The story of Guadalupe is also the story of an indigenous man, Juan Diego, who at the beginning tells Guadalupe, “I am a nobody.” He literally uses the term “piece of dung” or excrement. “You’re asking me to go to the bishop in Mexico City and tell him to build you a chapel on this hill, Tepeyac?” It sounds crazy to him. “I’m a nobody. Find somebody else.”
But, during the series of conversations he has with her, she continually refers to him as “my most beloved Juan Diego, my dear child.” And as a result, he gradually goes from being somebody who experienced himself as having no dignity to, finally, being eager to go to the bishop. “Let me go. I want to go.”
Not only that, but at a certain point in the story—when Guadalupe tells him that she needs to see him—he even avoids seeing her because his uncle is sick and he has to go look for a priest to give his uncle the last rites. He tries to sneak around her and, in fact, disobeys her. But that very act of disobedience in that story is also a reflection of how he’s gone from seeing himself as a nobody to seeing himself as somebody who is now even able to go against the wishes of the Virgin.
It is the story of somebody who goes from being an object of other people’s actions to somebody who is now capable of being the subject of his own actions and his own life. Why does that happen? The only reason is the relationship he develops with Guadalupe. It’s through that relationship, in which he comes to see himself as lovable and loved, that he becomes a self, an agent, a person.
This is very different from the way we tend to think of human agency in our individualistic society. We tend to think of relationships as burdens upon or limitations upon our agency. Whereas in the story of Guadalupe—as in the Latino community and in Christian faith—our human agency, our human dignity, our autonomy even, are not burdened by relationships; they are given birth by relationships.
I want to raise my children in such a way that they will have the strong sense of self to eventually disagree with me, and maybe even reject some of what I have taught them. But that can only happen to the extent that they’ve been raised in strong relationships of love. And also, by the way, to have the sense of self and strength that they don’t have to be beholden to their peers and to the culture and to the larger society.
I want them to be able to say, “No, that’s not what I think.” So that relationships are not limitations on freedom, but at least normally and ideally, are the source of real freedom.
ROBERTO GOIZEUETA is the Margaret O'Brien Flatley Professor of Catholic Theology at Boston College.
This article originally appeared in U.S. Catholic, a monthly magazine that explores faith in real life, and is reprinted by permission.
PHOTO CREDIT: Me haras un Templo by Jorge Sanchez Hernandez. Used with permission of artist.