When one thinks of pilgrimage to Mexico, one pictures the sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The hill of Tepeyac was once upon a time in the countryside, but it was long ago swallowed up by the immense urban sprawl that Mexicans today call the Federal District.
This means, essentially, that a trip to the sanctuary is a matter of taking a fast and efficient underground train. You emerge from the station onto a large esplanade at the end of which stands the conglomeration of buildings that is the sanctuary: the Old Basilica on the Hill where Our Lady appeared, and the vast New Basilica at its foot, where the miraculous image imprinted on St Juan Diego’s tilma, or cloak, is housed today.
As you stand on the esplanade, you may notice a few people advancing towards Guadalupe on their knees. Sometimes you see middle-class ladies of a certain age attended by solicitous younger people who lay cushions on the pavement to make their abuela’s pilgrimage that little bit easier. And you realise that this is the way pilgrimage is done – on one’s knees. And your mind turns to that other shrine of which most people outside Mexico have never heard – Plateros.
Plateros (the name means “silversmiths”) is not exactly in the middle of nowhere. It lies in central Mexico about an hour’s drive north of Zacatecas, in the state of the same name. Zacatecas is one of the most beautiful of Mexico’s many historical colonial cities, and an excellent base for a week’s stay. A former silver mining town, it is rich in architecture, and has some excellent museums.
The town of Plateros, by contrast, is small, and rather untidy looking. But you are there for one reason, and one reason only, and that is the sanctuary, which is a not very big colonial church with an adjoining building, the plaza in front of it accessible through a neo-Gothic stone gateway carved out of lovely pink Zacatecas stone.
The church contains the tiny statue (no more than about six inches high) of El Sacro Niño de Atocha, an image of Our Blessed Lord in pilgrim’s costume, sometimes known as El Niño Azul, the Blue Child, because of the colour of his clothing. He wears a sombrero and carries a pilgrim’s staff. This is, of course, a Spanish devotion, brought to the New World at some point soon after the settlement of Mexico by the Spanish, though the earliest evidence of devotion to the Holy Child of Plateros dates to 1829. The church itself had been completed in its present form in 1790.
As some two million Mexicans make the pilgrimage to Plateros every year (it is the third most popular shrine in Mexico), you may well have to queue to get into the church. This rather banal act of waiting in line underlines that you have come somewhere important.
Once through the door, you are immediately aware of the concentrated power of prayer in the relatively small church, all directed to the high altar and to the Holy Child. You have come as a pilgrim (if you were a simple tourist, you would be more than bewildered by now) and you see the object of your search also dressed as a pilgrim, and you realise that He is the One who accompanies you on the road, and has accompanied you all your life through, to this point: truly, you have been led here by God Himself.
If the effect of entering the church of Plateros is astonishing, and it has to be experienced, what comes next is even more remarkable. Alongside the church is a building that is called El Salon de Retablos, the Hall of the Ex-Votos. These are the memorials left by pilgrims, their testimony of graces received and prayers answered, each one consisting of a picture and a few words, the picture, often painted on tin or glass, depicting the deadly peril from which the Sacro Niño has saved the devotee. Representations of car crashes, other accidents, sick children lying in bed, adults on operating tables, people on their knees before the Holy Child – the entire breadth of human suffering and worry is here.
The word milagro (“miracle”) occurs again and again, along with doy gracias (“I give thanks”). For God intervenes, and we are grateful; in the most desperate times, He accompanies us.
These pieces of naïve art are eloquent and moving witnesses to faith, love and thanksgiving, driving home to you that the miracle of all miracles is Christ in our midst.
Then you stumble out into the sunshine, drained but renewed by the experience of so much faith, so much love, and realise that from this point on your must start your life again, and that new beginning is now.
Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith is a contributing editor of the Catholic Herald
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