The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Continuing with our Advent unit study, today we celebrated this beautiful feast with a few simple projects.

First we read the Tomie de Paola book, The Lady of Guadalupe. I love this story about Juan Diego and his vision of Mary - who was later honored as the Patroness of the Americas.

And since the boys noticed in The Legend of the Poinsettia that Lucida's family had a lovely shrine set up with candles for the Blessed Mother, we set about making one of our own. It is extremely humble, but it was easy to make and is just the right size for our prayer corner:

Starting with a miniature disposable loaf pan, I bent and molded it into the shape (more or less) of a shrine. On the back wall I taped a holy card showing the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Just below the card I placed one of our favorite "starry" candles. (Note: Bill warned me this might melt the plastic card, so I'm keeping a close eye on it.) To the right and left are two more candles for good measure - one can never light too many candles! Actually the aluminum backdrop illuminates the vision quite nicely!

Next we made a poster of Our Lady in the image as seen by Juan Diego:

I had some extra cake boards, and a bunch of burlap leftover from a Lenten craft. We wrapped the cardboard circle with the burlap and then stapled it all around the edges, trimming off the excess. Bookworm colored an image from the coloring book, Mother of God, and we taped it to the center of the board. Lastly we attached some rose stickers. The burlap is reminicent of Juan Diego's rough tilma, the image represents how he saw Our Lady, and the roses recall those that fell from his open arms before the Bishop:

"Suddenly he realized that no one was looking at the beautiful roses on the carpet. They were all looking at his tilma.

"Juan Diego looked down. His rough cactus-fiber tilma had been changed into a painting of the Lady just as he had last seen her at the foot of Tepeyac."

We added our poster to our Mexican corner, just above the stained glass poinsettia and our God's Eyes from yesterday.

I was hoping later today to enjoy a cup of Mexican hot chocolate for tea, but with Crackerjack's CCD in a few hours and a cookie swap later this evening, there's no time today, I'm afraid! Perhaps we'll try again tomorrow. :)

I wish you a Blessed Feast and a Happy Evening!