An Irie Latina from Barquisimeto, Venezuela participated in that city's famous annual procession of the Divina Pastora (Divine Shepherdess) on January 14th. She sent me some historical information about this event as well as her own personal feelings about the occasion which touches the lives of so many, each year. The history books have it that in 1703, a Capuchin friar in Seville, Spain by the name of Isidoro de Sevilla received a revelation through a dream showing him an image of the Virgin as the Divina Pastora. He later related a description of the image to an artist named Miguel Alonso de Tovar who produced a painting based on the friar's description. The depiction showing the virgin in a pastoral hat holding a boy in her left hand and a lamb in the right, was called the "Divina Pastora de Almas" and Isidoro de Sevilla later incorporated the Divina Pastora into a procession in 1703. A statue was later made in this image by Francisco Antonio Gijon, a sculptor, years later.
The story comes to Barquisimeto, Venezuela in 1790 where a statue of the Divina Pastora was delivered to a church in the the town of Santa Rosa. When it was decided to move the statue which was still in its packing crate to another location it was too heavy to be removed and it remained at this location which became its home to this day. Santa Rosa eventually became a neighborhood of Barquisimeto. Since then the statue has become associated with miracles of faith and healing and every year on January 14th it is commemorated through a procession taking it from its church in Santa Rosa to the Metropolitan Cathedral in Barquisimeto. On its way back to Santa Rosa it stops at many churches along the way. The procession is usually attended by more than two million people.
In the opinion of our Irie Latina from Barquisimeto, millions of people look to the Divina Pastora each year to provide them with the miracles needed in their lives and offer promises to her which they fulfill each year. Thousands of people from all over the world meet for this procession singing beautiful songs in numbers which grow larger every year. She feels it is the faith evident on the faces of these people which pull more and more of the masses toward God. Her own personal experience where her mother was cured of cancer after being gravely ill is her confirmation of these miracles. She attributes this miracle in her family to their abundance of faith and feels that her own faith has been strengthened now and forever. Hoping that what she has shared has made its way into your hearts she invites you to participate every year in the procession of the Divina Pastora for this great movement of faith. The photos below are her pictures from this year's procession.
(click to enlarge, pulse para agrandar)
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