Advent is a time to believe in impossible things.  Prophetic writers foretell of a virgin birth, and scriptural passages that dominate our liturgical gatherings this month offer scenes in which wolf and lamb, lion and goat, leopard and calf coexist in peace.  Though it is not impossible to conceive of a world where predator and prey live in harmony, the biblical scenes avail us to the Messianic kingdom that only exists for those who believe in impossible things.  The image expands even further: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame leap with joy, the dumb speak, and the dead rise.  It is difficult for those who do not believe in impossible things to imagine it.

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass there is a scene in which Alice, using logic and frustrated by effort, tells the White Queen that a person cannot believe in impossible things.  But the lady replies, “I dare say, you haven’t had much practice.  When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day.  Why, sometimes I believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”  Advent is an invitation for us to pass through the looking glass or look to see things in a new way.  The central story of this season is about the Virgin of Nazareth who was visited by a celestial creature announcing she would be the mother of God.  Knowing that it was impossible, she accepted the angel’s explanation that nothing is impossible with God.

Each year on December 8 and 12, the Catholic Church celebrates two important Advent days that honor her: the Immaculate Conception, patronal feast of the United States, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, patronal feast of the Americas.  The former represents a dogma or teaching, while the latter points to an event.  The event took place near Mexico City over three days in late 1531 as a pregnant native queen miraculously appeared four times to a poor indigenous peasant, Juan Diego, who recently converted to Catholicism, and once to his sick uncle. Her image resembled the Aztec mother goddess of fertility and earth.   Occurring while Spanish forces conquered “the new world,” there were numerous impossible things that transpired during those days, including Castilian roses growing on a Mexican hilltop in December, a tilma that captured the beautiful lady and details of a miraculous scene reflected through her eyes, and a commitment by the territorial bishop from Castile, Spain to build a shrine to commemorate the event and the lady.

Appearing nearly halfway between Canada and Argentina, she is adopted by all parts of the new land and claimed to be Our Lady of the Americas.  Catholics identify her as Mary, Mother of God, as she appeared pregnant in Advent and encouraged Juan Diego to connect his native spirituality with his newly adopted faith.  But many indigenous people theorize her to be more than the mother of God; they believe her to be a pre-Hispanic Aztec goddess or divine mother of new life and land who supersedes all other gods (revealed by her image that stands on the moon, surrounded by the sun, and wrapped in the stars).  Whether she is a feminine God or the mother of God, she is a divine loving presence that bridges spiritual and cultural diversity and pays tribute to the old while giving birth to the new.  She brings forth a new era of faith in a new land in a new testament and new liturgical season that ushers in new life.

Whether you believe Our Lady of the Americas to be the mother of God or God herself, you have stepped through the looking glass into the Messianic kingdom, a place of prophecies, where impossible things occur.  It is one of the marvels of our faith, our land, and our Advent—and it is re-presented to us each year at a wonderful time to believe in impossible things.