God & Mary Close to Us

Merry Christmas still!  And Happy New Year!  Today, we celebrate the motherhood of Mary, and we’re going to meditate on how she’s very close to us; we’ve said before that, while men are the sign that God is beyond our universe, women are the sign that He’s close to us.

For those who don’t know, this is the Tilma, or cloak, of St. Juan Diego of Mexico, from 1531:

It’s a sacred object, but I myself never knew the evidence for why some people believe it to be miraculous, until I learned about four attributes: 1) It hasn’t shown signs of decomposition in almost 500 years, whereas replicas always start to decompose after about 15 years; 2) While certain images have been painted (e.g. the moon), the original image has no brush strokes; 3) A Nobel Prize-winning biochemist declared “that the pigments used are from no known natural source, whether animal, mineral, or vegetable”; 4) One engineer magnified the pupils 2,500 times and was able to identify in them an image of people.

Source: reddit.com

Whether or not we find this evidence persuasive, what is a historical fact is that prior to 1531, very few native people in Mexico became Christian.  However, after the Tilma became known, nine million people became Catholic in eight years, and many suggest that a big reason was because the image of Mary shows her to be Aztek in race and she’s wearing the native clothing.  I was never able to recognize the native features until I saw this comparison:
In the history of authentic apparitions, our mother Mary often appears to people taking on the features of their race, presumably because she wants to be close to and identify with them.

The First Reading speaks twice of God’s face which has to do with being intimate with Him: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace” (Num 6:24-26).  To have God’s face shine was, for the Jewish people, a great blessing, but, in the Old Testament, they knew you couldn’t see His face because He’s beyond this world.

Source: https://agudasachimic.org/

In one important passage, Moses says to the Lord, “Show me your glory” (Ex 33:18), and God responds, “I will make all my goodness pass before you…  But, you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (33:19-20).  To see something so beautiful would overwhelm and kill Moses.  It’s like seeing someone remarkably beautiful.  Have you ever seen someone so beautiful that you actually stop and stare?  Only once in my life did I ever have my breath taken away: While in Germany, we walked into a church that was so ornately decorated that I gasped.  So, imagine seeing someone infinitely beautiful.  We would die.  God therefore accommodates Moses, “I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen” (33:22-23).

Yet, this accommodation is not enough for us and not enough for God.  Seeing each other’s face is a part of intimacy.  When people date online and look at people’s profiles, they need to see the person’s face.  So, God changes everything with one reality-changing act: God becomes man and takes on a human face.

This is part of God’s goodness: He wants us to see Him face to face, to be intimate with us.  And our Mother wants us to know that she and God are close to us.

A while back, I watched a video about an adopted woman in New Zealand who travelled to Russia to meet her birth mother.  It’s a beautiful story of someone longing to see her mother face to face.  Some of us long to see our parents face to face, perhaps because they have already died, or, for some reason, are no longer in our lives.  Now imagine if our parents came looking for us!

Last year, Pope Francis beautifully pointed out two truths about the Tilma: 1) Our mother reassured St. Juan Diego, “Am I not here, I who am your mother?”  Pope Francis said that these words indicate that our Mother’s closeness is shown in the Tilma; when we look at it, we remember her nearness; 2) He also said, “[The Tilma] is the image… of the Mother of believers… that is imprinted in our humbleness and in what we have, which is of little value, but which will become something great in God’s eyes”.  As we mentioned on Dec. 22, 2024 we are nothing without God, and yet He wants us to be great in His eyes, to share in the intimacy that He has with Jesus.

There’s a wonderful video made by a college student where she filmed things she ‘found beautiful’ and all she did was point the camera at various people’s faces and held it there!  Now, some people were clearly happy about being affirmed, but others showed doubt or even pain—it’s like people who can’t receive compliments or doubt when people affirm them.  Analyzing this video, Dr. Christopher West noted that some people are afraid to be seen.  They don’t know what it’s like to be looked at and loved by someone.  So he recommends that we do what Jesus says: Go to our room, close the door, and pray to our Father in secret (Mt 6:6).  In that safe place, we allow Him to love us, which makes us secure and at peace.

This year is the 100th anniversary of our parish family.  There is so much for which to be grateful and we’re the recipients of thousands of people who set up this community and made this place holy ground.  As mentioned, we hope to use this year to grow and one invitation is that everyone recommit to weekly adoration starting in 2026.  There’s no plan yet, but we’re working on it.

Adoration comes from the Latin words ‘ad ora,’ meaning ‘to the mouths,’ and Pope Benedict XVI said this means a kiss, an embrace, and ultimately love.  Adoration is where we go to adore Jesus and be loved.  Just being with Him is like being in the sun—you absorb vitamin D, get tanned, but there’s no cancer!  If we go willingly and faithfully, we’ll experience peace and a growth in virtue.  However, most importantly, it’s where God is close to us, where we see His face.

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