Watsonville Catholics Celebrate a Winter Miracle
On Dec. 12, hours before dawn, thousands of devout Catholics gathered in Watsonville’s city plaza to sing in the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and to commemorate a miracle that occurred nearly 500 years ago.
Watsonville’s annual Guadalupe celebration is one of the largest public gatherings in the city, bringing thousands of people to walk from the city plaza to St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, where they sing in the dawn with mananitas (songs welcoming the day) and fill the church with thousands of roses.
This pre-dawn celebration honors a gentle saint who is seen as a champion of the poor and downtrodden, and who was instrumental in converting millions of Mexicans to Catholicism.
Guadalupe’s feast day is one of the most important days on the religious calendar for many Latinos, and in Watsonville it caps two weeks of daily mass and parties. Yet this lovely tradition, based on song and roses, is unknown to many outside the Latino community.
Tuesday night mass at St. Patrick's is standing-room only
Thanks to the early hours, celebrants are usually heading home before most commuters are on their way to work.
The feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe commemorates the day in 1531 when a poor Aztec farmer named Juan Diego was startled by the sound of unearthly music and witnessed the apparition of a beautiful, pregnant, dark skinned woman. She was dressed as an Aztec princess, and surrounded by a nimbus of brilliant light. Speaking in Nahuatl, Diego’s native tongue, this vision identified herself as the Virgin Mary, Mother of the True God, and ordered the astonished farmer to tell the local bishop to build a church for her on that site.
The bishop demanded proof, and when Diego returned to the hillside in Tepeyac, in Mexico City, the miraculous woman appeared again, and told him he would find his proof at the top of the hill. There, despite the wintry weather, Juan Diego found a bounty of Castilian roses in full bloom. He gathered the roses into his tilma, a cape woven from cactus fiber, and carried them to the bishop.
When the farmer spilled his roses at the bishop’s feet,according to the legend, all were amazed to see the image of the dark-skinned virgin imprinted on the tilma.
Skeptical historians point out that the hilltop where Guadalupe appeared was previously sacred to Tonantzin, the Aztec goddess of earth and corn, and note that the miracle proved very convenient for the Spanish padres, who until that point had found few converts among the natives.
Nonetheless, a church was built on the site, and millions of Mexico’s indigenous people, inspired by the miracle, converted to Catholicism.Mexico became Catholic, and the Virgin’s basilica on Tepeyac hill is now the second most-visited Catholic shrine on earth, second only to the Vatican.
Many who pray to the Virgin for assistance promise to repay her with a pilgrimage to the Basilica in Mexico City. But if that is not possible, due to cost or travel restrictions, attending the Virgin’s feast day mass at St. Patrick’s can fulfill that vow.
Further afield, Mission San Juan Bautista has hosted a beautiful Dia de la Virgen celebration every year since the Mission’s founding in 1797. As at St. Patrick’s, the singing of the mananitas at the old mission begins at 5 a.m. But this year the early mass was followed by a free performance of La Virgen de Tepeyac, a 37-year tradition by El Teatro Campesino.
If you visit San Juan Bautista, check out the 17thannual Images of the Virgin exhibit at Galeria Tonantzin, a juried exhibit featuring art from throughout the U.S. The gallery is located at 115 Third St.in downtown San Juan Bautista.
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