#basilica Guadalupe

[zzraye]

Mexico City

[mexicoantiguo]

El edificio en la imagen es el Santuario de Guadalupe, también conocido como la Basílica de Guadalupe, México. en el año de 1938.

[apolllonia]

❤️‍🔥

[postcard-from-the-past]

Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in San Luis, Mexico

Mexican vintage postcard

[jaszo]

Basilica de Guadalupe

[gascontours]

Teotihuacán: Patrimonio Cultural y Espiritual.

Tres razones para visitar la zona arqueológica de Teotihuacán: Patrimonio Cultural: Teotihuacán es un sitio declarado Patrimonio de la Humanidad por la UNESCO, famoso por sus impresionantes estructuras como la Pirámide del Sol y la Pirámide de la Luna, que reflejan la rica historia y cultura de las civilizaciones mesoamericanas. Arquitectura y Urbanismo: La planificación urbana y la…

[chicosanchez]

Ya estoy tomando fotografías en lugares que podrían ser protagonistas de mi próximo libro. Si te gustaría conocer mis fotografías de la historia y de las tradiciones hispanoamericanas te invito a comprar La Historia Verdadera de los Hijos del Sol.

Cómpralo desde México en versión Kindle, pasta dura y pasta blanda versión blanco y negro desde este enlace: https://a.co/d/3o8epKm Cómpralo desde España en versión Kindle, pasta dura y pasta blanda versión blanco y negro desde este enlace: https://amzn.eu/d/1pKoEUX

Fotos 1 y 4 : Ángeles en la Basílica de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores de Soriano, Colón, Querétaro, México Fotos 2 y 4: San Juan Diego, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe y detalle general de la Iglesia de San Pedro en Tolimán, Querétaro, México

Fotos: https://chicosanchez.com

Gracias

[nyaa]

Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe March 3rd, 2016

[portraitsofsaints]

Happy Feast Day

Saint Juan Diego

1474-1548

Feast day: December 9

Patronage: America and Natives

Saint Juan Diego was an indigenous Mexican who embraced the Catholic faith that came with Cortez, spread by the Spanish friars. On December 9th, 1531, Our Lady appeared to him on Tepeyac Hill (Guadalupe), as he was going to Mass, asking for a church to be built on that spot. After convincing the skeptical Bishop of the apparition's authenticity, through Mary’s miraculous image on his tilma (cloak) and Castillian roses spilling out when he opened the tilma, the Bishop built the church. Thousands of conversions occurred, when the tilma, with our Lady’s image on it, was processed through Mexico City. St. Juan Diego spent the rest of his life as the tilma's caretaker and telling the apparition's story. The tilma can be seen today in the basilica in Mexico City.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase. (website)

[divinum-pacis]

December 12, 2023: Mexico City, Mexico A pilgrim holds an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the square of the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe during the annual Virgin of Guadalupe feast day Photograph: Quetzalli Nicte-Ha/Reuters

[sisitrip]

"The End is Nai"

Gallavich A.U.gust

Sigh. I missed the Gallavich A.U.gust 2024 @gallavichthings week for supernatural themed works. So, I'm just flinging this out there because it's my first demon related work and it is mess-ay.

That said, I had fun. Hope you enjoy "The End is Nai."

________________________

“Father, please take these feelings from me or end my life as your servant,” Mickey whispered, slipping inside the cool building. A blasphemous plea coming from someone who does not pray. But, it was critical. 

His desire could end his life in this church today. 

The familiar pew creaked softly under his weight as if in greeting. It wouldn’t be far off to say he and this church knew each other well. They should. Together, they’d killed enough demons in its walls to make them old friends.

Basilica de Guadalupe’s beautiful stone structure swam with the cloying scent of incense. But, the few parishioners in attendance couldn’t smell it like he could. The simple chemical warning told his senses that a malevolent presence was near. He could practically feel the target. It was close.

A sudden press of cold smoked air painfully tightened the skin all over his body.

“Why do the churches in Mexico keep using the Three Kings Pontifical Blend? That incense smells like poor choices dipped in potpourri. I prefer Will & Baumer. The French variety, mind you.”

Nai’s lofty comment startled him more than his materialization next to him. Caught unaware for the first time in years, he cursed softly and turned to the demon, telling himself not to be impressed by what he saw. Instead of a vicious battle face, he was met with a soft smile and curious green eyes. It rattled him that Nai didn’t seem ready to fight, especially since it was their job to kill each other.

