OUR LADY OF SUYAPA
OUR LADY OF SUYAPA
Patron Saint of Honduras. Her party is celebrated on February 3
8 kilometers from Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, is the village of Suyapa. This denomination derives from the indigenous name “coyapa”, which means “in the water of the palm trees”.
Alejandro Colindres, a young and humble farmer, and an eight-year-old boy named Jorge Martinez returned to this village. Tired of working all day in the corn harvest, they were surprised by the night next to the Pilignon ravine. This was a good place to spend the night and there they lay down on the hard ground. Alejandro immediately felt that an object, apparently a stone, prevented him from adjusting his back. In the dark he picked it up from the ground and threw it away.
Curiously, when lying down again, he felt that discomfort in the same place. Feeling the object, he realized that it was the same, so this time he did not throw it but, intrigued by what had happened, he kept it in his backpack. In the light of dawn he discovered with surprise that the mysterious object was a small image of Our Lady carved in cedar wood.
The image of Our Lady of Suyapa is a small sculpture made of cedar wood, measuring six and a half centimeters high. Its carving is old and it seems that it was worked by some devoted fan of the Virgin. With a dark complexion, her face is graceful, oval, with round cheeks; fine and straight nose, and small mouth; in her eyes, she guesses something of the indigenous race. Touching her august little head with a crown, her straight hair falls, parted in two, on both sides of her forehead, to her shoulders. Her tiny hands, without intertwining, come together gently on her chest, in an attitude of prayer. Her clothing painted on her own effigy is a pink-colored robe,
which barely peeks out from the chest, as it is covered with a dark cloak adorned with golden stars. The entire image is surrounded by rays of gilded silver, set in stones, which close in the form of a number eight, and at the end of the upper rays, twelve stars halo the head of the image.
On November 28, 1777, the Ecclesiastical Council of Comayagua gave license to Don José de Zelaya “to work and build a chapel on his hacienda, located in the Suyapa Valley, to celebrate Holy Mass there.” The blessing of this hermitage, and the first mass, took place in 1780, the year it was built.
In 1853, Pius IX declared Our Lady of Suyapa Patron of the Republic of Honduras and February 3 was chosen as her feast day.
In the year 1954, an essentially Marian year, the third Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Monsignor José de la Cruz Turcios y Barahona, laid the first stone of what would become one of the largest sanctuaries in Central America, and awaits its future constitution. as a Sanctuary and National Basilica.
The current Sanctuary of Suyapa is 93 meters long, 43 meters high in its towers and 46 meters in the dome. Its diameter is 11.50 meters. And the width of the central nave is 13.50 meters.
As Pope John Paul II said very well in the Eucharist that he celebrated in Suyapa on March 8, 1983: “The same name, Mary, modulated with different invocations, invoked with the same prayers, pronounced with the same love… , the name of the Virgin of Suyapa has a flavor of mercy on the part of Mara and of recognition of her favors by the people”.
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