Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 12, 2016

Both the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil and Pope Fran­cis tell us that the procla­ma­tion of our faith has to be incul­tur­at­ed, that faith has to be trans­mit­ted in a form that res­onates with the local cul­ture. We are spon­ta­neous­ly in res­o­nance with our own cul­ture, but being in res­o­nance with a dif­fer­ent cul­ture is not nec­es­sar­i­ly spon­ta­neous. In-cul­tur­a­tion requires on our side some degree of ex-cul­tur­a­tion, a dis­tanc­ing of our­selves from the cul­ture we are already famil­iar with, as my per­son­al  expe­ri­ence has taught me. Lack of ex-cul­tur­a­tion leads to lack of in-culturation.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is clear­ly an incul­tur­at­ed image depict­ing an Aztec woman, not a Span­ish or Euro­pean woman. But the name Guadalupe is itself a glar­ing exam­ple of lack of incul­tur­a­tion on the side of the hier­ar­chy in those colo­nial years. Let me explain. There exists in Spain a cen­turies old shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe (my own mother’s name was Guadalupe) and that was all that bish­op Juan de Zumár­ra­ga knew. So, when he asked Juan Diego for the name of the Lady that had appeared to him and he heard in the Nau­atl lan­guage the name Coat­lax­opeuh (trans­lat­ed she crush­es the ser­pent and pro­nounced Quat­la­supe), the non-excul­tur­at­ed bish­op, who knew only of Spain’s Guadalupe, felt a need to “cor­rect” Juan Diego: “you igno­ra­mus, it has to be Guadalupe”. And the non-incul­tur­at­ed name sank roots local­ly and beyond.

God writes straight with lines that to us may look crooked and, when today peo­ple hear the name Guadalupe, they think of that Aztec-look­ing Mary, not of the oth­er less known shrine in the Extremadu­ra region of Spain. This is the incul­tur­at­ed Guadalupe of Mex­i­co and of the Tepey­ac hill that we cel­e­brate today as patroness not only of Mex­i­co and Latin Amer­i­ca, but in fact as patroness of the entire Amer­i­ca, of the entire continent.