Do just one-third of American Catholics believe that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist, as was reported in this 2019 study? Or do two-thirds believe Church teaching on the Eucharist, if you question them more carefully as was done in this 2023 study?
Either way, faithful Catholics who attend Mass regularly didn’t need surveys to tell them that many American Catholics don’t believe in the Real Presence. Those who don’t believe make it obvious enough in the way they arrive late, leave early, and simply fail to show up for Sunday Mass. Our bishops’ call for a Eucharistic Revival, culminating in a National Eucharistic Congress in July, 2024, is certainly an attempt to remind Catholics that Jesus Christ is truly present, not merely symbolically present, in the Blessed Sacrament.
But there’s more than one way to communicate supernatural truths to disbelieving people than to hold a meeting or post a website. In 1531, God’s way involved sending the Blessed Mother to Mexico—through an apparition, of course.
In 1531, ten years had passed since the Spanish forces under Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec empire. Catholic missionaries had been trying to evangelize the native people for seven years. A small number, like Juan Diego and his wife, had accepted baptism and embraced the Gospel, but they were by far the minority. Most of the Aztec people were demoralized by their recent defeat in battle, were afraid of the sicknesses caused by European diseases, and were justly resentful of mistreatment by the conquistadores. Their understanding of their world had been based on a pessimistic cosmology, complex rituals, and bloodthirsty gods who demanded endless human sacrifices. Their gods had now apparently failed them, and this rocked their world.
But all that changed in less than a week in December 1531. A peasant farmer claimed that a beautiful woman had appeared to him multiple times, asked him to tell the bishop to build a church, and miraculously imprinted her image on his cloak. There were other baffling events as well, such as his uncle’s recovery from near death and the blooming of Spanish roses on a hillside in December. But it was the image that inexplicably appeared on Saint Juan Diego’s cactus fiber tilma that proved to be a revelation to the Aztec people.
Almost five hundred years later, images of Our Lady of Guadalupe can be found everywhere, inside and outside Mexico. What was it about this image that caused families, villages, and entire tribes to travel to the capital city in the sixteenth century—not merely to see the tilma but to accept baptism—almost overnight?
There are many mysteries about that tilma, such as how something made of cactus fibers has survived for centuries. And how the image remained unharmed despite being handled by thousands of devotees in the many years before it was placed behind glass. And how it survived certain destruction from nitric acid and a bomb blast. And how the image could have been applied to the tilma in the first place. All of these mysteries continue to elude twenty-first century science, as described in Guadalupe Mysteries. But what was it that sixteenth-century Aztecs saw in that image that touched their souls so profoundly that nine million of them became Catholics in just six years?
The Aztecs’ writing system was not based on a phonetic alphabet but on pictograms. Ordinary people were familiar with these pictograms, which included images of physical items as well as symbols that made puns on the sounds from their oral language. The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which the Spaniards recognized as a Christian icon, is a treasure trove of pictograms which were easy for the Aztecs to decipher.
Mary is shown to be greater than the sun, the moon, the stars, and the other lesser gods of the Aztec religion. That is, in the image, she blots out the sun, she stands on the moon, she carries the stars on her cloak, and she is held up by an angel. She is wearing blue, the color of the heavens, as if she has just descended from there.
Mary’s eyes are downcast in humility, and her hands are folded in prayer, indicating that she prays to someone else. To a Christian, her demeanor indicates that she might be reciting Luke 1:38: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord”. To an Aztec, her appearance shows that she is a woman and a virgin, not a goddess. After all, Aztec gods were depicted wearing masks, and she is not wearing a mask. Because she is wearing her hair loose, she signals that she is a virgin. On the other hand, the bow at her waist is a sign that she is a pregnant woman, and a kind of flower which indicated perfection (the quincunx) is located precisely over her womb.
Mary’s skin indicates that she is neither a Spaniard nor an Aztec. Instead, she is a mestizo, a woman of both races. In the Aztec culture, people wore symbols of the gods around their necks. The brooch at Mary’s neck has only one symbol: the cross.
Put all those pictograms together, and what do you get?
Behold a mere woman who is greater than all of your gods! This humble woman is a virgin, yet she is also the Mother of God. She is not a Spaniard or an Aztec, but she is a Spaniard and an Aztec. This mother loves you as if you were her own child, so much that she came down from heaven to ask for a church to be built so that you can worship her Son, the Son of God who died on a cross for you.
How do you convince unbelieving people about supernatural truths? Sometimes God does the heavy lifting by performing signs and wonders. Perhaps the millions of miraculous conversions that occurred in Mexico were meant to humble the mighty, educated, and technologically superior, cradle Catholics from Europe and show how much God loves the poor, uneducated, and simple of heart.
Or perhaps there is a lesson in the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe for us today as we try to explain the supernatural mystery of the Eucharist to our skeptical family and friends. What false idols are keeping them enslaved to a pessimistic worldview, complicated and busy lives, and a willingness to sacrifice even human beings for the sake of their own pleasure? Are those of us who do believe too arrogant to share with them about our personal experiences of peace in God’s Presence at Mass? Are we afraid of appearing simple-minded by telling them that we believe God is really and truly present in the tabernacles and on the altars of every Catholic church, waiting for us?
God has already given us something far more powerful than a Marian apparition. By His grace, we have divine Revelation. God Himself has come among us to set us free from slavery to sin and death, and the story of His love is not just five hundred or two thousand years old; His steadfast love endures forever (see Ps 136), and His mercies are new every morning (Lam 3:23). His love for us is deeper than the love of our own mothers, it is more powerful than the sun, the moon, and the stars, and, believe it or not, it is as close to us as the nearest Catholic church.
