LOS ANGELES — The Virgin Mary will accompany the Church in the New Evangelization, just as she did during the first preaching of the Gospel in the Americas, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez told around 100,000 devotees at the Aug. 5 Guadalupe Celebration.
“Our Lady of Guadalupe is calling us today, my brothers and sisters,” the archbishop said in his keynote address to one of the largest Catholic gatherings in U.S. history at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. “She is calling us to greater faith, to greater love, to greater hope.”
“She is calling us to dedicate our lives to the loving plan of God. To everything for his glory,” he said, stressing the Virgin Mary’s message to honor God “in our homes, in our families, in our neighborhoods and communities, in our political life.”
“Let’s ask Our Lady of Guadalupe — the bright star of the first evangelization and the Mother of the New Evangelization — to help us all to be better instruments of the love of God, so that everyone in our world may come to love him,” the archbishop told the coliseum crowd.
Sunday’s event, co-sponsored by the Knights of Columbus and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, was one of the city’s largest Catholic celebrations in recent memory. It is the Knights' second such gathering, following the 2009 Guadalupe Festival in Arizona.
From 3pm onward, the Los Angeles stadium was filled with prayer, music and talks in honor of Jesus Christ and his Mother, who appeared to St. Juan Diego in 1531 to herald the evangelization of the world’s Western Hemisphere.
Speakers at the Guadalupe Celebration included Supreme Knight Carl Anderson of the Knights of Columbus and Msgr. Eduardo Chavez, who oversaw the canonization cause of St. Juan Diego.
On display at the celebration, for veneration by the faithful, was the only U.S.-based relic of the tilma of Guadalupe, the saint's garment that was imprinted with a miraculous image of the Virgin.
Though that image has become an unmistakable part of Hispanic culture, its meaning transcends ethnic and geographical boundaries, as Archbishop Gomez stressed in his keynote address.
“Our Lady of Guadalupe is not only the Mother of the people of Mexico,” the Los Angeles Church leader observed. “She is the Mother of all the peoples of the Americas! She is the New Eve. She is the Mother of all the living!”
He pointed out that Mary’s message to St. Juan Diego, given at the now-famous Tepeyac Hill, is the same Gospel message that the Church proclaims to all nations and peoples.
“My brothers and sisters, we are all children of Our Lady’s mission at Tepeyac! All of us! We are all Guadalupanos!”
As she appeared to St. Juan Diego, Mary announced herself as both “the Mother of the true God” and “your compassionate Mother, yours and that of all the people that live together in this land, and also of all the other various lineages of men.”
St. Juan Diego, an indigenous peasant and Catholic convert, “heard her voice and carried out the will of God,” Archbishop Gomez recalled. Nine million Mexicans are said to have become Catholic in the seven years that followed the apparition.
Present-day believers, in Mexico and elsewhere, “received the gift of faith because our ancestors kept our faith alive and passed it on to us, through generations and generations, even in the darkest times,” Archbishop Gomez observed.
To illustrate this devotion to the faith, and the international nature of the Guadalupe message, he told the story of Blessed Maria Ines Teresa Arias.
Beatified last April in Mexico City, the 20th-century blessed fled Mexico during the time of the Cristero War, “when it was a crime to believe in Jesus Christ and to want to worship him,” Archbishop Gomez noted.
Having joined the Poor Clare sisters in Mexico City, Maria Ines came to the U.S. in 1929, receiving her habit as a novice in Los Angeles. On the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1930, she had a mystical experience in which she heard the Virgin Mary promise to accompany her in doing God’s work.
Though she returned to Mexico in 1931, “she heard her missionary calling here,” the L.A. archbishop recalled.
Blessed Maria Ines founded the Poor Clare Missionary Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, sending women to proclaim the Gospel through consecrated life in 14 countries.
She charged her sisters “to carry the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, so that she, through her maternal tenderness, would bring her Divine Son to live in the hearts of those who hunger for God without knowing it.”
Archbishop Gomez addressed that same advice to the crowd at the Los Angeles Coliseum, encouraging Guadalupe Celebration participants to deepen their faith and pass it on to others.
“Jesus Christ wants to make use of us. Just as he made use of St. Juan Diego. Just as he made use of Blessed María Ines,” he reflected. “He wants us to be apostles and missionaries. And Our Lady of Guadalupe will accompany us in all our endeavors.”
“My brothers and sisters, now it is our turn. The mission of Tepeyac continues today. It continues in you and me! Our Lady of Guadalupe is counting on us now!”
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Having seen the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe preempted as a symbol of Mexican invasion and conquest of the Southwest U.S. I have decidedly mixed feelings. Our Lady is a Gang Symbol and very popular tattoo. Having, emptied their pews post VII, many of our (incidentally Hispanic) Bishops would like to fill those pews with immigrants and illegals at the expense of our ‘expendable’ present American population. I have always been revolted by religious rallies in stadiums. Ever since watching people in Bermuda shorts at a JPII mass putting down the sandwiches they were eating and going up to receive communion in their greasy hands.
