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Dear Friends in Christ, and especially my young friends here at the Solidarity School,

I first want to tell you how happy I am to make this visit to your school. The friendliness I feel, being with you, tells me that you have a very good school here, that your teachers and your parents are doing everything possible to make it a good place for you to learn - and your friendliness also tells me that they are succeeding, and that you are trying your best to be good students, and good Catholic boys and girls. This makes us all so proud, and it makes us appreciate so much how good our Lord has been to us - our Lord and His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary - and how they look out for us, and help us every day from their place in Heaven.

Yesterday, we celebrated a very important feast for all the people of this country, but especially those who come from Spanish-speaking backgrounds. It was the feast of our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared to St. Juan Diego, long ago in 1531. Now Mary has appeared at other places in the world - you know some of them - Fatima and Lourdes especially - but Guadalupe was the only time that we are sure she appeared in this part of the world. If we ask ourselves why she appeared, then we can think of two very good reasons:

the first is that she loves us very much, and sometimes, she feels our needs so deeply, that it brings her to us. Then she picks someone very special, like Juan Diego, to see her, and to tell the message to others, the she and our Lord, are always in Heaven praying for us, and helping us with our problems here on earth;

and the second reason why she appeared, I believe, is because she understood how important the things were that were happening in Mexico, and in other places across this continent of North America. For in those years, the Indians and the Spaniards - the people who already lived here, and the people who had come across the ocean from far-away Spain - they were getting together for the first time. And of course, when people who are so different get together, often there can be trouble. And so our Lady appeared to a poor Indian, but she sent him to the Spanish Bishop, and together, the two of them, the Mexican Indian and the Spanish bishop, together they spread the word about her visit, they build a great church in her honor, which we can still visit, and in that church, they put the wonderful gift that she gave them both - her beautiful picture, miraculously painted on the inside of Juan Diego's cloak.

No one has ever been able to explain this wonderful miracle of our Lady. People who believe in her don't need to - they just believe. And the people who don't believe, and who would like to try and prove that the whole thing was a fake - well, they have never been able to do it.

But if you believe in our Lady, and that she appeared, then your eyes can be opened, and you will learn the lesson she wanted to teach - and that lesson is that we must all get along and cooperate and help each other - no matter what our background is, and no matter what language we speak. Juan Diego was an Indian, and the bishop was a Spaniard - but together they accomplished what our Lady wanted - to spread the word of her appearance, and to spread the word that she came to tell all people to work together.

And from the two of them, almost five hundred years ago, the message of Guadalupe has spread until there are millions of people who know about and believe in the message, and who believe that our Lady really came down from Heaven that very special day in 1531.

We are some of those people - you and me, here in Atlanta, Georgia, and in this wonderful place for learning that we call the Solidarity School. And we will continue to do what our Lady wants, by cooperating, by working together, just as St. Juan Diego and the bishop worked together. And who knows, five hundred years from now, what wonderful things might happen, because of what we are doing here today. Only God knows, but we can certainly believe that it will happen.

There is another very special day coming soon, the day when our Lord was born, two thousand years ago. But His love was and is so strong, that we still celebrate the day of His birth, as if it were happening in our own time. But the wonderful, the miraculous thing is, that it can happen in our own time. Every time we do something good, every time, we help other people out, and every time we try to be good parents, teachers, and children, then the Lord's love is born in us all over again, and Christmas happens in our hearts.

Our Lord, and His Mother Mary want this to happen to us - and they want us to feel that they are here with us, for every step of our lives. Let us pray very hard during these next few weeks, that we will be filled with the spirit of Christmas, and that through our own example, others may come to know and to understand how much God loves us, and how He shows His love, especially through His Son, Jesus Christ, and through His Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

And I hope you all have a safe and joyful Christmas, and that the new Year will bring you every blessing that you want, and that God wants for you.

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