God corrects us since we are ignorant. God shows us what we do not want to see. In what God shows us, our misperceptions are corrected so that we see with clear vision.
We have preconceptions of who God is. In our mind's eye, we have picture of what we believe God looks like. Similarly, we can have an idea of the appearance of Mary, the mother of Jesus. What we imagine is not necessarily accurate. God sets us straight so we see right again.
We get an inkling of such correction from Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared in 1531 to Saint Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, a native peasant, on Tepeyac Hill in what is present-day Mexico. After initially coming to him a few times on that hill, later he went before the bishop to convey her request that a shrine be built there, so that people could go there to receive grace. The bishop told Juan Diego that he needed a sign to confirm that the apparition truly was Our Blessed Mother Mary. When Juan Diego, at Our Blessed Mother's direction, returned to the bishop with flowers from Tepeyac Hill even though it was winter, upon Juan Diego opening his tilma, or his mantle, and letting the flowers fall to the ground, upon his tilma was impressed an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is depicted on the tilma as having the features of a woman native to the land in which she appeared. Europeans, only having arrived in the Americas less than forty years earlier, only had seen such native people for the first time a few decades before she appeared to Saint Juan Diego. For centuries Europeans likely had been envisioning Our Blessed Mother Mary as not looking like she appeared to Juan Diego.
Europeans were coming to the Americas to evangelize the native peoples, having a certain idea of what Our Blessed Mother Mary looked like. As it turned out, the native people seemed to have evangelized the arriving Europeans, who were probably corrected in their misconceptions of the certainty of the appearance of Our Blessed Mother Mary.
We can be convinced we have something to show to our neighbor, when in fact our neighbor has something to show us, when God wants to show us something through our neighbor. We can be sure we are the teachers, when in fact we are the students. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a call to humility.
In this summons to humility, God guides us to see our neighbor with fresh eyes, casting aside our inaccurate perceptions of our neighbor. So often we avoid seeing our neighbors for who and what they truly are. God is in our neighbor, but we can refuse to see God in our neighbor.
Jesus told us that we find Him in those of the least among us.* Jesus is in the impoverished person who comes to us. When the bishop received the poor man Juan Diego, he welcomed Jesus. When we welcome our neighbor into our hearts, we open our hearts to Jesus.
What we do to our neighbor, we do to Jesus. When we subject our neighbor to racism, we are not only disrespecting our neighbor, we are also rejecting Jesus, who is in our neighbor.
When we refuse to open our hearts to our neighbors, we close our hearts to God. In the one in front of us who is different from us, we receive a call to open our hearts, to see anew, to see as God wants us to see.
We receive this summons to see with new eyes as we gaze upon Our Lady of Guadalupe. By appearing as a native, she challenged the assumptions of the Europeans who likely did not expect her appearance to be as it was.
In Our Lady of Guadalupe, we see a rebuke of racism. In her we see a call to welcome those who are different from us, to listen to them, to pay attention to them, to see them with fresh eyes. As we consider her, we are invited to learn from those who are different from us.
Race is an invitation to step outside of ourselves. When we are with someone of another race, God wants to teach us through that person. If we are racist, we reject God's advances. As we open our hearts to someone of another race, we open our hearts to God.
* Matthew 25:40,45
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