From Archbishop Donoghue

Commemoration of Our Lady of Guadalupe
December 12, 1999
St. Joseph’s Church, Dalton
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3rd Sunday of Advent

Dear Friends in Christ,

The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of the great occasions in our Church’s year. And this is mainly because of the wonderful things our Lady did when she appeared to Blessed Juan Diego on that great day in ???? It seems that when God wishes to make the strongest impression on His children in these modern times, to call them to a new holiness and a new enthusiasm for their Faith, He sends the Mother of His own Son to the world, to convey, in a way that shows His power over all things, the message of redemption and salvation and living faith.

As a sign of this truth, the first miracle our Lady granted was the blooming of roses on a mid-winter day, and a sign that from the coldest of hearts, God can bring forth a warmth that causes faith to bloom again, and to bring its sweet fragrance into our lives.

And there was added another manifestation of God’s power, which to this day draws our attention, and continues to frustrate the repeated attempts of science to explain it away – the miraculous and holy image of our Lady, in the splendor of her heavenly queenship, fashioned in a moment of unexplained energy, on the cloak of Blessed Juan Diego, for him, for the bishop, and for all to see from that moment on. Surely, this is a sign, that the image of God’s holiness has been sealed once and for all across the wide face of humanity, and that those who flee from this face, in sin and shame, also flee the cloak, the mantle, of His protecting love, seen perfectly in the face, again, of His Son’s mother, the mother of our Faith and of the love which we have come to know in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally, on that December day, there was the miracle of obedience – the obedience of Juan Diego to this heavenly lady, who sent him to challenge the most resistant of authorities to falsehood, the authority of a bishop, a direct successor of St. Peter, and guardian of the Church -–the obedience of the bishop, who bowed to the intervention, the rightful intervention of God into the affairs of Man, and who believed on behalf of the whole Church, that miracles can and do exist at all times, at any place, and to any man or woman who walks in holiness – and last, the obedience of all the people, who that day, and in the weeks, the months, and the years that followed, came to believe in this appearance of our Lady, came to believe in God’s miraculous power over us, and came to believe that obedience, total obedience to the law and will of God is what is asked, and what is waited for – the obedience that Mary gave to the Holy Spirit – “Be it done unto me according to thy word” – and the obedience of her Son Jesus Christ, who went to His redeeming death, saying, “Father, not my will, but thy will be done.”.

Dear friends, this obedience is our inheritance – and we must now become obedient sons and daughters, just as Blessed Juan Diego did on that day – that the rose of faith may bloom again in our hearts and minds - that the image of Christ’s holy mother, our Mother in Faith, may be forever imprinted on our souls, as the one who guides us and guards us on this dangerous journey through life’s mountains and valleys.

Whatever the past has been, our obedience begins anew today – born of the word of God in the Gospel – strengthened by the Creed we will recite, our pledge of what we believe – touched and imprinted by the image of perfect love, when we receive, in Holy Communion, the once broken body of our Lord, raised now on our altar, in all glory, to save His people again.

May we approach Him worthily today, dear friends, with that kind of humble and dutiful worthiness exemplified by Blessed Juan Diego at Tepayac, and may our Lady continue to lead us, her children as well, towards the miraculous love of Jesus Christ, and to the peace which obedience to God always brings.

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