Our Lady of Guadalupe

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe who is the patron saint of our diocese and of the Americas as well.

I’m not a huge Mary devotee in general, but I believe her to have been an amazing woman and I do believe she is “full of grace” (which I will talk about in a moment), even though that theology tends to war in my head with the theology I learned as a child that Mary was just a regular girl who happened to be chosen to give birth to our Savior.

If you’ve never read or heard the story of “Our Lady of Guadalupe”, be sure to google it and read a couple of different versions, because you will get a bit of a different spin depending on the version you read. Either way, it’s a fascinating story.

As I said before, the theology of Mary being “sinless” has warred in my head since I started studying about Catholicism. How is it that anyone could be sinless or “full of grace”? Aren’t we as humans innately sinful creatures? And she was human, after all. But the other day, a friend said something that finally made it make sense to me. I think the reason Mary was given grace was because God was merciful to her. As my friend said, how could Mary have stood at the foot of the cross and watched her flesh and blood die for her sins? How could she have lived with that and through that? How could any parent deal with their child dying because of what they had done? I don’t know that I could. So, I think Mary was without sin because God was giving her mercy so that she wouldn’t have to deal with the knowledge that her son had to die for her.

Mary truly was an amazing woman. She said yes to God when he asked so much from her. So much. I often wonder if I would have been able to say yes to God in the same circumstances. I’m not sure I could have. I hope I could have, but I’m just not sure.

I am reflecting a lot on Mary these days. I hope to write more on her in the days to come.