“Prefer the Gloria F8 blend myself,” he finally mumbled, heart speeding. He allowed himself to gaze at Nai’s straight, fiery red hair. It was lightly waved at the root, as if fighting to curl. He wondered if curls would suit Nai and if they would feel as soft as he imagined. 

“Oh my, a non-traditionalist.” Nai tilted his head in a disarming way and continued with a purring that had him rooted to the spot. “I wonder what your bosses in Citta del Vaticano would do if they knew. Flagellation, hopefully? The rope enthusiast in me is practically rigid at the thought.” A slow smile spread across Nai’s perfect features.

He stiffened. Flirting? In a church? Nai shifted toward him, bringing the full power of that face to bear down on his indifference. In response, his tattoos grew heavy on his skin, warming the air in anticipation of an attack. 

“My bosses ain’t none of your business,” he said, making the mistake of looking Nai in the eyes. 

He was immediately lost.  

The taste of chocolate entered his mouth, rich and thick. It was mixed with the slight savory taste of peanuts, caramel and something else. Something even sweeter than chocolate. 

“Nougat,” Nai whispered knowingly, the cold smoke scent radiating off him as he inched closer. “Creamy nougat. A main ingredient in your favorite candy bar.”

He gritted his teeth. The flagrant invasion of his senses triggered a small tremor, showering dust from the ceiling. While he got a coating, Nai was spared. The dust floated in a corona-like crown around the demon’s head, as if unwilling to settle on something so unholy.

“Sensory infusement of a candy bar is entry level at best,” he said disdainfully, brushing dust off his shoulders. “Are we dehydrated? There’s a bowl of water in the back. Help yourself.”

Nai’s verdant eyes danced with amusement. “I’ll be saying ‘no thank you’ to the offer of lethally blessed water. And to prove I’m less violently inclined than you, you should know I’m utterly wounded by how unimpressed you are. We can’t have that. Let me try again.”

The taste of sour cherry, silkily warm, filled his mouth. Not just the sour cherry, but also the sweet dough surrounding it and the butter it was tossed in. He could even taste the dollop of sour cream. Vareniki. A dish his mother made for him when he was a sick child. Before she abandoned him. He blinked, stunned. 

“Ah, a direct hit,” Nai whispered, delighted. “Maybe I’ll make vareniki for you one day. Just like your incubator used to mak-”

He grabbed the front of Nai’s white linen shirt, fisting it hard. 

“She was my mother. Not a fucking incubator,” he said through his teeth. “Watch yourself, dyavol.”

Nai merely smiled at him, unbothered. “I should give you the same advice. Your tattoos are about to set this place on fire.” 

The air around them grew hotter and the wood varnish on the pews began to bubble and smoke in reaction to the energy his tattoos were emitting. He had to calm down, but Nai was making that impossible with his proximity and his smile. Incredibly, Nai inched closer still and their thighs ghosted against each other. He forced himself to let Nai’s shirt go and instead simply stared at him while he was sized up as well. He fought the urge to smooth his hair.

“You have a black ring around your irises,” Nai murmured, leaning in a little and stunning his senses. “Which one of us gave you that?”

He let Nai sweep a bit of dust from his temple and resisted leaning into the touch. 

“Vorter.”

Nai sighed while running his eyes greedily over his face. 

“Oh, he is particularly nasty, that one. You might not believe this, but I severed my bond with him after what he did to your Ignatius. Tell me, has he recovered the use of his sight?”

Another tremor. This one was strong enough to rattle the stained glass windows. 

“No thanks to Vorter. And what do you mean bond? Bond like what, like a … boyfriend bond?” He was sweating.

Nai chuckled and dragged his gaze up and down his body, pale lashes sweeping his cheeks prettily.

“We're no different than the bleating cattle you protect. We prefer companionship too.”

He stiffened. “Fuck you. People aren’t cattle and neither am I.” 

Nai sniffed the air between them, putting an arm around the back of his seat. The sensitive skin between his shoulders sang from the whisper of Nai’s tracing thumb. A simple touch and he's lost again. God, help him.

“Oh, I agree. You're like a spring lamb and smell just as sweet. Even your anger is intoxicating to my senses. The things you make me imagine, Mikhailo.”

