The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the most treasured among Mexicans and Catholics alike. It all started in 1531 when an Aztec Indian named Juan Diego was walking through the Tepayac hill country in central Mexico. The Blessed Mother appeared tohim and requested that a church be built in that place. No one would believe him, not even the local Bishop Zumarraga, who requested a sign from Juan. On a successive visit, Juan was told to collect a full bloom of Castilian roses. Removing his coat or tilma, he cut the roses and Mary kindly rearranged them in his tilma. When he visited the Bishop, Juan told him what had transpired on the frozen hill, then he opened the tilma letting the flowers fall out. But it wasn't the beautiful roses that caused the bishop and his advisors to fall to their knees; for there, on the tilma, was a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary precisely as Juan had described her to them. The tilma shows Mary as the God-bearer - she is pregnant with her Divine Son. Over the years, the miraculous tilma has been subject to a variety of environmental hazards including smoke from fires and candles, water from floods and torrential downpours. But it has survived. In 1977, the tilma was examined using infrared photography and digital enhancement techniques. Unlike any painting, the tilma shows no sketching or any sign of outline drawn to permit an artist to produce a painting. Further, the very method used to create the image is still unknown. It can be seen today in a large cathedral built to house up to ten thousand worshipers. It is, by far, the most popular religious pilgrimage site in the Western Hemisphere. Mexicans celebrate this apparition today with a morning prayer at 5 AM called Mañanitas, and an evening Mass followed by plentiful food during a fiesta, with dancing and drinking of Tequila with lime.
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