(ANALYSIS) The cloak worn by St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin was made from rough cactus materials from central Mexico, and it should have deteriorated after 15-30 years.

But this "tilma" remains intact, and its mysterious image of the Virgin Mary has not faded since December 1531, when Juan Diego, an Indigenous peasant, reported a series of Marian encounters. The framed cloak is displayed behind the high altar of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe at the foot of Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City.

Scientists have studied the cloak for centuries. For starters, it's hard to describe the survival of this cactus-fiber cloak without using the word “miracle.”

“We are dealing with mysterious events, but that doesn't mean they aren't real,” said Vivian Dudro, a senior editor at Ignatius Press, who helped produce a new edition of “The Lady of Guadalupe,” a classic children's book by the late artist Tomie dePaola.

“All I know is that historians and scientists keep digging into the details of all this. Even with what we call ‘legends,’ you soon realize that there are real people involved in stories of this kind," she said in a telephone interview. “The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe is best described as ‘sacred history,’ and pieces of this history continue to emerge to this day.”

Year after year, Juan Diego's tilma is viewed by an estimated 20 million pilgrims, with more than 10 million visiting the basilica close to Dec. 12 — the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico and the Americas. Around the world, throngs march in parades and sacred processions behind copies of this iconic Marian image.

While Our Lady of Guadalupe has played a central role in Mexico's tempestuous history, Pope Francis has stressed that this image should not be tethered to culture and politics.

“The message of Guadalupe does not tolerate any ideology of any kind,” he said during last year's Vatican rites for the feast day. Instead, believers should focus on Mary's question to Juan Diego: “Am I not here, I, who am your mother?”

This is a crucial message, said Dudro, that children need to hear when parents and teachers introduce them to the story of Juan Diego: The Castilian roses he plucked — following Mary's instructions — from the frozen soil and, finally, the image of her that appeared on his cloak when the roses spilled out before the Franciscan bishop of Mexico.

In dePaola’s picture book, Juan Diego apologizes to the Virgin Mary for his failure to convince the bishop to build a church in her honor near Tepeyac Hill, insisting that she should have sent "a child or a noble" on this mission, “rather than a poor, ignorant farmer.”

Our Lady of Guadalupe responds: “My beloved son, I have many messengers I could send, but it is you that I need and want for this purpose.”

This maternal language, “my son, my dear son,” is found throughout the story, noted Dudro. The poor, the humble, the weak can hear Mary “saying to them, ‘I am your mother.’ ... Children, especially, have enough things to be afraid of in this life. Isn't it nice to have the Mother of God on your team, too?”

Meanwhile, the mysteries linked to Our Lady of Guadalupe remain. Historians continue to uncover relevant documents, such as the 1995 discovery of “Codex Escalada,” a 1548 account of Juan Diego's story that includes a drawing of the tilma’s image.

In 1979, researchers using infrared radiation confirmed that there are no painter's brush marks on the Guadalupe image. In 1983, astronomers discovered that the stars on the Virgin Mary's blue-green mantle correspond to constellations in the winter sky during the final 1531 vision. As recently as 2006, computer images — enlarged 2,500 times — found as many as 13 people reflected in Mary's eyes, including a bearded man resembling descriptions of Juan Diego.

“When the Divine breaks into our world, what we discover is that the material world is not the only reality surrounding us,” said Dudro. “What we have learned is that this image defies human explanations, and we call things like that ‘miracles.’ ... Something — actually that’s someone — has intervened in our world. That's what we are looking at in this case.”

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.