It looks like a miracle to me! The Virgin of Guadalupe has engraved her own image on a tree in a NJ commercial district. We are truly blessed.
Now in case you are not up on Our Lady of Guadalupe, here is the quick run down.
You see, in the early years of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the clergy arrived and found that they were having a little trouble converting the indigenous people of the region to the word of our lord. I mean, the Spanish arrived, slaughtered tens of thousands, destroyed ancient cities, sent all the gold back to Europe, set up hacienda systems in which Spaniards got to own the land that the indigenous people had lived and worked for thousands of years…. And for some reason, some of these indigenous folks were resistant to the true word of God that the Spanish brought with them.
But the mother of Jesus really really wanted to bring these folks to God. So one day, in 1531, she appeared to Juan Diego, a “peasant” descendant of the Aztec people, and spoke with him in his native language of Nauhatl, and asked him to build a church for her in that spot. Well Mr. Diego went back to town and told the Spanish Archbishop about running into the mother of God while out for a stroll, and the Archbishop instructed him to go back to the site and ask for a miracle. Well, he went back, and the mother of God told him to collect some flowers, (which were Spanish roses) and he did, and gathered them in his cloak. When he got back to the Archbishop, he spilled out the flowers, and sure enough, the brown-skinned virgin had left her own image imprinted on the inside of that cloak. And the rest is history.
Nowadays, folks travel, often hundreds of miles, sometimes on their knees, to pay homage to the blessed virgin.
And once you finally get inside, they put you on moving sidewalks so that you don’t try to stay too long, gazing at the image left on Juan Diego's cloak.
