OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE: AN INVITATION TO REDEEM A COLONIAL LEGACY
by Will Braun
 The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe as she appears on Juan Diego’s cloak which now hangs in the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City |
I found myself in a tide of pilgrims advancing toward the world’s second most visited holy site on its busiest day of the year. We were drawn by the spiritual gravity of one of the most tender and compelling stories in Christian history. The story dates back to 1531 and a modest indigenous peasant on a little hill in Mexico.
By 1531, colonization and Christianization of the "New World" were in their early stages of devastation. Christ had first been made known –in Columbian guise– to the indigenous peoples of the "New World" four short decades before. Following the arrival of Christ, conquest and conversion had progressed rapidly.
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