Today we celebrate a great feast day, Our Lady of Guadalupe.
She was given the title of Patroness of all America by Pope Pius XII in 1945.
And the story is beautiful: how Our Mother met Juan Diego, this peasant from Mexico,
as he was going to the city; and Our Mother asked him—this was December 9th,
1531, to request the bishop of Mexico City to build a temple, a church dedicated to her
on Tepeyac Hill, which is near the city. And the story goes that Juan Diego went to see the bishop,
and the bishop didn't believe him. And then he asked, the bishop asked, Juan Diego for a sign.
And then is when Our Lady gave the famous sign of the flowers that were picked up on Tepeyac Hill,
on, in December of that year, which was impossible to find those Castilian roses—and
at the same time, on Juan Diego's cloak, we find the famous tilma: the famous image of Our Lady.
But what I wanted to focus on was that on December 12th,
Juan Diego, had, was taking care of his uncle who was dying. And then he was going to look
for a priest, to be able, for the priest to be able to give the last rights to his uncle
and decided to go around the man the hill of Tepeyac to avoid that lady who had appeared to him
two days earlier. This was December 12th. An hour later, Our Lady intersected him
because there is no space, right—Our Lady can do anything—and then told Juan Diego that famous
phrase, "Am I not here, who am your mother?"
"I'm going to take care of your uncle. Don't worry, but you go to the bishop."
Juan Diego was trying to avoid Mary with good intentions, and sometimes also we try to avoid
Mary in our busy lives. So we don't have time because we are more we have more pressing things
to do, to think about, to take care of—and we need to remember that Our Mother is always there
to help us, and we want to go to her intercession especially these days in which we see so much
moral degradation in our society and in the world. We need to be witnesses to faith and to prayer.
So, let's together make sure that God and Mary are always in our heart and that we make recourse of,
uh, Mary, of Our Lady of Guadalupe today for all our problems, for all our concerns. So that she is
able and ready to help us through our faith. May God bless you, may God bless your families, and
May God bless America in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.