Secure...in the crossing of arms

Feast of Our Lady

of Guadalupe

December 12*

 

*Since the Feast date falls on Sunday this liturgical year, 

it will not be celebrated on the 12th.

Churches with this namesake, however, may choose to celebrate Saturday or Monday.

 

 

 

 

   “Am I not here, I, who am your Mother?  Are you not under

my shadow and protection?  Am I not the source of your joy? 

Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? 

Do you need anything more?  Let nothing else worry you, disturb you.”

These were the words of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St Juan Diego when she appeared to him in 1531. They are still relevant today as then-Archbishop (Cardinal) Burke reminds us in a homily he gave in 2005 at the new Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe that he helped establish in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Some insights...

“…our late and most beloved Pope John Paul II placed the mission of the Church in America, at the beginning of the Third Christian Millennium, under the protection of the Virgin of Guadalupe and commended her to us as the Star to lead us to Christ and, in Christ, to the conversion of our personal lives and the transformation of our world.”

He calls this apparition ...“the mystery of the Visitation as it was experienced on our continent in 1531. The woman clothed with the sun, bearing the Infant Savior, the Anointed, in her womb, appeared to St Juan Diego, from December 9 to 12, 1531, in order that a chapel be built in which she might manifest the all-generous and never-failing merciful love of God for us, incarnate in her womb and alive for us in the Church, above all, in the Sacrament of the Real Presence, the Holy Eucharist.”

He reminds us that “…she has desired to remain with us always, in order that the mystery of the Visitation might be always new for us. She has miraculously left her living image on the tilma or mantle of Saint Juan Diego. In the magnificent basilica built to her honor, in which the tilma of St Juan Diego is enthroned, the Mother of God continues to visit pilgrims and to announce to them the great mystery of God’s all-loving and never-failing mercy.”

 

 

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!