What I learned about Our Lady of Guadalupe

Yesterday was the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and I googled this piece which said, “In August 2017, two links circulated on social media that suggested that NASA had announced it had deemed Mexico City’s Our Lady of Guadalupe tilma (a cloak or mantle made of cactus fiber upon which her face is said to be imprinted) to be “living”, in that the image reacts to outside stimuli. Social media users shared links from RCatholics.com and Matrix Drops, the former dated 7 August 2017 and the latter with no easily discernible date. Together, the viral items suggested that indeed a discovery of some sort had taken place in early August 2017.”

While NASA did not really make this announcement, however, this is what I got from Google, “Prof. Phillip Callahan, a biophysicist at the University of Florida, discovered that the differences in texture and coloration that cause Our Lady’s skin to look different up close and far away is impossible to recreate. The tilma has shown characteristics startlingly like a living human body. In 1979, when Callahan, the Florida biophysicist, was analyzing the tilma using infrared technology, he apparently also discovered that the tilma maintains a constant temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the same as that of a living person.”

The most notable examination was a three-hour infrared photographic session by Callahan in 1981, who did note multiple layers of paint covering changes to the hands and crown, but came away with more questions than answers. Callahan found, for example, that most of the entire painting seemed to have been done with a single brush stroke.

It was found that the retinas of Mary’s eyes, like the human eye, expand and contract. Scientists have also found that the temperature of the cloth is always 36.6 degrees, the body temperature of a healthy person. The picture was also examined with a stethoscope, at which time scientists found a heart rate of 115 at her belly, corresponding to a pulse rate of a fetus. How could a piece of cloth have a temperature like a human being? NASA engineers have also found that the paint with which the image was made does not exist and never existed anywhere on earth

This ends my sortie in Google about what was written about Our Lady of Guadalupe. Suffice it to say that 2,000 years after our Lord Jesus Christ returned to heaven and later the Virgin Mary ascended into heaven and was crowned Queen of Heaven, later she returned to earth as our Lady of Guadalupe, our Lady of Lourdes, or our Lady of Fatima and millions of tourists every year come to visit these sacred sites. All I can say at this point in our life is that for many of us Catholics, the Blessed Virgin Mary continues to live not only in heaven but helps us here on earth. Hence, there are so many unexplained events on this earth that only God knows about, which we would only find out when we enter God’s kingdom when our time also comes.

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Finally the 2019 Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) is over. According to The Philippine STAR “fireworks crackled and lit up the sky, as dazzling as the nation’s historic finish, and capping its date with destiny… A far cry from the gloom of a stormy opener, the 30th edition of the regional sporting show folded up in a splash of colors on a clear December night at the expansive New Clark City Athletics Stadium in Capas, Tarlac, yesterday.

“The Philippines ruled majority of the rest and emerged the best.

“Fourteen years after basking in the glory of its successful hosting of the Southeast Asian Games, Team Philippines is the SEAG king again, winning it all in wire-to-wire, record fashion at home in a victory that was more a triumph of the spirit for a nation hungry for inspiration and hope and reduced to a mere spectator in the succeeding games after the “Miracle of 2005.”

“Singapore remained the king of pool for the eighth straight time and Vietnam dominated athletics and kurash and kicked its way to the football throne. Thailand conquered cycling and judo and soared in sailing. Indonesia made its mark in shooting and modern pentathlon, and Malaysia topped karate and gymnastics.”

However the Philippines emerged the best in the 30th SEAG! Congratulations to all athletes!