Guadalupe

I always thought Our Lady of Guadalupe was beautiful.  But it wasn't until I spent two years teaching our nation's poorest of the poor that I learned to love her.

A dear friend from college gave me a lovely statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe as a gift for my classroom.  She was very pretty, but very Anglo!  So, my mom and I delicately darkened her skin with a paintbrush and a little tea.  It did the trick.  And made her more beautiful.

I set her on the counter that ran along the windows, in my direct view as I stood at the blackboard.  And there, as I sweat in the desert heat, and as my heart broke for these little ones, she became my mother.  How good it was to look upon her during moments of angst, or peace, and see her, her face brown like these children.  So long ago, she had appeared to such a little man, and so, she loved to be near all of us.

Though they were rascally and quite normal nine-year-olds, my children also had depth of heart unlike most.  Having witnessed the world's gravity beyond anything I've seen, watching death, removing the boots of drunk and passed out fathers, crying for their imprisoned mothers, attending funerals for young tragedies, losing the language of their ancestors...  It was all so much to bear.  And so, if you stood in our little classroom and watched carefully, you would have seen it: Alonzo took a detour on his way back from the pencil sharpener to graze his fingers on her feet.  Larissa leaned in softly and whispered in her ear.  Alyssa ran her hands along her veil.  And a befuddled teacher implored her with her eyes, "Please, dear Lady, pray for us."

The Lord has taken so much away from them.  The Lord took much away from me during those days.  We had mornings when we might all have broken in two.  We spent days feeling empty and short of breath, close to tears and to quitting.

But there she was, Our Lady, ready to give us the Lord's greatest gift.  Full of grace, and full of the Son, she stood with tenderness in her eyes.  Do you hear her?  She sings her Magnificat.  The Lord lifts the lowly, gives food to the hungry!  And just as St. Juan Diego beheld her, his cheeks flushed, his pants dusty, we kneel before her catching our breath in amazement.  She appears to the littlest ones to give the greatest of gifts.  Carried in her womb, the Light of the World is waiting to enter our hearts.


I am miles and months away from those children now.  I pray for them and ache for them and always will.  But I entrust them to Our Lady's care, and pray that in their dreams and in their prayers, they are still tracing the lines of her face with their fingers and whispering in her ear.