HOMEPAGE for this issue: December 8, 2010 Download PDF Version

Guadalupe expert discusses image, St. Juan Diego

By Rossana Goñi

Msgr. Eduardo Chavez of Mexico City, postulator for the cause of St. Juan Diego’s 2002 canonization, visited Denver in June. That week he spoke to El Pueblo Católico about the Guadalupe image and the saint.

Q: What led you to study and investigate the Our Lady of Guadalupe apparitions?
A: Well, it has been a grace that came from (Mary), there’s no doubt about that, because I never imagined myself studying … the Virgin of Guadalupe.  She is a source of wisdom and of God’s limitless love. 

In 1981 I started to study Church history in Rome and in 1986 I finished.  I went back to Mexico and it was there that I started to help in St. Juan Diego’s cause (for canonization).  It was, let us say, “by chance.” But, as we know, the things of God are never by chance.  It was there that I started to love and understand (Our Lady of Guadalupe) more. 

In 1988, Cardinal Norberto Rivera (archbishop of Mexico) asked me to become part of the historical commission (of the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes). … At the time I was rector of the minor seminary in the Mexico City Archdiocese. I was the only one (there) with a doctorate in Church history, so it was necessary to become part of the commission because the Holy See asked for it.  So, it was no “chance happening,” but rather something that God wanted.

Q: Did you encounter any difficulties in the canonization cause of St. Juan Diego?
A: Like all jobs or missions, it had its adverse situations. … In St. Juan Diego’s cause there were certain things that had to be confronted, but they led us to go deeper.  When people … are opposed to something, you logically start to seek the truth, and that helps greatly in strengthening what is true.  That is the point: it was never simply about canonizing Juan Diego just for the sake of canonizing him, rather, it was about finding the truth.  So the canonization of Juan Diego is the coronation of this whole process, but in reality it is the coronation of the truth of God in our midst.

Q: Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared in Mexico, but her message is for all.  Tell us about that.
A: (The Guadalupe message) is not just for Mexicans and Hispanics, but for the entire world.  The Virgin of Guadalupe is the mother of us all.  She said: “I am your mother, the mother of all the inhabitants of this land and all those who love me.” 

For that reason we must know her better, but this knowing her better cannot remain simply in the mind, as something academic. The more you try to understand the things of God in your mind, that is when you bear them more in your heart and in your attitude and thus in your apostolate. We are one and the same family; she asked us to “build her a sacred house in which to offer her all our love.”  That is the Church, which is family.

Q: What is the essence of Mary’s message to the Aztecs, to the Mexican people and to the people of God today?
A: Juan Diego wasn’t even an Aztec.  He was Toltec. … The real essence of the message of the Virgin of Guadalupe is Jesus Christ.  The center of the image — the center of the message — is Jesus Christ.  She takes us to Jesus Christ, our Lord. 

Effectively, the Virgin of Guadalupe takes an indigenous man, a tilma (cloak), speaks in Nahuatl and speaks also in glyphs — that marvellous codex in which the letter of love that is her image is written. She takes some indigenous elements in order to speak to the entire world about the mother of God. That is what the Virgin of Guadalupe does.