Advent With Our Lady: The Immaculate Conception & Our Lady of Guadalupe

The season of Advent, as a whole, is about preparing for the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ at Christmas. Many Advent devotions remind us of the coming of the Messiah and Light of the World. These include, but are not limited to, an Advent wreath, O Antiphons, Las Posadas, and candlelight Rorate Caeli Mass.

One very appropriate way to prepare for the Nativity of the Lord is to increase in devotion to the Mother of God, the woman who conceived Him, carried Him, and gave birth to Him in Bethlehem.

There are three Marian feast days in the second week of December: the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (normally on December 8th but transferred to the 9th this year), the Memorial of Our Lady of Loreto (December 10th) as well as the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12th). How do these Marian devotions apply to us as evangelists? First, some backstory on the two most prominent of these: Guadalupe, and Immaculate Conception.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

In the early 1500s, Spanish missionaries evangelized throughout Mexico with little success. In December 1531, Our Lady appeared to St. Juan Diego, a native Nahua convert, four times over four days. The first apparition was on December 9th, the day after what would later be the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. On December 12, 1531, the last apparition, Our Lady revealed the miraculous image on St. Juan Diego’s tilma. Within a decade, over 9 million indigenous people converted to Catholicism.1 Because of this, Our Lady of Guadalupe is invoked as patroness of all of the Americas as well as the Star of the New Evangelization.

In a 1992 speech to Latin American bishops, St. John Paul II said:

Latin America, in Our Lady of Guadalupe, offers a great example of perfectly inculturated evangelization. In fact, in the figure of Mary—from the beginning of the Christianization of the New World and in the light of the Gospel of Jesus—authentic indigenous cultural values ​​were incarnated. In the mestizo face of the Virgin of Tepeyac is summed up the great principle of inculturation: the intimate transformation of authentic cultural values ​​through integration into Christianity and the rooting of Christianity in the various cultures. 2

There is a great deal of symbolism in the icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe—many of these symbols are cultural references to the native Nahua people. For example, her hairstyle denotes that she is a virgin but the position of her belt says that she is pregnant. Rays of sunlight glow around her, with brighter rays around her womb. The positions of the stars on her mantle are the same as they would have appeared in the night sky at that time. Her cloak is covered with four-petal flowers, a sacred sign in Aztec culture.

In a 2022 homily, Pope Francis stated,

It was Our Lady of Guadalupe who transmitted the right faith to the indigenous people, speaking their language and wearing their clothing. She did it without violence and without pressure.3

This speaks of our commitment to non-confrontational evangelization as well as our method to “listen, befriend, porcelain, invite.” Our Lady of Guadalupe brings the Christian message to a non-Christian culture. She speaks to individuals in simple, sensitive ways that they can understand, accept, and embrace. Because of this, we distribute two different holy cards and medals bearing the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The Immaculate Conception

Our Lady appeared to St. Catherine Labouré on November 27, 1830. She gave instructions to create a medal with the words “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.” This is key because the Immaculate Conception was not defined as a dogma until 1854 by Pope Pius IX in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus. Moreover, on March 25, 1858, the Feast of the Annunciation, Our Lady of Lourdes identified herself as “The Immaculate Conception.”

In 1846, eight years before Ineffabilis Deus, the bishops of the United States declared Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception to be the Patroness of the United States of America.4

St. Maximilian Kolbe had a great devotion to “The Immaculata,” the Immaculate Conception, and often used the Miraculous Medal in evangelization. He wrote:

This is truly our heavenly weapon, a bullet with which a faithful soldier hits the enemy, and thus rescues souls … Now in this epoch of the Immaculate Conception, the Most Blessed Virgin has given mankind the ‘Miraculous Medal.’ Its heavenly origin has been proven by countless miracles of healing and particularly of conversion. The Immaculata herself, in revealing it promised all who would wear it very many graces; and since conversion and sanctification are divine graces from God, the Miraculous Medal will be one of the best means for attaining these gifts.

The three aforementioned saints—St. Juan Diego, St. Catherine Laboure, and St. Maximilian Kolbe—served as messengers of Our Lady. She is, in turn, a messenger of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Guadalupe, like many Marian devotions, illustrate her role as Mediatrix of All Graces. Our Lady of Guadalupe shows us how to be approachable and relatable to the people we evangelize. The Immaculate Conception illustrates that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the New Ark of Covenant, the holy and spotless vessel that carried the New Covenant in the Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. She is the nearest companion of Jesus her Son, and so should be near to us, as we bring Jesus to others.

May we imitate Our Lady as we finish this brief but holy season of Advent. May we prepare ourselves, and the people we evangelize, for the joy of Christmas and the coming of the Messiah.