Guadalupe: Mother of the New Creation

I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in Mary or in the Guadalupe apparition. This book gave me so much to think about. The author "unpacks" the significance and symbolism of the apparition and also explains how the book is a call to anyone who wants to consider how best to evangelize and build bridges between cultures. The events of the apparition happened in a specific cultural and religious context, but the lessons apply to all of us today as we work to build a universal Church. One of our primary calls as Christians is to treat others with dignity ... the book reinforces that in a beautiful and unique way. Highly recommended.

This book from the greatest American Catholic publishing house Orbis Books, a division of the Maryknoll American Catholic Missionary Society, of which my uncle is a long time member, not only serves as an excellent introduction for the serious academic researcher of this American religious phenomenon, but also ably and consolingly accompanies any already knowledgeable and faithful and practicing Catholic on our long pilgrimage with Our Lady of Guadalupe, la Virgen Morenita, Queen of the Americas. Twenty five years ago I was privileged while accompanying Mayan Indians fleeing the US supported right wing genocide in their ancient mountain homeland to visit several times the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe near Mexico City. The old and traditional Basilica visited by US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had sunk into the swampy ancient lake bed which forms the Mexico City region and so the tilma had been removed to a new and larger and modern Basilica nearby, yet we still could visit the old Basilica and observe the votos left by past generations of pilgrims. I was also able a few times to climb Tepeyac to the chapel at the site of the apparition which came so early in the occupation by Europeans of this hemisphere, a generation after Columbus's first voyage. Upon descending from that hilltop I bought a bag of roast chicken at a stand, and following the instructions I had received did not share with a mother and baby who asked some of me, and disaster has followed me ever since. This Thanksgiving I have given two turkeys to poor families in Mexico and hope in this way to make at least partial reparation to Our Lady of the Poor at Guadalupe, for my past selfish and thoughtless failures, particularly that most painful one upon her very doorstep of Tepeyac. I come too late to learn, but we must ever remain on our pilgrimage to total conversion, and not turn aside in despair but ever move forward. Thus within the first page and a half of this book, I could not read for my tears, as the Reverend Father Elizondo so faithfully recounts his own first trip to Tepeyac with his father as a small child, and his own communion of prayer with the poor masses within that ancient basilica, before the tilma graced by Our Lady. I felt after so many solitary visits there accompanied, understood, in communion of prayer with a profound and a Catholic and a prayerful soul. And so is this book, a journal of Father Elizondo's pilgrimage and profound research of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Here we find a comprehensive Marian theological treatise of Gudalupe accessible to any reader, and especially useful as we approach the novena of her Feast Day December 12th. These past years I have been fortunate to join in pre-dawn procession in my parish in Mexico bearing the image of Our Lady Of Guadalupe throughout the small village, praying the Rosary, the major Marian prayer, in union with my fellow parishioners of our Parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe, our patroness, our protectres

This fascinating book shows how the Guadalupe story has functioned as a new Gospel story for the Americas. Elizondo calls the Church to pay attention to the experiences of the poor and oppressed and to learn from their joyful intimate relationships with this God Mother.