Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent

Optional Memorial of St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin

St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin (1474–1548) was a humble Indigenous man from near Mexico City. After his conversion to Christianity, he lived a simple, devout life. On December 9, 1531, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him on Tepeyac Hill, asking him to tell the bishop to build a church in her honor. Mary’s message of love and protection was confirmed through the miraculous image left on Juan Diego’s tilma—the image we now know as Our Lady of Guadalupe. He spent the rest of his life serving at the shrine and welcoming pilgrims.

St. Juan Diego is the patron of Indigenous peoples, evangelization, and all who feel small, humble, or unworthy, reminding us that God often chooses the simplest hearts for the greatest missions.

REFLECTION:

Isaiah speaks to the deep truth of human life: we are fragile. Our plans, our strength, our sense of control—even the seasons we find ourselves in—can change suddenly, like flowers that bloom for a moment and then fade. Isaiah is not trying to discourage us; he is reminding us that we were never meant to anchor our hope to things that wither. Instead, our hope rests on the God whose word endures forever, whose promises outlast every fear and every storm.

This message comes alive again in the story of St. Juan Diego, a humble, poor, ordinary man whom Heaven chose for an extraordinary mission. When Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to him in 1531, Juan Diego felt his own fragility deeply—he saw himself as “a small rope, a tiny ladder, a leaf of grass.” In other words, he understood exactly what Isaiah meant: we are like grass. We feel unworthy, too small, too weak to carry God’s message.

Yet Mary spoke to him the same truth Isaiah proclaimed: What is fragile in us does not limit what God can do through us.

Mary’s message—“Am I not here, I who am your Mother?”—became a living sign that God’s love stands forever, even when everything else feels uncertain. Juan Diego could have said no. He could have believed his own smallness. Instead, he trusted a word that came from God, and because of that trust, millions came to faith.

Advent invites us into that same trust. We may feel like grass—fragile, overwhelmed, unsure of our place in God’s plan. But God does not depend on our strength; He depends on our willingness. Mary did not see Juan Diego as too small. God did not see Israel as forgotten. And He does not see us as hopeless or insignificant.

Grass withers. Flowers fade. But God’s word—spoken in Isaiah’s prophecy, whispered by Our Lady to Juan Diego, and fulfilled in Christ—stands forever.

And because His word stands, we can stand. We can hope again. We can trust that God can do great things even through the smallest of us.