Also check out what Our Lady is doing across Europe right now ... at http://www.fromoceantoocean.org
God bless!
I’d also like to see a Rosary Crusade similar to the gathering for Our Lady of Guadalupe. Our Lady is for everyone, but unfortunately sometimes the Mexican population here seem to idolize her Feast Day with plays and flowers, but ignore Her other feasts such as “Our Lady of Fatima”, the “Assumption”, etc. I’m sure that her message for all people would be further enhanced by a national or international Rosary Crusade. We need her intercession especially in the coming months before the election, the crisis in the Middle East and the possibility of Russia re-arming again. Please, if any priests are reading this encourage your congregations to sacrifice and pray the Rosary, for now as when Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared, we are living in pagan times. Sacrifice of children by the Aztecs can be seen today by the abortion of millions of babies every day.
The apparitons of Lady of Guadalupe brought about the conversion and Batism of 9,000,000 Aztecs during the time the Church lost 8,000,000 Catholics to Protestanism. This image is not created by human hands and is filled with mysteries that baffle scientists, painters and many from other major professions, as they continue to find mysterious things not found before. As man increases its modern technology, they have used it extensively to discover more and more mysteries in the image itself. The miraculous image of God’s Mother has wrought miracles perhaps totaling in the billions now. The greatest miracle are the words Our Lady spoke to St. Juan Diego. Bl. John XXlll called this miraculous image the “greatest Relic of the Church”. To think, an image created by Heaven itself, created right before the eyes of the first Spanish Bishop of Mexico. I remember reading of a Jewish Man granted permission to study the image, his intention was to prove it “not created by Heaven”. When he came down from the scaffolding, he immediatly asked for Baptism. He found that Mary is in fact Queen and Mother of the Jewish people.
rosemarie kury, You say that, “the Mexican population here seem to idolize her Feast Day”. Correction, the Mexican people honor our Lady on all her Feast Days, but especialy on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. As she is Queen of the Americas and Mother of Mexico and its people. I know where you and poetcomic1 are coming from. My Parish here in California, when it was built by the Extension Society in 1940, was chosen by the goodness of the Extension Society to be named Our Lady of Guadalupe. Mainly because 90% of the parishoners were Mexicans. The non mexicans raised a huge uproar not worthy of the name Christian. They said, “Our Parish will not be named after a Mexican Virgen”. So they Chose another. When the Church building became too small it was decided to build a larger Church in the year 1955. The Parish Priest decided to rename the Parish to its orginal intended name, “Our Lady of Guadalupe”. Again another uproar from non mexicans. This time they claimed the right to not have it not named after a Mexican Virgin, they said, “If it were not for us, mexicans would’nt have a church to pray in”. What an insult to God and his Mother from “Gente Non Sancta”.
Wow talk about all the racism on these boards from supposedly “Devout Catholics.” Not an ounce of Christian charity except from a scant few. this is sooo sad considering the Blessed Mother loves ALL of her children.
CeCi Castillo-
Don’t let them desecrate and exploit the Holy Mother and tell me about ‘racism’. Cesar Chavez knew a thing or two about how rich cats used illegals to bust American agricultural unions. Last I heard this is NOT Mexico and if I have anything to do with it it will never be.
Hispanic Americans have fought and died for this country only to come home to 2nd class citizenship and humiliation and they endured. Oh, but anyone who slips across the border to deal drugs and steal (and yes, dear, many MANY do) should have the same rights as the Hispanic-American veterans and their families. Speaking of racism, the flood of illegal (and legal immigration) has been a total disaster for the young black American.
poetcomic1, It is an absolute inexcusable excuse to make comments on racism on a topic that has to do with 100,000 people with their Archbishop honoring our Lady. I can answer your ideoligies of course, but this is certainly not the place. Heaven was stormed with prayer by 100,000 people, imagine all the Graces wrought through it all. Our Lady of Guadalupe spoke these and many more words to St. Juan Diego, “I am the Mother of the true and ever living God for whom we all exist and live for.” “I am She who crushes the head of the serpent.” “Why do you fear. Am I not your Mother who is present.” What words of consolation, these and Her other words, have been to people throughout the world for 500 years. Bl. John Paul ll loved our Lady very much. He loved her under all her titles, but especially had a devotion to the Patroness of Poland known as the Black Madonna. His next greatest devotion, even before ascending to the Papacy was to Our Lady of Guadalupe. He loved her very much, because 500 years ago She told us how much she loves us very much. As Christ was the Stone the builders rejected, so his Brown skinned Mother of Guadalupe, is also the stone rejected by those who wish to build.
Yes poetcomic1 with your disgusting diatribe you will feel real at home with some of the right wing nuts on these boards.
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