Nai offered up his name delicately for the first time, like a hot house flower opening for the briefest moment. They stared at each other as the church started to violently shake around them. 

“Looks like your time is up,” he whispered as Nai grimaced in pain. The church’s air intensified its invisible defense system, pulling small grains of black sand from Nai’s freckled cheeks where he brushed them off like so many flies. 

“So it seems.” Nai stood, all six feet of him. “No matter though. I think this little experiment was a success.” 

With a soft, inward flex of air, Nai apparated midwalk into the aisle, startling a veiled parishioner. She stared in horror from behind her black lace veil and crossed herself. If only it was that easy to kill Nai’s kind.

“What experiment?” he called after Nai, tattoos no longer heavy, but sliding around his skin ready to be weaponized. He didn’t want this to be over yet.  

“Proximity test. I wanted to see how long we could be face to face before it became … unpleasant,” Nai called back, still walking. 

He rolled his eyes. 

“You know what happens when you get near one of us. It’s been established since the beginning of time.”

Nai turned and walked backwards with a smile that slowed the pace of his heart. Even though Nai should be repugnant for simply being what he was, he couldn’t see anything but his beauty. He was certain of nothing anymore.

“Oh, I’m aware of what happens to your ancient markings in our presence. I didn’t mean that type of proximity.” 

He stepped into the aisle too, shaking dust out of his hair. The church growled from its rafters to its foundation, pulling screams from the few parishioners. He barely heard it.

“Then what kind of proximity test?” he asked, desperate to keep Nai a few more moments. 

Nai stopped and the church thumped hard on its foundation, sending the congregants running for the back exits.

“My proximity to the man and not the Vatican weapon.” Nai’s jovial smile slipped and his confusion was plain. “It’s just that, really it's a bit, you probably wouldn’t understa-” 

“Today, dyavol,” he interrupted, tattoos singing to be let loose.

The confusion fled Nai’s face completely and all that was left was soft, vulnerable wonder.

“I …,” Nai smiled ruefully. “I didn’t expect to like you.”

The church rumbled hard around them, sending small pieces of painted stone ceiling to the floor. A crack signaled a larger piece coming loose above him, opening the roof to send a beam of sunlight directly onto Nai, bathing him in a beatific glow. Mesmerized, he forgot to duck, not that he would have cleared the space in time. But, the impact he expected never came. He looked up and the stone slab, about thirty feet wide and possibly weighing a ton, hovered in the air, held there by two of Nai’s relaxed, raised fingers. With a gentle flick, the slab shot into the confession box, shattering it. He almost felt sorry for the priest who’d been watching from the lectern with wide eyes. The poor man screamed and fled the pulpit. 

“I hope you’re not waiting for a thank you,” he said, brushing dust off his shoulders, heart hammering.

“I’d be disappointed if you did,” Nai replied, Its dark hilarity back in place. “I’ll settle for a drink the next time we cross paths though. Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Grand Cru. 1945 is my preference if you can find it.”

With that, Nai stepped out into the sunshine. The quaking church stilled, leaving him in dazed silence. 

He sighed as his tattoos resumed their place on his knuckles. The Sede was going to lose its shit over this. The story of how a demon got close enough to kill, yet walked away alive was going to be required at his Rome debriefing. Malene was going to kill him for the headache coming her way.

But, all he could think about was where he was going to find a Romanee-Conti burgundy, circa 1945.

[ffcrazy15]

“While we wish the new administration success in promoting the common good, the reports being circulated of planned mass deportations targeting the Chicago area are not only profoundly disturbing but also wound us deeply. We are proud of our legacy of immigration that continues in our day to renew the city we love,” Cardinal Cupich [archbishop of Chicago] said in his Jan. 19 remarks at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, where he was participating in a pilgrimage. [...]

“For members of faith communities, the threatened mass deportations also leave us with the searing question, ‘What is God telling us in this moment?’ People of faith are called to speak for the rights of others and to remind society of its obligation to care for those in need. If the indiscriminate mass deportation being reported were to be carried out, this would be an affront to the dignity of all people and communities, and deny the legacy of what it means to be an American.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Sign of the Day...

