We continue Father Lawrence’s photo tour of the Province of Saint Joseph based on the liturgical calendar. This mosaic from the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC has today’s saint, Juan

Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC.

Diego, the visionary of Our Lady of Guadalupe, at the forefront of a host of saints of the Americas. The friars serve at the Shrine in various ways as it is directly across the street from the Dominican House of Studies.

The original tilma of Juan Diego is hanging in the basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico. It is over 450 years old but shows no sign of decay, which seems a miracle in itself as it is made of woven maguey fiber that disintegrates after 20 years. The image has not faded. An analysis of the image carried out by Richard Kuhn, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, and another by two NASA researchers, concluded that the colorings in the image were of unknown origin, and do not belong to any vegetable, animal or mineral. They are not synthetic. The researchers didn’t know what they are.

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A satellite imaging expert named Aste Tonsman studied the image using image digitization; he was amazed when studying the corneas of the eyes of the image that he saw in them a series of people and objects–an Indian unfurling a tilma before a priest, another young man, an Indian with his lips open and his hands together, pieces of furniture, a ceiling arch, and so on.

You can access the collection of photos of the Province taken by Fr. Lew here and as well as his own page where he displays his best photos taken throughout the world. Fr. Lew’s sermon for today can be found here.