The image printed on the tilma, the “cloak” of the Indian Juan Diego, on December 12, 1531, in Mexico, is an astonishing miracle. Scientific discoveries only reinforce the evangelizing power of the message delivered by the Mother of God by Véronique Jacquier of France Catholique (2025).
Can you imagine looking at an image of the Virgin Mary as if the apparition had just happened? This is how Our Lady of Guadalupe has presented herself, for 500 years, on a tilma that remains in an astonishing state of preservation. This garment, cloak or cape, worn at the time by the natives, is made from agave plant fiber and has a lifespan of twenty years at most!
Marian apparitions
Juan Diego was amazed when he discovered the colorful image of the Virgin Mary on the garment he was wearing. The miracle occurred on December 12, 1531, when the bishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumarraga, had asked him for a sign. The prelate refused to believe in the Marian visitations the Indian had received, or in the heavenly request to build a “house of God” in Tepeyac, on the site of the four apparitions. On the tilma, the Virgin’s face is brown, like that of the mestizos, the fruit of Indian and Spanish alliances. Her dress is pink, embroidered with gold-edged flowers. Her mantle is turquoise blue with gold fringe, and studded with forty-six stars. At the foot of the Virgin is a crescent moon, surrounded by more than a hundred golden rays. The bishop immediately recognized the pregnant Virgin of the Apocalypse, with “the sun surrounding her and the moon under her feet”, as described by Saint John (Rev 12-1).
It has stood the test of time
The colors of the image pass through the weft of the threads as if they belonged to the fabric itself, and the pigments are of unknown origin and perplex specialists. Equally incredible, the image has survived the centuries without damage. For 116 years, the tilma was exposed to the veneration of the faithful without any protection whatsoever: the smoke of the candles, the touch of the hands of the faithful, the humidity, the dust – nothing damaged it. In 1785, while cleaning its frame, it also withstood an accidental spray of a liquid composed of 50% nitric acid. In 1921, it was spared from a bomb attack. The blast from the bomb placed on the altar in a spray of flowers left the image intact behind its protective glass, while next to it, a bronze crucifix was thrown into the air and fell back twisted after absorbing the force of the explosion.
A presence
Unperturbed by the vicissitudes of time, the Virgin of Guadalupe can be seen not just as an image, but as a presence that has fixed in her gaze those who witnessed her appearance on the tilma! Our Lady’s eyes measure only 7 to 8 millimetres in length, making human intervention impossible. From 1979 to 1997, American doctor Jose Aste Tonsmann used high-performance equipment to study the phenomenon and digitize what he saw in the corneas of both eyes. He found thirteen characters, including the bishop of Mexico City, a black woman and a family of Indians. All the leading ophthalmologists concluded that the Virgin’s eyes reacted in accordance with the laws of physiological optics.
Forty-six constellations
The vestments of Our Lady of Guadalupe also have some astonishing features. The forty-six stars on the mantle correspond to the constellations that could be seen in the Mexico City sky on the day of the apparition, December 12, 1531, at the hour of the winter solstice, i.e. precisely at the moment of the coming of the “New Sun” so eagerly awaited by the Aztecs. The dress, with its accessories, colors and flowers, delivers a message easily understood by the Indians. The turquoise blue of the coat is the color of the highest Aztec dignitaries, and the Virgin on the tilma is quickly identified as a celestial queen at prayer with her hands clasped. She is pregnant, as her double-knotted black belt is the one worn by Aztec women during pregnancy. The medallion she wears around her neck contains an engraved cross, a pictography of the union of two cultures.
As for the dress, it’s strewn with flowers, one of which, placed on the belly, is a Mexican jasmine whose four petals represent the four cardinal points or four directions of the universe. For Aztec scholars, this flower summed up all knowledge of their world: a world destroyed four times, like the four petals. The fifth, represented in the center of the flower, was expected to be the last creation of mankind. Thus, Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to the Indians as the woman giving birth to the “God of the Fifth Sun”, who would create perfect harmony with the cosmos.
Extraordinarily, this message translates into music. In 2008, Mexican researcher Fernando Ojeda Llanes discovered that all the symbols on the Virgin’s dress and cloak make up a musical score. His mathematical-musical exercise gave rise to “divine” music, as if the Virgin of Guadalupe wanted to convey her message of love and peace with infinite delicacy, touching all our senses.
Unprecedented evangelization
Five centuries ago, the marvellous image led to the reconciliation of Indians and Spaniards within eight years, and sparked an evangelization unprecedented in history: 9 million Mexicans were baptized. In the 21st century, the Queen of Mexico and the Americas still uses her image to speak to all her children. On April 24, 2007, the day the State of Mexico legalized abortion, a mass was celebrated in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in defense of life. Over 1,000 people witnessed an inexplicable phenomenon: an intense light in the shape of a foetus burst forth from the womb of the image of the Virgin Mary. The patron saint of the unborn showed the way to the new evangelization: protection of the family and respect for life.
