La Salle celebrates Our Lady of Guadalupe: ‘It’s going to be a big day’

Arnie and Laura Sanchez learned their daughter was struggling in medical school and asked for a little heavenly aid. Help Sabrina with her studies, they prayed, and we’ll make a pilgrimage to Guadalupe.

To the Mexico City shrine they went and their daughter became Dr. Sabrina Sanchez. The Sanchez family still is grateful for her success and now Dec. 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, sits atop the can’t-miss days to give thanks.

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Esmeralda Cruz lights candles Monday, Dec. 12, 2022, at the Lady of Guadalupe shrine before services at St. Hyacinth Church in La Salle. (Scott Anderson)

Monday, the Sanchez family and other Mexican-Americans flocked to St. Hyacinth Church in La Salle for a celebration that doubles as religious service and a celebration of Mexican culture and heritage.

“It’s going to be a big day,” said Arnie Sanchez, owner of Los Jarritos, a La Salle restaurant. “We just have a lot of faith in the Virgin of Guadalupe.”

And after two years of celebrations muted by COVID-19, this year’s observances were expected to be the best-attended and most elaborate to date. This year’s celebration included an Aztec dance troupe performing before Sunday’s vigil services which, to Rosa Vazquez’s eye, seemed busier than in years past.

“There were more people this year, I believe,” said Vazquez, Hispanic secretary for the La Salle parishes. “Every year it gets bigger.”

The day in turn means preparation and complexity that rivals Christmas and Easter.

“It’s definitely up there, maybe a little more so than Christmas because there’s less sleep,” said the Very Rev. Thomas Otto, pastor of the La Salle parishes, who was up late Sunday hearing confessions from parishioners and also some new faces.

“Guadalupe brings out people who haven’t been here for a long time,” Otto explained. “There’s a magnetism that draws people to Our Lady and to Our Lord.”

While Christianity in Europe was spread partly by historic figures – St. Patrick in Ireland, Charlemagne in France – the greatest mass conversion of the Americas began with an apparition in 1531. Then, a poor peasant named Juan Diego claimed to have seen a radiant figure on a hilltop in modern day Mexico City.

The ruling Spanish authorities didn’t think much of Juan Diego or his story and sent him away demanding proof. He returned with flowers native to Spain (this on the cusp of winter) and his outer garment or tilma bore a detailed image of the woman he beheld.

The Spanish concluded it was the mother of Christ, as the image matched Revelation 12:1, “A woman clothed with the sun and with the moon under her feet.” The indigenous peoples in turn recognized a divine message and were rapidly converted, with eight million baptisms reported in seven years.

Today, the Guadalupe apparition site is the second-most visited pilgrim destination in the Catholic Church (only St. Peter’s Basilica draws more visitors) and Dec. 12 is a holy day of obligation in Mexico, though only a feast day in the United States.

Nevertheless, Esmeralda Cruz, of La Salle, a longtime parishioner, said the celebration is catching on among parishioners with no Spanish or Hispanic heritage. Cruz said the elaborate altar draws parishioners of every ethnicity to prayer and the Aztec dancers draw onlookers who invariably learn more about the apparition.

“Little by little it’s growing,” Cruz said.