These men lost track of him and returned to the bishop, saying that Juan had invented the whole thing. The bishop still did not heed this revelation, but he was intrigued enough to order his servants to follow Juan Diego to see if it really was a heavenly lady with whom he was conversing. He did so the next day with the same result. She instructed him to go back to the bishop and make the request again. She replied that she had chosen him to be her messenger (after all, the foolish of the world confound the wise and proud 1 Cor 1:27). Upon returning to the Lady, Juan Diego asked her to send someone else, a person of higher standing who could be more persuasive and believable. He did so, but the bishop, while not a skeptic, was a prudent man and asked for proof. She wanted this indigenous neophyte to go to the bishop and make this request. She revealed that she was the “true mother of the true God” and that she desired a temple or shrine to be built on this spot in her honor, which in former times had been sacred to the goddess Theotenantzin (“the mother of the Gods”). She addressed him tenderly, asking him where he was going. Looking around, he suddenly saw a beautiful young woman, a queen, or at least a princess. As he passed over a rather desolate and barren hill about three miles from Mexico City, he heard strange music, which he could neither locate nor identify. The story goes like this: In December 1531, ten years after the conquest of Mexico at the hands of Hernán Cortés, a native convert was making his way to his catechism class. It is also in some ways achingly familiar, drawing on tropes common to the Christian tradition. The story of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Guadalupe, Mexico is one of high drama and therefore eminently memorable.
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