The Miraculous Tilma of St. Juan Diego

I have experienced many dialogs with people regarding the truth of the Catholic Church, and I have found that there are many paths one can take, all of course which need to be travelled with charity.  However, the more I experience of these conversations, the more I realize the power of the Saints and their miracle stories.  What strikes me in particular about them is that they demand a decision.  When hearing these stories, one cannot remain indifferent.  If they are true, then an act of faith in the Catholic Church must follow, and if they are not, then the Catholic Church is guilty of several momentous hoaxes.  There is no better example of such a story than that of the miraculous tilma of Juan Diego.

Juan Diego was born in 1474 in Cuautitlan of the Texaco kingdom, a part of the Triple Alliance of the Aztec Empire.  In 1524, at the age of fifty, he and his wife requested baptism from one of the early Franciscan missionaries to Mexico.  Five years later his wife passed away, leaving Juan Diego with an elderly uncle, Juan Bernardino, another recent convert.

Every Saturday, Juan Diego would walk nine miles to the nearest place of religious instruction to attend Mass and receive catechism lessons.  On the morning on December 9, 1531, Juan Diego was making one of these trips.  Walking through the Tepeyac region, he heard beautiful singing coming from the top of Tepeyak hill.  When the singing stopped, a woman’s voice called out to him: “Juantzin, Juan Diegotzin.”  He walked up the hill and discovered a beautiful woman who shone like the sun.  She inquired about Juan Diego’s destination, and, aware of who she was, he replied, that he was going to “your little house in Mexico, Tlaltelolco, to follow the things of God.”  She confirmed his suspicions by saying,

“I am the ever-perfect holy Mary, who has the honor to be the mother of the true God by whom we all live, the Creator of people, the Lord of the near and far, the Lord of heaven and earth.”

After confirming her identity, the Blessed Mother gave Juan Diego his mission.  She deeply desired to have a church built on the very hill on which she stood:

“I want very much that they build my sacred little house here, in which I will show Him, I will exalt Him upon making Him manifest, I will give Him to all people in all my personal love, Him that is my compassionate gaze, Him that is my help, Him that is my salvation.”

Juan Diego was to deliver this message to Friar Juan de Zumarraga, the head of the Church in Mexico City.

When Juan Diego approached the Friar with the Blessed Mother’s Request, Zumarraga, skeptical of the rampart idolatry found in many Indian converts, brushed off the poor man telling him that he would listen to his story when he had more time.

Juan Diego returned to Tepeyac hill dejected.  He pleaded with the Virgin to find somebody more deserving of the task, or at least to find somebody to whom the Friar would listen.  The Virgin listened, but was firm in her resolve:

“[I]t is necessary that you, personally, go and plead, that by your intercession my wish, my will, become reality.”

When he returned to Zumarraga, the Friar this time listened more intently to Juan Diego.  Doubtful, he sent him away with a request of evidence that would confirm his story.  Juan Diego left and promised to return with a sign from the Virgin.

Juan Diego returned to the hill at Tepeyak a third time and once more found the Blessed Mother.  When he explained the Friar’s request, the Virgin asked him to return the next day and she would grant the request.

However, while he was away, his uncle Juan Bernardino, fell gravely ill.  Thus, the following day, instead of returning to see the Blessed Mother, he stayed by the side of his ailing uncle.  Death seemed imminent.  In his dying moments, his uncle pleaded with Juan Diego to bring a priest to hear his confession and prepare him for his passing.  On December 12, Juan Diego wrapped himself in a tilma and hurried on the nine mile hike.

Recalling his broken promise to the Virgin and running in haste because of his uncle’s condition, Juan Diego took a slightly different route in hopes of evading the Virgin.  Nonetheless, as he rounded the hill he saw the Blessed Mother coming down towards him.

“My youngest son, what’s going on?  Where are you going?  Where are you headed?”

He pleaded with her to understand, explaining the condition of his uncle, and assured her that once his mission was accomplished he would return to her without delay.  After listening, the Virgin spoke,

“Listen, put it in your heart, my youngest son, that what frightened you, what afflicted you, is nothing; do not let it disturb your face, your heart; do not fear this sickness nor any other sickness, nor any sharp and hurtful thing.  Am I not here, I who have the honor to be your Mother? .... Don’t grieve your uncle’s illness, because he will not die of it for now; you may be certain that he is already healed.”

As Juan Diego would soon learn, at that very moment she was also appearing to Juan Bernardino, revealing her name as Our Lady of Guadalupe.  She instructed Juan Diego to walk to the top of the hill where, despite the cold winter, he would find a variety of flowers in full bloom.  He was to cut them and bring them back so she could arrange them in his tilma.  Upon doing so, she said to him,

“My youngest son, these different kinds of flowers are the proof, the sign that you will take to the bishop.  You will tell him for me that he is to see my wish and that therefore he is to carry out my wish, my will; and you, you who are my messenger, in you I place my absolute trust.”

