Tuesday, December 12, 2023
Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Pilgrimage
Silence, all mankind! The Lord stirs forth from his holy dwelling.
Guadalupe, December 1531 Mary appeared five times to Juan Diego and his uncle Juan Bernardino, ninety minutes north of the center of current-day Mexico City. A basilica on the hill of Tepeyac where the visitations occurred houses a very special cloak. The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is the most visited Catholic shrine in the world.
Lourdes, February 11, 1858 Mary appeared to 11 year old Bernadette Soubirous, in the Pyrenees of southern France, 20 hours from Medjugorge. Water pours from a spring, and tens of thousands of pilgrims bathe in the water each year. Countless miracles are claimed, and 69 healing miracles have been authenticated by Catholic authorities.
Medjugorje, June 24, 1981 to six local children midway between Sarajevo and Dubrovnik in Bosnia/Herzegovina (formerly Yugoslavia). These visitations are still occurring. Many pilgrims and residents have seen Virgin Mary. More than a million pilgrims visit Madjugorje each year.
God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in his temple.
These are just a few of the stories about Mary, theotokos, mother of Jesus appearing time and again, often to children, always in ways that create excitement and hope in people all around the world. In Mexico the virgin asked the young boy Juan to tell Archbishop Zumarraga she wanted to be called “Guadalupe.”
Juan’s uncle was sick, and in tending to his uncle, Juan sought to avoid the virgin. She found him, though, and said to him, “Am I not here, I who am your mother?” Juan’s uncle was healed, as he collected flowers (impossible in December, but still he found Castilian roses not native to Mexico). The virgin arranged the flowers inside his tilpa, his cloak. When Juan arrived at the home of the archbishop, he opened his tilpa, the flowers fell to the floor, and on the fabric lay the image of the Virgin. We have been looking at that image ever since.
A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. She gave birth to a son, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod. Her child as caught up to God and his throne.
For hundreds of years Catholic pilgrims have walked along the Way of St. James, the camino de Santiago. To Jerusalem, to Rome, and to many sites of Mary’s visitation, pilgrimage holds an exalted place in the lives of faithful men and women in every religion. In the Catholic world, 20 million travel each year to Guadalupe, 18 million to the Vatican, 8 million to Lourdes, 7 million to the tomb of Padre Pio in southern Italy, 6.6 million to the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida in Brazil, 4.5 million each year to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, and 2 million to St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Quebec.
Don’t you want to get out of the humdrum world you’re in and set out on a trip with the goal and desire to bless God and be blessed by him?
I do too.
Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have salvation and power come, and the Kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed.
(Zechariah 2, Revelation 11-12, Judith 13, Luke 1)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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