Sonoma Valley family’s Virgin of Guadalupe shrine draws the faithful for annual celebration

It was six years ago that Antonia Villalva and her partner, Adolfo Hernandez, returning from a visit to their native Michoacan, first saw the Virgin Mary statue at a kiosk as they were approaching the U.S. border in Mexico.

There was something compelling about her serene face that called out. But they didn’t have enough pesos left to buy it, so they continued on.

The face followed them. Villalva said she couldn’t stop thinking about it. She remembers it was as if the statue was calling to her to bring it back home with them. So Hernandez turned the car around and bargained to buy the statue with 65 U.S. dollars.

She is the Virgin of Guadalupe, the beloved patron saint of Mexico, to whom they appeal for comfort, help and miracles.

The statue, several feet tall, was the largest and most beautiful of all the Virgin Mary statues at the stand; Mary was luminously painted wearing a red gown with a green cape.

Villalva’s grandparents in Mexico had a Virgin Mary statue just like it. From her small living room in a house along Highway 12 near Agua Caliente, she explained in Spanish that having one of her own gives her a good feeling, like she is keeping up the tradition. And she wanted to share the Virgin by placing her where everyone could see her, seek comfort from her and express their thanks.

At first, the statue occupied a corner in their living room. But over time, Hernandez’s friend Tomas Bernal suggested building a small outdoor shelter to protect her from the elements, and he assembled a work party to create the casita with warm wood paneling, black tile floor and pitched roof. The shrine, gently lit with string lights that beckon night or day, has come to be a fond landmark in the “Springs” area of Sonoma Valley.

Judging from the candles left, more than 300 people stop by throughout the year, at all times of the day or night, to kneel and pray for help and pay homage. They leave offers of flowers, jewelry and rosary beads, and they light candles with prayers etched for specific appeals.

“People stop by who are going on trips and bring flowers, asking her to take care of them. She’s become a symbol of safety for everybody we know,” said daughter Jennifer Hernandez, a 15-year-old student at Sonoma Valley High School. “Many people come with problems in their family. They bring a candle and light it for her and they pray for her.”

Some, she added, pray before they go to Mexico to visit family, that they will be able to return. And if and when they do come back, they come to the shrine to thank her.

The family provides a vase and access to a water hose but leaves the visitors to their prayers. Some will just pull up, pray without ever leaving their cars and quietly drive on.

Confident in the care of the Virgin, they say they don’t worry that the shrine will attract problems.

“No one has to ask permission to come see her,” said daughter Joanna Hernandez, 25, who like her mother makes beeswax candles for Oak Forest Design in Sonoma.

Only once has there been serious trouble. A few months ago they stopped by the statue, as always, to pray before going to work and saw with dismay that someone had wiped feces over Mary’s pretty face.

“We don’t understand why suddenly someone would do that,” she said, remembering that it was hard to clean her and that a neighbor helped because they had to rush to work.

But overwhelmingly, the Virgin is a shared object of adoration.

On Friday, Dec. 12, starting at 2:30 p.m. and going until about 6 p.m., up to 200 people from throughout the Sonoma Valley and beyond will flock to the small yard for El Dia de la Virgin de Guadalupe, a national holiday in Mexico. They will gather around her to celebrate her day with a live band, special songs just for the occasion like “La Guadalupana,” prayers and a potluck feast of tamales, hot chocolate, the warm fruit punch called ponche, and posole, a spicy soup.

Villalva and Hernandez, who also have two sons, Miguel Angel, 23, and Juan Carlos, 28, who is in Mexico, have hosted the celebration for years. Anyone is welcome to come. There is no charge, but many people bring food or pitch in to help pay for the band. Several Mexican restaurants and markets in the Springs area donate food.

Throughout the North Bay, the day is being marked with Masses, pageants and celebrations.

In Santa Rosa, hundreds come to St. Rose Church to pray, recite the rosary and leave flowers at the foot of an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on Dec. 11. In the evening they begin to gather and by midnight, after a blessing, Scripture reading and sprinkling of holy water, they hoist a three-dimensional statue of Our Lady affixed to a pole and begin a procession that will take them miles north, to Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Windsor. Up to 2,000 have joined the pilgrimage in years past.

Among them is Juan Garcia, a Santa Rosa father of four. Each year, he and a large group of friends gather at El Rancho de la Guadalupana south of Santa Rosa, where there is a small covered shrine with a picture of Our Lady. They offer flowers, pray and then get on horses and ride north to join the big procession in north Santa Rosa. Garcia, 49, bears a large banner of the Virgin.

“I’m a believer,” he said, explaining his commitment to making the middle-of-the-night journey each year.

He said he believes his father escaped death because of her. He was only about 7 years old when his dad was arrested in Mexico and sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit, Garcia said. Just before the execution, he prayed to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Not long after, his father was exonerated and set free.

“I feel good. I believe it and I believe God is the reason I’m here, too,” Garcia said, asserting that his own prayers for health after a serious illness four years ago have been answered.

In Mexico, the Virgin of Guadalupe is adored. It is believed she appeared to the humble Juan Diego, the first indigenous American Roman Catholic saint, at the hill of Tepeyac in Mexico City. She asked him, in his native tongue, to build a basilica at that site. The archbishop did not believe him and asked for proof with a miracle. The first miracle was a healing of Juan’s uncle. The second was when the apparition of Mary again came to Juan Diego and told him to gather flowers from the top of the hill. He found roses, even in December, which the Virgin arranged in his peasant garment or “tilma.” When Juan Diego opened the garment before Bishop Zumárraga on Dec. 12, 1531, the flowers fell to the floor, and an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe was seared into the fabric. Our Lady of Guadalupe is also known as the Dark Virgin because she appeared with the same dark skin as Juan Diego and many of the natives of Mexico.

That is deeply significant, said Father Moses Brown, assistant pastor of St. Rose Church, because it was an image the native people could relate to. She appeared after the fall and destruction of the native culture by the Spanish, who brought with them an image of the Virgin Mary who was “white as snow.”

“The events of the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe really shape Mexican history,” said Father Brown, who leads the Our Lady rituals and celebrations. “There is no Mexican history without it. Everything we identify as Mexican is, in some way, related to these events. It is so profound. In Mexico, her image is everywhere. You see her on buses, at the post offices, in people’s homes.”

Maria Elena Perez, who was born in Michoacan but left as a small child, coordinates the Our Lady of Guadalupe celebrations in Windsor, which begin when the procession arrives long before dawn.

Many people, in a culture that reveres motherhood, look to her as a soft mother figure, she said of the Virgin. It is easier for them to ask her to intercede with God on their behalf.

“They love her so dearly in their hearts,” said Perez, who credits prayers to Our Lady for bringing her son back safely from three tours of duty in Iraq, including the deadly Battle of Fallujah. “They want to show their gratitude.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.