Saint Juan Diego

On 9 December the Church remembers Saint Juan Diego, three days before the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The account of what happened on Tepeyac hill is told in the lesson for 12 December, so we will not tell it again here. Today we look at the man himself. Juan Diego was born around 1474 near what is now Mexico City, and his Nahua name was Cuauhtlatoatzin. He was a simple man, and he became a Catholic as a grown-up, around 1524, when the first missionaries arrived.

There is one thing in that account that matters for today. The account says that when the Lady asked Juan Diego to carry her message to the bishop, he felt too small for the job. He was not rich or important, and he thought she should send someone greater. The account says she answered with great tenderness, calling him the smallest of her children, and sent him anyway. God does not choose his helpers for being big, but for being willing. We do not have to believe every detail, but the account shows how God thinks.

This is just what Jesus teaches. Once his disciples asked who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven. Jesus called over a little child, put the child in front of them, and said that whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest. The Church teaches that the Kingdom belongs to the poor and lowly, to those who accept it with a humble heart, and that humility is where prayer begins. Humility does not mean thinking badly of ourselves. It means knowing that everything we have is a gift, and being ready to let God use us.

Pope John Paul II declared Juan Diego Blessed in 1990 and a saint in 2002, both times in Mexico City: the first Indigenous saint of the Americas. The Church names saints to hold them up as models and as friends who pray for us. In Mexico, many children dress up as Juan Diego around these days, with a tilma, a simple cloak, and a hat. He shows that you do not have to be big, rich or clever for God to count on you.