Publications

Our Lady becomes clearer during pilgramage to Mexico

By Joe Fleischman, nSJ

In a poor dusty barrio of Ciudad Juarez, I stood gazing toward the promised land, El Paso, Texas. From behind a newly completed section of fence along the U.S.-Mexican border, there were jobs, opportunity and a way forward. But for most Mexicans, it might have well been a thousand miles away.

As a first-year Jesuit novice, I was making my 30-day pilgrimage. I had the desire to learn more about the Mexican/ Latino experience. My starting point: our novitiate in St. Paul and a one-way bus ticket to El Paso and $35. My final goal: the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. In recent years I had grown in my relationship with Mary through the Mexican and Latino devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, and now felt compelled to meet Mexico’s Lady on her own turf.

However, I soon found that her turf, and that of her Son, was everywhere. Anywhere that I found Latinos or Mexicans, I also found Our Lady of Guadalupe offering her love, compassion, help, and protection both directly and through the care of others. I found that the more that I accompanied Mexicans and Latinos in their joys and in their sorrows, the closer I came to Christ and His Blessed Mother.

Despite chalking up over a thousand drug-trafficking murders in the course of the past year, Ciudad Juarez quickly became my favorite border city. It was a bustling city full of historic buildings, empty tourist shops, and security vehicles staffed by young Mexican soldiers brandishing AK-47s. The drug violence had largely stopped, but the city was hurting in the absence of American tourists.

As I sought to better understand life in Ciudad Juarez, I stumbled across Christ and his Mother in unexpected places.

A Sunday Mass in Juarez’ cathedral was particularly moving. In the heart of this turbulent city, I found myself praying, in the midst of parishioners in surgical masks, for an end to the drug violence and a halt to the swine flu. Indigenous Catholics, vested in Native dress, were dancing to the rhythm of drums outside. Verses from a traditional song to Our Lady of Guadalupe punctuated the decades of a rosary. Swine flu fears ruled out any touching during the Sign of Peace, but peace was nevertheless at the top of our prayer agenda. I had a powerful sense that Christ and His Mother were with their people and that because they had faith, everything would turn out alright.

Across the border, back in the United States, I walked into the headquarters of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles and immediately sensed Christ’s presence in the person of Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ, around whom dozens of gang members waited patiently for help in leaving their lives on the streets. The needs were overwhelming but Fr. Greg continued to lavishly offer educational, employment, psychological and tattoo-removal services to the young men and women who sought a different life. After Mass that evening in the Jesuits’ Dolores Mission, I ate dinner with the humble and faith-filled Latino men at the parish’s homeless shelter. I had the sense that I was breaking bread with Christ who dwelt within these men.

At the Valley Missionary Program Encounter in Coachella, Calif., I was privileged to witness Christ and His Mother touching many previously hardened hearts. Seventy Latino men had entered reluctantly into the retreat, many at the strong prodding of a girlfriend or mother. The majority had fallen away from God and the Church and dozens had grown up immersed in gang culture and drug addiction. By the end of a weekend full of witness talks, Eucharistic adoration, prayer before the Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine, and much love and fellowship, the men formally committed their lives to Christ as new Valley missionaries. Our Lady had never given up on her sons, and her persistence had paid off abundantly. At the Jesuits’ Kino Project dining hall in Nogales, Mexico, I found myself pondering the plight of deportees as wave after wave of Latino men crowded in for a meal. Every day an average of 800 are deported via Nogales, Arizona. The deportees often have no food, no money and little clothing. Some have been in the United States for as long as a couple of decades and have no life experience in Mexico. I helped to provide a couple of meals a day for the deportees, while Mexican religious sisters offered housing to some of the women. Groups of students and academics came and went, trying to better understand the realities of migration. On a mural at the back of the dining hall, Our Lady Guadalupe prayed unceasingly in the midst of her distressed children.

On the outskirts of Mexico City, in the impoverished barrio of Chalco, there was a stage and large outdoor tent assembled with hundreds of mothers in their chairs. It was Mother’s Day and El Festival de las Mamas was in full swing at St. Ignatius Jesuit Parish. Pig-shaped marshmallow treats, cups of fruit and excited kids were everywhere. For more than two and a half hours, youth groups acted out funny skits and sang traditional songs in honor of their mothers. At one point I found myself on stage as the American entry in a Mexican-style dance contest. Despite my stellar dance moves, the pastor, of course, won. Mothers are highly esteemed in Mexican culture, and those mothers in turn look to Our Lady of Guadalupe as the greatest exemplar of what it means to be a loving and compassionate mother for others.

As I reached my goal at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, I sat on the floor beside the tomb of St. Juan Diego and found myself in the midst of a powerful moment. I was focused on Our Lady of Guadalupe who united, for me, an earlier passion for Hispanic ministry with my more recent passion for Native American ministry. Our Lady of Guadalupe had come to bring Christianity to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, including both Latinos with their Aztec, Mayan, and other native ancestries, and the Lakota of South Dakota. As I prayed in the ancient parish of the Indians where the earliest Aztecs had come to the faith as a result of the Guadalupan apparitions, I felt powerfully missioned by Our Lady to continue her work of bringing the Catholic faith to the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

At a time of rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, I believe that Our Mother is calling upon us to reach out to Latinos in our churches, in our work places, in our communities and to truly welcome them as brothers and sisters in Christ. I believe that she is asking us to build personal relationships with Native Americans, in our cities and on the reservations, in order to learn the wisdom of their traditional ways and to walk in solidarity with them as part of one extended family. I believe that Our Lady of Guadalupe is inviting us to be instruments of her love, compassion, help, and protection, especially to the Latinos and Native Americans in our midst.

May we each respond generously to the unique earthly pilgrimages to which we are being called, finding and serving Christ along the way according to the model of our Blessed Mother. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

back