December 12th is the feast day for the saint Our Lady of Guadalupe... She is said to have appeared, four times in December of 1531, as a vision, to an Aztec peasant, Juan Diego, who was so dazzled and overwhelmed that he was converted to Christianity and then went on to convert the vast majority of his fellow countryfolk… She asked Juan to erect a shrine, but the local bishop demanded some kind of a sign before he would go along… Juan told the bishop that the vision had told Juan that he should gather roses, but before he even could, he opened his cape for the bishop, and hundreds of roses fell out… And just to cap that off, also an image of the Virgin Mary appeared on the inside of his cloak. The cloak is now kept there in the Basilica in Guadalupe. Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patron saint of Mexico, and is also called the “patroness of the Americas”… But she is also known worldwide… Here she adorns a steak house in Amsterdam… There's something cheesily wonderful about this neon glowingness..

[Mary Elaine LeBey]

+

Be my mother, I said to the trees, in the language of trees, which can’t be transcribed, and they shook their hair back, and they bent low with their many arms, and they looked into my eyes as only trees can look into the eyes of a person, they touched me with the rain on their fingers till I was all droplets, till I was a mist, and they said they would.

- Emily Berry, from “Canopy,” in Stranger, Baby

[alive on all channels]

[apple-blossom-jeans]

view from Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico City

[thepastisalreadywritten]

In 1531, a "Lady from Heaven" appeared to Saint Juan Diego, a poor Indian from Tepeyac, a hill northwest of Mexico City.

She identified herself as the Mother of the True God and instructed him to have the bishop build a church on the site.

As a sign for the bishop, she left an image of herself imprinted miraculously on his tilma, a poor quality cactus-cloth.

The tilma should have deteriorated within 20 years but shows no sign of decay after over 470 years.

To this day, it defies all scientific explanations of its origin.

In the eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the tilma, we can see reflected what was in front of her in 1531.

Her message of love and compassion, and her universal promise of help and protection to all mankind, as well as the story of the apparitions, are described in the "Nican Mopohua," a 16th-century document written in the native Nahuatl language.

There is reason to believe that at Tepeyac, Mary came in her glorified body and her actual physical hands rearranged the roses in Juan Diego’s tilma, which makes this apparition very special.

An incredible list of miracles, cures, and interventions are attributed to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Each year, an estimated 10 million people visit her Basilica, making her Mexico City home the most popular Marian shrine in the world and the most visited Catholic church in the world after Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

There is no under sketch, no sizing and no protective over-varnish on the image.

Microscopic examination revealed that there were no brush strokes.

The image seems to increase in size and change colors due to an unknown property of the surface and substance of which it is made.

According to Kodak of Mexico, the image is smooth and feels like a modern day photograph.

(Produced 300 years before the invention of photography.)

The image has consistently defied exact reproduction, whether by brush or camera.

Several images can be seen reflected in the eyes of the Virgin.

It is believed to be the images of Juan Diego, Bishop Juan de Zummaraga, Juan Gonzales-the interpreter, and others.

The distortion and place of the images are identical to what is produced in the normal eye, which is impossible to obtain on a flat surface.

The stars on Our Lady's Mantle coincide with the constellation in the sky on 12 December 1531.

All who have scientifically examined the image of Our Lady over the centuries confess that its properties are absolutely unique and so inexplicable in human terms that the image can only be supernatural.

Altogether, 24 popes have officially honored Our Lady of Guadalupe.

His Holiness Blessed John Paul II visited her Sanctuary four times: on his first apostolic trip outside Rome as Pope in 1979, and again in 1990, 1999 and 2002.

The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is celebrated on December 12th.

In 1999, Blessed John Paul II, in his homily given during the Solemn Mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, his third visit to the sanctuary, declared the date of December the 12th as a Liturgical Holy Day for the whole continent.

During the same visit, Pope John Paul II entrusted the cause of life to her loving protection and placed under her motherly care the innocent lives of children, especially those who are in danger of not being born.

—

Patronage: Americas, Central America, Diocese of Colorado Springs Colorado, Diocese of Corpus Christi Texas, Diocese of Dodge City, Kansas, Estremadura Spain, Diocese of Gallup New Mexico, Mexico, Diocese of Nashville Tennessee, New Mexico, New World, Diocese of Orange California, Diocese of Phoenix Arizona, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Diocese of Sacramento, California, Diocese of Sioux City Iowa, Spain.