The feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe helps to orient us to proper devotion to the Blessed Mother. When she appeared on December 9, 1531 to a newly baptized Juan Diego, she looked like him, she dressed like him, she spoke his language. She belonged in the environment where she found herself. This serves as a corrective to imagine Mary as somehow on another plane that we are, as being so lofty in holiness as to be beyond us. No, Mary is always our sister as a current book of theology puts it. That means we are to imitate her in bringing Jesus into the world. She did it by birth. We do it by witness. What matters is being “God-bearers” in a way similar to Mary.