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I converted to Catholicism while in the Navy. I worked a very arduous shift back then. Two eve watches, 8 hours later, two day watches, 8 hours later, two midnight watches. I was baptized between my eve watches. My last midnight watch was Saturday night, and I could now receive communion at the Sunday Mass. But that midnight watch was frantic. We detected 13 Soviet submarines 12 miles offshore up and down the east coast. Each submarine had 19 nuclear armed missiles. Three Soviet ships intentionally banged into our ships in the Mediterranean. And the Chinese had amassed 3 Army divisions in the area of their land closest to Taiwan. And we were handling all the highly sensitive top secret messages being transmitted because of all this activity. When the shift was over, I was completely drained, and just wanted to get a ton of sleep. But I did not want to disappoint the priest who personally gave me my RCIA lessons, and baptized me. So I went to the 9 AM Mass. When I received the Eucharist, I took 3 steps, and every cell in my body exploded with energy. I drove 3 hours to my parents house with this energy. The moment I stepped into the foyer, and closed the door, every ounce of energy completely drained away from me. I was absolutely bewildered, and thought to myself that it all happened when I received the Eucharist. At that exact moment, I physically heard Jesus say “IT IS my body – always treat it with reverence and respect”. I realized that I had the wrong concept of the Eucharist, and that Jesus was telling the true meaning and nature of it. This is an absolutely true story, and I did not imagine any of it.
That’s an amazing story thank you for sharing it.
We have friends who worked at a West VA Navy base. The local theory was that the surveillance work done there was the same sort you describe.
Very pertinent article, I have bought a couple of books on Guadalupe. Every Catholic should read and understand this miracle, it is quite astounding, as your article shows.
Regarding the Eucharist and the lack of Catholics who believe in the Real Presence, this unfortunately gets back to the Catholic preaching at Mass. Outside of my Grade School teaching, I can’t recall a single time this was preached at Mass. Frankly with all the stats that show Catholic lack of understanding you would think this would be a ongoing priority. Also at Mass the Alter server should be ringing the bells during the consecration, to emphasize the fact that miracle is occurring, with Bread and Wine transforming to the Real Presence, hopefully this being expressed correctly.
At the least, the earlier study was misleading as it seems “catholic” was applied to those who had left the Church and did not believe anything about it, much less details of belief such as the actual presence. I also believe the later study had some less foggy notions as to definition of “catholic”, but still the statistics are slanted by not asking the correct questions, or slanted in selection of questions. For studies on “Catholics”, that should be limited to those who actually practice the faith as laid out by Church teaching, instead of treating it as only a cultural/sociological thing of nebulous social club rules for membership.
Detailed presentations of the saints by Dawn Beutner open a wide range of rich realities. Truths that escape the mind of most.
She associates the Blessed Virgin appearing, not fully Aztec Indian as might be expected, nor white Spaniard. Mestizo. A mix of both. There’s an appeal to the unity of the human race, a madonna not quite Spaniard rather much like them. They practiced human sacrifice in countless numbers. Ms Beutner alludes to the idolatries of our modern, tech advanced culture who sacrifice their children for pleasure. The abortion that is cosmetic, primarily to retain a comfortable standard of living. More opportunity for pleasure.
Why insert the Eucharist, if not to challenge the unbeliever who in my own experience are more prone to consider the appearance of Mary to the Aztecs rather than place faith in the Real Presence? Communicants often say, a symbolic presence, I as often correct them on the Real Presence. I suppose many of today’s Catholics who favor abortion rights are more akin to Aztecs prior to Mary’s appearance. The great miracle is that her appearance drew the Aztec nation to worship and adoration of her Son.
We read: “How do you convince unbelieving people about supernatural truths?”
Today, Manichaeism is alive and well from the ivory tower all the way down to the Aztec/local abortion clinics. Aside from providential signs and wonders, within the academic community (our modernday shamans in cap and gown) it is also necessary to expose our artificial dualism between the spiritual and the material..
St. Augustine saw through all this. Augustine discovered Trinitarian reality, that “substance” is spiritual… “so far from being ultimate, ‘form’ and ‘matter’ alike [are] merely figments of the human mind; they were the spectacles through which men see the corporeal or object world. [Augustine’s] emancipation from the delusions of materialism and idealism [both!] followed as a matter of course and, with this, the revolution was complete” (Cochrane, “Christianity and Classical Culture,” 1940/1974).
The revolution? Today, to see around our modernday delusions and ideological dualisms is to see, freshly, what it means when Christ–speaking through the words of the priest as alter-Christi!–announces always anew: “THIS is my body…” Not this ‘bread’, but THIS!
To believe in the Real Presence we must first shed the dualisms of our spectacles which today dominate our institutions of “higher” learning, our politics, our economies, our entire culture, all of our Babel subcultures, and our self-referential selves.
When we notice ourselves as thrown backward/forward into a starkly Apostolic Age, then we will rediscover the supernatural, and the sacramental–and can even believe anew in the Real Presence.
Beautiful retelling of the Guadalupana with a delicate but succinct application to today’s pessimistic world view. Bravo!
Thank you Dawn. God, the Lord of Life, within Mary’s womb, a living tabernacle. Happy feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe!
I’m native American and Spanish. My parents took me to 8 years of Catholic school. During adoration in church, I experience an understanding that the host is the true Body of Christ. There were no visions, no voices just an understanding.
Jesus lets us all know that he is truly present in the host; however, the method will vary. The question is are we willing to follow Him?