May Jesus Christ be praised and may his holy Mother pray for
us.
I saw her, and I wept.
In the summer of 2006, I was sent, courtesy of the Diocese of Charlotte,
to the city of Guanajuato in Mexico to study Spanish. While I was there I made a pilgrimage to
Mexico City and to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. And there I saw her, and I wept. I wept because as I gazed upon her miraculous
image, I knew that the mother of my Lord had come to me. Her image was not a painting. The ground on which I stood was not selected
by the diocesan properties commission.
This holy ground had been chosen by the Lord God Almighty and revealed
through his Ever Virgin All Holy Mother.
She had claimed it. The footsteps
of St. Juan Diego had walked where I now walked. Millions upon millions of pilgrims, popes and
prelates, priests and peasants, peoples of all nations had come here to see
Her. And when I saw her, I wept. Far from home, I found my mother. Perhaps it
is better to say that she found me, a pilgrim not only to the Shrine at Guadalupe,
but on my way to a Cathedral floor, to the imposition of apostolic hands, to
the Calvary that is the Altar, and to that holy pasture of the flock of
God. I had this sense on that day that I
stood in the presence of her miraculous image, that she had called me by name. With the tenderness that only a mother’s
voice can summon, my soul heard her summons to me.
Our Lady called St. Juan Diego by name. In the midst of an ordinary day, as he walked
to Divine Worship and sought to know the one who has loved him from all
eternity, Mary called him by name. She
made a request and she gave him a message.
On this ground, which had been stained for centuries with the blood of
human sacrifice, Our Lady wanted a chapel.
She wanted a church. She wanted a
temple that would be the foundation of the new city where the praises of the
Father and the sacrifice of the Son would be celebrated in the power of the
Holy Spirit. Our Lady was claiming the
land, and in Juan Diego, she was claiming the people for her Son.
I have been asked to speak today about Our Lady of Guadalupe
and the New Evangelization. Let us be
clear, dear brothers and sisters, there can be no new evangelization of the
world without radical and intentional discipleship. We must first respond to the call of the
Lord, to the call of Our Lady, and to the call of our Holy Mother the Church to
allow the grace of God to conform us to the image of Christ the Savior. Juan Diego only becomes a messenger of the
Most High, because he was first a disciple of the Lord. He can bring the message of Our Lady only
because he has listened to her. He can
bring the message only because he is first convinced that She has given him the
message. St. Juan Diego never proclaims
himself. The message the he brings is
not his own. He hands on to others, in
clarity and charity, the message that he has received. St. Juan Diego is a witness to the facts, but
also a revealer of the truth. He is the
recipient of divine grace and heavenly favor.
He is able to respond to Our Lady in obedience because humility reigns
in his soul. These are the conditions of
discipleship: obedience and humility.
St. Juan Diego is ever obedient and ever humble. He had gazed upon the face of the Mother of
God, yet he always showed respect and reverence to the Church and her
bishop. St. Juan Diego reminds us how we
are to be disciples before we can witness to the message of salvation. Our Lady
is the perfect disciple. She heard the
word of God and kept it. At Guadalupe,
Our Lady shows us how we are to be evangelizers as well.
First, at Guadalupe, Our Lady shows us that a culture is more
than just a language. In her miraculous
image, she takes unto herself the elements and customs of the culture that is
to be evangelized, purified by the light of the Gospel, so that her Son can be
better proclaimed and better received. She
does not simply speak to Juan Diego in his native language. She is revealed to him as a sister, a
mother. She is not an outsider. She has entered into the culture.
My parish is a least eighty percent Hispanic. However, most of the children in my parish
have only a basic knowledge of Spanish.
Most of them were born here.
Nearly all of them have been educated here. They are culturally Hispanic, more
accurately, they are culturally Mexican, but their primary language is English. I was asked by the Hispanic parents shortly
after I arrived in the parish to preach in English, as well as Spanish, at the
Spanish Masses. What was the reason for
this? The parents told me that they
wanted their children to understand the homily.
The culture is more than a language.
