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Celebrating Beauty: The Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Guadalupe

Updated: Jan 21, 2021

An ongoing series about how to add a little beauty to our favorite feasts and seasons

This week we celebrate two big Marian feasts, The Immaculate Conception on December 8th and Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12th. We could never talk fully of beauty without talking about Mary.


Why is Mary so connected with beauty?


The Church answers that question with the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Pope Pius IX defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. What it means is that Mary was preserved from all stain of sin from the very first moment of her conception in her mother's womb. This is an important dogma because everything else we believe about Mary flows from the truth that because of her special place in God's plan of salvation, Mary was conceived without Original Sin.


It is an important distinction to make that Jesus' death on the cross made this possible. Because God is outside of time, He applied the graces won on the cross to Mary before she was even born. Think about it this way, if you had the power to make your own mother, you would want to make her perfect right? Mary was free from Original Sin because she is the Mother of God.


So what does all this have to do with beauty? As we know from the saints, lives of virtue are compelling and beautiful. Well, Mary, as the perfect human being, lived the most virtuous, most beautiful life imaginable. Mary is beautiful because she is, as the angel Gabriel affirms at the Annunciation, "full of grace". Her life is beautiful and is the model for us as well. We can look to Mary to see the perfect life we can look forward to in Heaven. Mary teaches us how to be saints and we are drawn to her because of her great virtue and grace.


In his book The Glories of Mary, St. Alphonsus Liguori gives two examples of hardened sinners returning to the Church just by looking at images of Mary. Before you write this off as a pious fiction, we also have the witness of our second feast, Our Lady of Guadalupe. In 1531, Our Lady appeared to a poor, native Mexican man named Juan Diego (now a saint!) and asked him to ask the bishop to build a church dedicated to her on the spot she had appeared. The bishop was finally convinced when after a few times of meeting her, Juan Diego returned with his tilma, or cloak, full of roses and imprinted with Mary's image.


There are so many interesting things about the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe, but the most compelling is that of her image. Mary appears as a young woman of mixed Spanish and native descent, showing that she is there for all people. Her clothes told the native people a lot about who she is. Her mantle of stars says that she is an empress, the black cord around her waist says that she is pregnant, the way she wears her hair says that she is a virgin, and the pattern on her dress says that she is royalty and her child is divine. She is standing in front of the sun and on top of the moon showing that she is greater than these two prominent Aztec gods. These two images also would have evoked images of the woman from Revelation 12 for the Spanish viewers. The positions of her hands and feet say that she is praying.


The image is rich and beautiful and millions of natives converted when they saw it. That is the catechetical power of beauty. Through the prayers and witness of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so many people have come to know Jesus and that is beauty worth celebrating.


Let's Celebrate!

Here are some ways to honor Mary with beauty on these two great feasts!


Playlist


Movies

On Formed:

  • The Bible and the Virgin Mary

  • 1531: A Story That is Not Finished Yet

  • Mary of Nazareth

  • The Woman

  • Guadalupe: The Miracle and the Message

Books

  • 33 Days to Morning Glory by Fr. Michael Gaitley

  • True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort

  • The Glories of Mary by St. Alphonsus Liguori

  • The Secret of the Rosary by St. Louis de Montfort

  • Hail, Holy Queen by Scott Hahn

Prayer and Scripture

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