Saint Joseph School students in grades kindergarten through nine celebrated the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12.
The costumed eighth-graders re-enacted the story of St. Juan Diego, a peasant to whom the Blessed Mother Mary appeared in 1531 in a remote region of Mexico. She appeared as Our Lady of Guadalupe, an Aztec princess with dark skin and native clothing, expectant with Jesus, and directed Diego to make sure a church was built in her honor on Tepeyac Hill near Mexico City. He told priests and a bishop the story of the vision and request, but the bishop didn’t believe that Mary appeared to a poor man.
So, Diego returned to the place where the apparition appeared, pleading to Mary, and she reappeared, asking him to gather roses in his cloak for the bishop. The flowers were impossible to have grown in that region and in that season without a miracle. When St. Juan opened his cloak for the bishop, the roses fell to the ground and on the cloak – or tilma – was an image of Mary.
The Saint Joseph School students sang a traditional folk song and those in grades kindergarten through six participated with the upperclassmen in games and recited a decade of the rosary.