With the flowers wrapped in his tilma, Juan Diego set out to see Friar Zumarraga.  The servants would not let him enter and simply ignored him, but Juan Diego continued to wait.  The servants became curious about what the poor man carried in his tilma, and Juan Diego, afraid of not being able to protect the flowers, opened the tilma just a little to allow them to see.  As they reached into the tilma, they found that the flowers, instead of being present, were painted onto the tilma.  Amazed, they took Juan Diego in to see the Friar.  He unfolded the tilma, letting the flowers, which had returned, fall to the floor, only to reveal upon the tilma’s rough surface an image of the Virgin Mary.

The rest of the story is complete with Friar Zumarraga’s amazement, profound apologies to Juan Diego for his dismissiveness, the accompanying of the poor man to Tepeyac hill, and the building of the church to satisfy the Blessed Mother’s request.

The story of the tilma, however, continues to be astounding throughout the next five hundred years.

On November 14, 1921, Luciano Perez Carpio, am employee of the private ministry of the presidency, entered the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  He placed flowers at the base of the tilma, which had been preserved since the time of Juan Diego.  Moments later, the bomb that was disguised in the flowers detonated.  The explosion was so powerful that it ruined to Basilica’s altar, the candelabra, and the bronze crucifix, and shattered windows of neighboring homes within one kilometer.  Just inches away was Juan Diego’s tilma in its glass covering, which remained perfectly in tact.

In 1785, during a routine cleaning of the tilma, nitric acid was spilled onto the garment.  As an eyewitness testified,

“The spilling of a great deal of acid occurred while the side of the frame was being cleaned ..., enough to destroy the whole of the surface being cleaned .... I have personally seen, on those occasions when the glass case has been open .. that the nitric acid left a somewhat dull mark where it was spilled, though the painting is without any damage.”

The most remarkable story of survival, however, is how the tilma survived during the first 116 years of its history.  During this time the tilma was displayed without any type of covering or protection.  The tilma was particularly susceptible to deterioration caused by saltpeper, a naturally corrosive substance carried in the air coming off the lake, not to mentioned the constant handling of the fabric by the thousands of pilgrims that visited it every year.

Near the end of the eighteenth century, Jose Ignacio Bartolache, a natural scientist and medical doctor, designed an experiment to test how long a tilma such as Juan Diego’s would last in a similar natural environment.  He commissioned several tilmas to be made from the same materials and in a similar fashion to the tilma of Juan Diego’s time period.  Two replicas were displayed in the same area as the original image in order to expose them to the environmental conditions.  Needless to say, the replicas could not withstand the humidity and saltpeper of the Tepeyac climate, and before a short period they were discolored and falling to pieces.

In the first investigation on the tilma, made in 1666, a team of seven professional painters was commissioned to investigate how the image was made on the fabric.  In a joint and unanimous statement, the artists were astounded as to how an image so perfect could have been produced on a surface so rough:

“It is humanly impossible that any artist could paint and work something so beautiful, clean and well-formed on a fabric which is as rough as is the tilma or ayate ... There cannot be a painter, as skillful as he may be or as good as there have been in this New Spain, who could succeed perfectly to imitate the color, nor determine if such a painting is in tempera or oil, because it appears to be both, but it is not what appears, because only Our God knows the secret of this painting, of its durability and preservation, of the permanence of its beautiful colors and the gold of its stars.”

Numerous studies have been conducted on the tilma as science has progressed, yet the more experiments done and observations made, the more miraculous the tilma appears.  In three different years (1929, 1951, and 1956), with advancements in photography, three different people (two professional photographers and an ophthalmologist) took close-up photographs of the eye of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  All three reported that the image’s coloration not only depicts her pupils but also images that one would expect to see reflected in the eyes of a living human person.  In this case, they observed the reflected images of people.  It is impossible for a painter to accomplish this feat, particularly one that lived in the 1500’s.  The presence of reflected images found on the eyes is known as the Purkinje-Sanson effect, and it was observed a fourth time in 1958.  Finally, in 1981, Dr. Jose Aste Tonsmann made the same scientific observations of the image.  He said,

“The presence of the images in both of the eyes of the Virgin of Guadalupe constitutes, without a doubt, one of the most forceful proofs ... of the difficulty of obtaining a natural explanation for its creation.”

I began this exposition with the claim that the claims of the tilma demand a decision.  In a culture poisoned by Cartesian doubt, it is tempting to meet these claims with an indifference:  “Sure, this all sounds compelling, but it simply cannot be.”  In no other area of our lives would we demand more proof that has been offered in the case of Juan Diego’s tilma.  Have I seen it myself?  No, but then again, I have never seen a man walk on the moon - yet I have no difficulty in trusting the evidence that suggests the reality of the event.  The claims of the tilma are so bold and so scandalous that they force a decision and in turn an act of faith.  The stark reality is, either the claims are true or the Vatican is guilty of a deliberate hoax the magnitude of which the world has never seen.  Of course, if that is the case, then the guilt is shared by the independent scientists who studied the tilma and all came to the same conclusion: no natural occurrence could have produced it.  If it is not a hoax ... if it is true ... then the ramifications of it change everything.

Saint Juan Diego, ora pro nobis.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, ora pro nobis.

Source:  The presentation above is a summary of the work found in the book Our Lady of Guadalupe, by Carl Anderson and Eduardo Chavez.  Quotations are from the same text.