December 12 – Feast of Our Lady of
Guadalupe
After a prayer session at a migrant
camp in New York’s apple country, a young mother pauses on the steps of the
crowded trailer she and her husband share with three other couples. When she
feels overwhelmed by her life as an undocumented immigrant far from home, she
confides, she comes out onto these rickety steps to look for the Virgin’s star
in the night sky. Her grandmother taught her this custom in their Zapotec
village in Oaxaca. “It helps me to know that whether I am here or in Mexico, I
can see her,” she says. After a moment, she adds in a quiet yet firm voice, “She
sees me, too.”
Deirdre Cornell,
American Madonna: Crossing Borders with the Virgin Mary
American Madonna: Crossing Borders with the Virgin Mary