Even as the language changes, the customs and the faith and the piety of
the culture endure. Our Lady teaches us
at Guadalupe that a culture is more than the language. In order to evangelize, we must engage, but not
necessarily embrace the culture.
In Our Lady of Guadalupe, the people recognize their
mother. She speaks the truth. She reveals the will of God. There is no lack of clarity in the message
that Our Lady gives to Juan Diego. She
always speaks with a mother’s voice. She
approaches with love and tenderness. At
Guadalupe, Our Lady is taking possession of a mountain that had been the place
of human sacrifice. With love and tenderness, she is overcoming evil and hatred. At Guadalupe, we see evangelization as a work
of gentleness. It is the tender voice of
the mother that conquers the evil in men’s hearts. Never shying away from the truth, and never
being afraid to be bold in our proclamation, even so, Our Lady at Guadalupe
teaches us to evangelize with the gentle voice of a loving mother.
In the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady is
not the center. Her eyes are cast in
reverence of the Lord who is within her.
The black sash and the four-petal flower demonstrate that she is
pregnant. The appearance at Guadalupe is
the Visitation of the Lord. She draws us
to herself, so that she can bring us to Him.
Juan Diego is not the story of Guadalupe. Our Lady is not really the story of
Guadalupe. This is the story of Jesus
Christ. He is the focus. He is the one in whom we gaze upon the face
of the invisible God. He is the one we
preach. He is the one to whom we are
united in Baptism and in all of the Sacraments.
He is the one who leads us to the house of the Father. It is Christ the Lord whom we proclaim. Our Lady brings us to him. The Loving Mother makes us a gift to her Son,
and she makes her Son a gift to us. Mary
does not keep us for herself. She gives
us to the Lord Jesus, and then she gives us to his people.
As Our Lady draws us to the encounter with her Son, she sends
us out to reveal his love. Mary pushes
us along the missionary road. Sometimes
the mother walks ahead of her child, sometimes a protective step behind. When I was selecting the vestments for my
First Mass some two and a half years after my visit to Guadalupe, I had three
requirements. First, the vestment needed
to be white, because my first Mass was celebrated on Trinity Sunday. Second, some of the decoration needed to be
blue, as a sign of devotion to Our Lady, but also as a prayer that she would
protect my priesthood. And third, I
wanted an image of Our Lady on the back of the vestment. When I placed the order with a vestment
company in Mexico, the picture in their catalog was the image of Our Lady of
Perpetual Help, my favorite image of Our Lady. I realized a few days later that
I had only requested an image of Our Lady, not a particular one. I prayed to Our Lady and said, “You pick the
image.” Some weeks later, my vestment
arrived. It was not what I expected. I’ll admit I was a little disappointed at
first. I really love the image of Our Lady
of Perpetual Help, but it is the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that adorns my
vestment. I knew that she had made her
choice for a reason. I immediately
treasured the image and the vestment. It
is my wedding garment. It is my vesture
for the feast of heaven. With her image
behind me, Our Lady of Guadalupe pushes me on every step along the apostolic
road, whether to Galilee, to Calvary, and even unto Emmaus. Our Lady sends us out with the message of her
Son.
Our Lady of Guadalupe calls us by name. She teaches us that a culture is more than a
language. She speaks to us with the
gentle voice of a mother. She draws us to
herself so that she can give us to her Son.
And she pushes us along the road of evangelization. She has given us her miraculous image to
inspire us and to lead us. I knew that she
had chosen the image for my First Mass vestment, but only a few years later
would I know why. As I said, the parish
where I am blessed and privileged to be the pastor is about eighty percent
Hispanic. Upon my arrival at the parish
almost two years ago, one of the dear Hispanic ladies helped me to unpack some
of my vestments in the sacristy. The
white vestment, with the blue banding and the miraculous image came out of the
box. The dear lady looked at the
vestment, and with a tear in her eye said, “You have come here to be our
Father.” And together, we looked upon
Our Lady, and we wept. Amen.
Presented after a screening of “The Blood
and the Rose” at the Catholic Media Conference, Charlotte, NC
