La Salle church hosts Mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe

A Mass on Thursday at St. Hyacinth Church in La Salle 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.

The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe was celebrated Dec. 12.

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.