Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
/Our Lady of Guadalupe
12 December 2024
Today we observe with great joy the miraculous appearances, by which the Blessed Virgin Mary made herself known as the “ever virgin Mary, Mother of the true God through whom all things live” (cf. Office of Readings, Report by Don Antonio Valeriano). The appearance of Mary sparked massive numbers of conversions to the true faith in the one Catholic Church established by Jesus. Her appearance resulted in hundreds of thousands of souls leaving behind the falsehood of pagan worship and false religion. Her appearance resulted in souls believing in the love of God shown in Jesus Christ, who is the Savior of the world. To celebrate the Virgin today, and to do so in a way that pleases her and gives to Jesus what he is owed as God, means we must put behind ourselves false idols that get more attention that our soul and more attention than living our Catholic faith. To celebrate this feast day today in a way that is good means we must stop making excuses for living a weak life as disciples of Jesus.
Our Lady of Guadalupe has become so closely associated with the history of Mexico that, as one song says, to be Mexican is to be Guadalupan as something essential. But even beyond Mexico, this appearance of Our Lady has transformed our continent and our world, such that she belongs not only to Mexico and to Mexicans, but is the Empress of All the Americas. The number of conversions to Catholicism that resulted from her miraculous appearance in Mexico has led her to also be called the Star of the New Evangelization. This means she is invoked for the new proclamation of the Good News that must be made in our time since so many souls who once were Catholic have fallen into darkness and sin as they leave the Catholic Church, or as so many other souls still have never heard of the true Church where salvation is found.
To be clear, any time we honor Mary, like we do today on this great feast, it is never enough to stop with Mary. Mary’s role is to point us to her Son, Jesus the Savior. If we stop with Mary, or if we focus only on her or exclusively on her, then in fact we are not listening to the whole message of the gift that comes from God when some miraculous appearance takes place. To say this another way, if we think that the popular song means that it is enough to be Guadalupan, then we are not listening to what Mary wants us to hear. To be devoted to Mary means we must see that she leads us to Jesus. To be devoted to Mary must lead us to the One she points to: to Jesus the Son of God. We might add some words to that popular song and say: To be Mexican is to be Guadalupan, which is to be Catholic as something essential! If one thinks that it is enough to be Guadalupan, to simply honor Mary without reinforcing and building our life with Jesus, then we are making a catastrophic error that will not lead to our salvation in heaven. If one thinks that it is enough to be Guadalupan and simply to appear devoted and catholic on December 12, then we are missing the entire message of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We would be causing the Virgin sadness if we honoring her did not result in living more fully the catholic faith.
Two simple ideas come to my mind from the story of the appearance of the Virgin to St. Juan Diego. When Juan Diego first saw Our Lady of Guadalupe she called him “the humblest of my children” and she said that it was her ardent desire that a temple ber built on the hill.” And so, the two ideas are the virtue of humility and the construction of a temple.
First, we recognize that everything we have is a gift from God. And we owe Him everything in return. Humility, being humble like St. Juan Diego, means that we listen to the ways God speaks to us and comes to find us. He comes in our humble dedication to prayer. He comes in our commitment to attend and participate in all Sundays and holy day Masses. He comes in our moral living and in the way we work to remove sin from our lives. He comes with His grace in living a proper sacramental life, including following the important practice of marrying according to Christ in his Church. This humility to live marriage and family life as a sacrament places our entire life and our future on the solid foundation of Christ. In the humility of service to others, especially the poor, God comes to us with His blessing.
And God comes to us, His humble children, with a call to engage is some work. We are called to build a temple. But perhaps not exactly the same temple we think of on Tepeyac Hill. By humble living of our faith and the commitment of holy baptism, we are building ourselves into a temple! In baptism, the Holy Spirit is given to us to take up residence within us. And so, we should recognize that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. We are called to be beautiful temples dedicated to Christ. We honor God and the Virgin Mother when we guard and care for our soul and live as the temples we have been made to be. How senseless it would be to celebrate the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe, how senseless it would be to make visits to shrines (like the shrine in Mexico City or Oklahoma City), how senseless it would be to take the time to come here to church if we do not recognize ourselves as temples of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, in humility, we seek to guard this temple of the soul and body and we seek to make sure our children do the same.
May the intercession of the Virgin of Guadalupe encourage each of us to be more fully alive in her Son and to focus our efforts and attention where the Lady points us: to Jesus Christ and to fuller living of the gift of our Catholic faith.