November 27, 2023

Who is St. Juan Diego?

He can be found in any portrayal of the Guadalupe apparition: a middle-aged, indigenous Mexican, simply dressed, gazing adoringly at the radiant Virgin. Wherever Our Lady of Guadalupe is known and revered, her faithful messenger St. Juan Diego is also loved for his humble, devoted fulfillment of her mission.

St. Juan Diego

His conversion

Carl Anderson and Eduardo Chavez describe the saint’s cultural background: “Known by his indigenous name Cuauhtlatoatzin, meaning ‘eagle that speaks,’ he belonged to the Chichimecas, a people … whose wise men had reached the conception of only one God. As a macehual, a middle-class commoner, he owned property through inheritance.”[1] At fifty years old, Cuauhtlatoatzin requested baptism, taking the name Juan Diego. The apparitions took place about seven years later, while he was walking the nine miles to the missionary church, as he did every Saturday and Sunday (Anderson and Chavez, 6).

After the miraculous image on the tilma was established in its shrine, Juan Diego took up residence beside this new church for the last fifteen years of his life, caring for the church and pilgrims. (Vatican.va, “Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin”)
Canonization

Feast day: December 9
Solemnity of Our Lady of Guadalupe: December 12

In his canonization homily, St. John Paul II described St. Juan Diego as a model of harmonizing ethnic identity with Christian faith. The story of Guadalupe, the Holy Father explained, is “a model of perfectly enculturated evangelization”; that is, it demonstrates how every human culture is meant to be wholly taken up in Christ, remaining itself in all its richness. St. John Paul went on:

In accepting the Christian message without forgoing his indigenous identity, Juan Diego discovered the profound truth of the new humanity, in which all are called to be children of God. Thus he facilitated the fruitful meeting of two worlds and became the catalyst for the new Mexican identity, closely united to Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose mestizo face expresses her spiritual motherhood which embraces all Mexicans. This is why the witness of his life must continue to be the inspiration for the building up of the Mexican nation, encouraging brotherhood among all its children and ever helping to reconcile Mexico with its origins, values and traditions.
Appearing to her children

In this, Juan Diego is a great heavenly friend for our time, in which people of varying backgrounds and heritages often live side by side. In his life of simple faith and love, he not only embraced fully all that he was, but became Our Lady’s instrument of unity among her children.

By his example and prayers, we too, following Our Lady’s guidance, can be channels of the divine love in which all human goodness is not abolished but fulfilled (cf. Mt 5:17).

In the words of St. John Paul II, “Beloved Juan Diego, ‘the talking eagle’! Show us the way that leads to the ‘Dark Virgin’ of Tepeyac, that she may receive us in the depths of her heart, for she is the loving, compassionate Mother who guides us to the true God.”