A few days ago I was talking with some friends of mine about the awesome power of the different miracles our faith has had. It is interesting how there are so many wonderful miracles that have happened which scientists have not been able to explain and it is kind of sad to think about how not many Catholics hear about them. One that is more well-known, but still incredible to my friends and I is the miracle which Our Lady of Guadalupe left Juan Diego... Juan Diego's tilma.
For those who do not know about this miracle here is a bit of a synopsis of the story behind it.
On December 9, 1531, Our Lady appeared to Blessed Juan Diego who was a recently converted Aztec. She asked his to go to the Bishop and request him to build a church for her on the barren hill of Tepeyac which is now part of Mexico City. Our Lady wanted to show her merciful love to all of her children. The prudent Bishop asked Juan to ask the Lady for a sign. Juan did so and Our Lady promised to give him the sign. On December 12, Our Lady again appeared to Juan on Tepeyac Hill and told him to pick the Castilian roses which miraculously appeared there and bring them to the Bishop as a sign for him to believe her request. Juan gathered the roses into his tilma and brought them to the Bishop. He opened the tilma to show them and, to everyone's astonishment, the Image of Our Lady appeared on it. The Bishop then built the church as Our Lady had requested and ten million natives were converted and baptized to the one, true faith within the next 10 years.
Scientists today cannot really explain the image on Juan's tilma. The fabric that the tilma was made with was a type of cactus which is supposed to disintegrate between twenty-sixty years, but after about four hundred fifty years it is still intact. Most shockingly about that is the fact that there is nothing covering it to protect it from disintegrating. When looking under a microscope scientists could find no proof of brush strokes to prove that it was painted on. The image seems to increase in size and change colors due to an unknown property of the surface and substance of which it is made. According to Kodac, the pciture feels more like a photograph, but photography was not invented until three hundred years after the miracle happened. After multiple times of trying to reproduce the image no one has been able to succeed in making another exact replica. I personally find the eyes of this image the most amazing of all the other scientific facts. If one is looking at the eyes of the image very closely then it would be easy to see a reflection of images of people believed to be Juan, the Bishop, the interpreter, and a few others. It is believed that the reflection shows the reactions of those in the room as Juan's tilma was opened. The distortion and place of the images are identical to what is produced in the normal eye which is impossible to obtain on a flat surface. Lastly, the stars in the sky show the exact way the constellations were the night of the miracle.
Just one example of how awesome the Catholic faith really is.
No comments:
Post a Comment