February 05, 2025
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St. Michael in Streator celebrates Guadalupe to packed house; ‘It’s a big, big celebration'

Hours-long worship, a procession and communal dining among the festivities

By Tom Collins
A procession works around St Michael’s School with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe following Mass on Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, at St Michael the Archangel Church, Streator. The image carried by the ushers appeared on a peasant's garment (still preserved in Mexico City) and its symbolic message set off mass conversions to Christianity in Mexico and the Americas.

A procession works around St. Michael the Archangel School with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe following Mass on Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, at the St. Michael parish church, Streator. The image carried by the ushers appeared on a peasant's garment (still preserved in Mexico City) and its symbolic message set off Mass conversions to Christianity in Mexico and the Americas. ( Tom Sistak For Shaw Media )

Drummers pounded the skins and into St. Michael the Archangel Parish poured members of Danza Chichimeca wearing Aztec costumes and headdresses. The Streator church exploded Sunday in music and native dance.

“The closest equivalent for non-Hispanic Americans is Thanksgiving.”

—  the Rev. Monsignor Philip Halfacre, pastor of Streator Catholic church

But this performance was not for entertainment but rather to accompany a sacred liturgy. Sunday commemorated the evangelization of the Americas, begun in 1531 A.D. when a peasant near modern-day Mexico City witnessed a miracle that transformed the western hemisphere.

Though the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe falls on Dec. 12, the Streator parish juggled the calendar to celebrate an elaborate feast on Sunday to accommodate an hours-long of worship, a procession and communal dining.

“This is a religious celebration, a national celebration and a cultural celebration all coming together at once,” said the Rev. Monsignor Philip Halfacre, pastor of the Streator parishes. “The closest equivalent for non-Hispanic Americans is Thanksgiving.”

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A member of Danza Chichimeca, of St Mary’s Parish in Bloomington, performs a ceremonial dance inside St. Michael’s Church, Streator, following Mass on Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The dancers were brought in to celebrate Mexican culture in tandem with the Guadalupe celebration, which commemorates the mass conversion of indigenous peoples to Christianity in the 16th century.

A member of Danza Chichimeca, of St Mary’s Parish in Bloomington, performs a ceremonial dance Sunday, Dec. 8, 2024, inside St. Michael parsih church, Streator, following Mass celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The dancers were brought in to celebrate Mexican culture in tandem with the Guadalupe celebration, which commemorates the mass conversion of indigenous peoples to Christianity in the 16th century. ( Tom Sistak For Shaw Media )

This year’s festivities drew a packed house – it was standing-room only in the vestibule at St. Michael – and reflected months of planning. Halfacre said the celebration has grown both in participation but also in complexity, as organizers brought in musicians and Danza Chichimeca, a dance group affiliated with St. Mary Parish in Bloomington.

“It’s a big, big celebration,” said Fabiola Garcia.

Garcia and her family were asked to present the gifts before the Liturgy of the Eucharist, so Garcia dressed children Joselyn, Evelyn, Jaelynn in native dress to observe the occasion.

Parishioner Jenny Torres estimated three months of planning went into Sunday’s liturgy, procession and feast, though the overall effort is merely a byproduct of the growth in Streator’s Spanish-language community.

“Our Spanish Mass has grown this past year, definitely,” Torres said.

Celebrating the Mass was the Rev. Ignaco Cardenas Moran, a native of Jalisco, Mexico, estimated that participation jumped from 250 last year to more than 300 this year. While he enjoys the music and dance as much as any of his parishioners, he emphasized the celebration is an act of veneration and thanksgiving.

“Everything that we do, every action we take during this celebration is a way of showing our faith and our love to our Our Lady of Guadalupe,” Cardenas said.

The feast commemorates a 16th century apparition of the Virgin Mary that obliterated pagan worship in Mexico in little more than a decade and soon spread to the Americas as a whole.

In 1531, St. Juan Diego observed a reported an apparition to secular and ecclesiastical authorities, none of whom at first believed him.

Diego won over his skeptics when he presented authorities with non-native flowers and an image on his outer garment (or tilma) showing a woman much like the one described in Revelation 12:1, “A woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet.”

Ecclesiastical authorities understood the biblical significance of the image and believed Juan Diego had seen an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The indigenous peoples didn’t know Scripture but grasped the symbolism of the tilma and soon embraced Christianity.

While the apparitions are a matter of faith – though the centuries-old tilma has been preserved and remains on display in Mexico City – the rapid conversion of the indigenous peoples is a matter of record. Historians estimate 3,000 baptisms were performed daily until some 8 million indigenous people became Christian.

Our Lady of Guadalupe remains a holy day of obligation in Mexico and is piously observed in Spanish-speaking parishes across Illinois.

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