like the sun and the rock on which she is standing sends forth beams of light. Perhaps, that day, a new color was added to the rainbow, because her splendor is indescribable. The best that St. Juan can do is say the ground sparkles like the rays of a prism in mist. The mesquite bushes, the cactus, and other scrubby plants look like emeralds, their foliage like turquoise, and their stems, thorns, and leaves shining like gold. St. Juan bows low and Our Lady speaks. She sends him on a mission to the bishop. She wants a chapel built at that spot to adore her son Jesus.

As any of us might be, he’s overwhelmed and tries to decline, claiming he’s only a humble farmer, but the Virgin insists that it must be him personally.

His first visit to the bishop is a failure, so the next time he passes the hill, he avoids it. He doesn’t want to see the Virgin again and disappoint her, but she finds him anyway and insists he see the bishop again. This time, she provides him with a miraculous sign, evidence that the Mother of God herself wants this chapel built. She tells St. Juan, “Climb, smallest of my sons, to the top of the little hill where you saw me and where I gave you my commands. There you will see many flowers; cut them, pick them, gather them together.” He gathers the blossoms into the fold of his garment and takes them to the bishop. When he allows them to fall to the floor, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is revealed on his tilma.

Over the next ten years, Our Lady brings the entirety of Mexico into the Church. Tens of millions are baptized, so many that the priests are wearing out with the labor of a thousand baptisms a day. Our history books miss this entirely, but this is the single most important event in the western hemisphere.

There are actually two miraculous signs given to St. Juan Diego. We think first of the image, but the flowers are also a miracle. Flowers growing in the desert, in the middle of winter. Flowers blooming where they ought not to have been.

The Prophet Isaiah proclaims:

The desert and the parched land will exult;
the steppe will rejoice and bloom.
They will bloom with abundant flowers,
and rejoice with joyful song.

Over 1,000 different flowers are named in Our Lady’s honor. In a world made barren by sin, one which we wander in a desert exile, Our Lady is paradise. She is the Enclosed Garden.

Her flowers bloom before us when we least expect. One moment the field is dandelions and weedy clover. We walk in prose and a haze of menial concerns. What to make for dinner, how to pay the next bill, who will win the big game, how to get through the end of the semester or the work-year and survive until the holidays, the new year when maybe our luck will finally turn around.

Living where I do, in early December the sky is likely to be grayed over and the temperature frigid. Commuting to work on dark, sluggish mornings, I join the line of other cars, and we all hum past electrified fast-food signs, queue up at red lights, hurry to the next very-important-thing, swept away in the madness of the crowd, the derangement of our age.

The Advent darkness starts to get to me. But then, like a vision of heaven, some new and unknown flower pushes up through the gravelly median. The poet R.S. Thomas puts it this way; “I have seen the sun break through/ to illuminate a small field/ for a while, and gone my way/ and forgotten it. But that was the/ pearl of great price, the one field that had/ treasure in it.”

This garden in which we currently find ourselves is far from immaculate. It is, in fact, something of a withering, wintery wilderness. But Christ is here, and his Mother. He is sowing seeds, seeds like pearls that he’s wildly throwing all over the place. We are those seeds. Climb the hill. Take the lesser path. Find the earth. Bury yourself. Make your sacrifice.

The Hortus Conclusus, the Song of Songs calls her; “A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up.” I cannot help but think of Eden, marked as it was by four rivers flowing from the center into a cruciform, and Our Mother at the foot of the Cross while water flowed from the side of her Son.

The Cross is the tree of life. It’s at the center of a cosmic enclosure, a walled garden, a sacred monastic womb. We are held within the love of our Mother, whose only goal is to deliver us to redemption. What is virginal (in her) or barren (in us) blossoms and grows and stretches its face to Heaven where God’s flowers are more beautiful, rainbows more colorful, and each and every one of us gathered into a bouquet for Our Lady.

Read more:Mother Seton’s surprising painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Read more:How long will the miraculous image of Guadalupe be with us?