Everyone is welcome to go visit the missionary image of Our Lady Guadalupe at St. John Bosco Catholic Church in Natalia. She will be on display through July 7.
This digital replica, is the exact size and color of the original miraculous image that Our Lady left on Saint Juan Diego’s tilma in 1531. It is certified by Cardinal Norberto Carrera, Archbishop of Mexico.
Today, the original image is preserved behind a glass screen inside the the basilica at Mexico City. It can be viewed from a distance of twenty-five feet. Each year more than ten million people visit her, making this shrine the most popular in the Catholic world after St. Peter’s Basilica at Vatican City, according to an article by University of Dayton.
Ruby Vera, of Natalia, is among many of those who have visited the original shrine in Mexico and shared her own testimony with us.
“The bascilica in Mexico City is up on a hill with stairs going all the way up. I have seen people climb those stairs on their knees, be healed, and come down on their feet.”
An article published by University of Dayton, titled “Our Lady of Guadalupe: Icon of the Church in the Americas”, author Brother John M. Samaha, S.M. reports on some of the miraculous events attributed to the Virgin of Guadalupe including this one: “In the early seventeenth century when floods almost destroyed Mexico City, her image escaped unharmed. In 1921 during the Mexican Revolution, a bomb was planted in flowers placed before the altar behind which the image hung. When the bomb exploded, no one was hurt, but the altar was badly damaged, yet not even the glass covering the picture was broken.”
“To this day Our Lady of Guadalupe continues to work wonders large and small, noticed and unnoticed. Why hasn’t the holy image deteriorated after almost five centuries? Why do the colors remain bright? Why hasn’t the crude fabric shown signs of disintegration. The search for answers to these questions, regularly pursued by experts, persist from generation to generation. What they have learned is fascinating. However, the scientific investigations defy natural explanations.”
