| “If someone had asked the Child in Mary’s womb where He was going, He could have replied:
I do not go anywhere; my mother goes for me. I can’t go anywhere unless she does. If she doesn’t carry me, I don’t get to go at all. She walks for me, and I trust her to go wherever she likes on my behalf.”
– St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God
By Sister Mada-anne Gell, VHM
In the “Treatise on the Love of God,” St. Francis de Sales imagines a dialogue with the Infant in Mary’s womb.
“If someone had asked the Child in Mary’s womb where He was going, He could have replied:
I do not go anywhere; my mother goes for me. I can’t go anywhere unless she does. If she doesn’t carry me, I don’t get to go at all. She walks for me, and I trust her to go wherever she likes on my behalf.”
Mary bears Jesus in her womb, and for a long time after His birth, in her arms. She steps and He moves with her.
It makes me think of that first Visitation—of Mary’s journey to Elizabeth. I often meditate on Elizabeth’s frame of mind before Mary’s arrival in Ain Karim.
She is pregnant. She has been childless most of her long life, and that is a source of great sorrow. Perhaps there have been disappointments, miscarriages. She supposes the infant John she carries will be another such. She hasn’t felt him move yet—no kicking, fluttering, just stillness. Mary appears, and Elizabeth’s fetus leaps in her womb! Mary brings Jesus, and Jesus brings life. What joy! What great, enduring joy!
And then on the Hill of Tepeyac, more than 1,500 years later, we find Juan Diego and his wife, Aztec in origin, and childless. Despite the efforts of the Spanish missionaries, few Aztecs had converted to Christianity. Their conquerors had been hard on them, and nothing in their religion much appealed to the indigenous peoples.
Suddenly, miraculously, at the age of 57, Juan Diego begins to believe. He and his wife become fervent Catholics, two people among very few believers.
The Lady appears to him: young, Aztec, dressed in the style of his own people. Juan Diego notices that she is pregnant and that she will soon give birth. Our Lady of Guadalupe, carrying the Child Jesus in her womb, much like Mary did when she visited Elizabeth so many hundreds of years before. A long Advent indeed!
As St. Francis de Sales had imagined, the Son of God had been whisked away to a new place, a windswept hill in Mexico.
We know the rest of the story: the miracle that so resonated with the Aztec peoples there, their joy at our Lady who looked just like them, and the mass conversions. The Lord had come to His people, and they recognized Him in His mother’s face.
Mary had carried Jesus to them in her womb. She sent Juan Diego as the humble witness to His coming and to convey that message to his family, friends, the whole of his world.
So must I accept that, faulty and regretful and lukewarm as I am, she has sent me, too, to follow in her footsteps and bring the news of her Son to all the world. What a gift to receive. What joy, to encounter Jesus within Mary’s womb, to be a messenger. As I am. As you are. My soul doth magnify the Lord My spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. For the Most High has done great things for me, and Holy is his name. |
Our Lady of Guadelupe, St. Juan Diego, and the First Visitation