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Mary as our
model in fostering the new springtime of faith
The following are
excerpts of the address given by Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke,
Archbishop emeritus of St Louis, U.S.A., and Prefect of the Supreme
Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, at the Springtime of Faith Summit.
The event was held at the University of Dallas Campus in Rome on 14
November [2009] on the theme: "Mary as our Model in Fostering the New
Springtime of Faith".
The apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe at Tepeyac Hill
and at the home of Juan Bernardino, uncle of St Juan Diego, from
December 9th through 12th in 1531, are most remarkable among the
approved apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The maternal tenderness
and directness of the conversations of Our Lady with St Juan Diego are
truly striking. The five apparitions over four days are marked by a
certain urgency and insistent message, and have their culmination in the
altogether remarkable divine writing of the image of Our Lady on the
tilma of St Juan Diego. By means of the tilma
—
miraculous both for the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and for the
uncharacteristic durability of its cactus-cloth material
—
Our Lady of Guadalupe has never ceased to appear to pilgrims who look
upon the tilma which is truly alive with her image.
The apparitions and message of Our Lady of Guadalupe
underline both the infinite transcendence of God and his unceasing mercy
toward all men without boundary. At the very beginning of the first
apparition, Our Lady of Guadalupe immediately identifies herself to St
Juan Diego with these words: "I am the perfect and ever virgin Holy
Mary, Mother of the God of truth through whom everything lives, the Lord
of all things near us, the Lord of heaven and earth".1 The
Blessed Virgin Mary [then] declares the intention of her apparition: "I
want very much to have a little house built here for me, in which I will
show him [God], I will exalt him and make him manifest".2
The Mother of God continues: "I will give him to the
people in all my personal love, in my compassion, in my help, in my
protection: because I am truly your merciful Mother, yours and all the
people who live united in this land and of all other people of different
ancestries, my lovers, who love me, those who seek me, those who trust
in me. Here I will hear their weeping, their complaints and heal all
their sorrows, hardships and sufferings".3
Coming to Our Lady of Guadalupe on pilgrimage, the
pilgrim experiences her divine maternity in an ever greater closeness to
her Divine Son, our Savior. It is by drawing pilgrims to her Son, Our
Lord Jesus Christ
—
above all, in the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist
—
that the Mother of God hears the cries of God's children.
Rightly, Our Lady of Guadalupe is called the Star of the
New Evangelization because she announces and presents the mystery of
God's love and mercy in all of its newness, as if for the first time, so
that once again men may come to know and have faith in her Divine Son,
place their hope in him alone, and live in his love. In the same way,
Our Lady of Guadalupe is our model in fostering the New Springtime of
Faith, the new encounter with Christ, which leads each of us to the
conversion of our life and transforms our society ever more into a
civilization of love.
Historical Context
Certainly, the apparitions
and message of Our Lady of Guadalupe respond to the condition of man in
every period of Christian history, for, even though souls have been
purified of the stain of original sin through the life-giving waters of
Baptism, the effects of original sin have continued to cause men the
greatest suffering and sorrow. The Christian vocation received at
Baptism is the call to carry the Cross with Christ, in order that the
Christian may reach the destiny of his earthly pilgrimage in the Kingdom
of Heaven.4 Our Lady's apparitions and message at Tepeyac
Hill and at the home of Juan Bernardino in December of 1531 responded,
however, to a most dolorous manifestation of
man's sinfulness.
Our Lady appeared on the American continent at a time
when many men were drifting far from God. The situation in what is today
Mexico City was marked then by the violence and darkness which are
always the fruit of man's rebellion against God. On the one hand, under
a long and macabre leadership, the religion of the native Americans was
increasingly marked by a diabolical worship which demanded constant and
mass human sacrifice. Warren H. Carroll, historian and founder of
Christendom College in Fort Royal, Virginia, has described the horror of
the situation in his book, Our Lady of Guadalupe and the
Conquest of Darkness.5
On the other hand, the arrival and activity of European
explorers in the same territory had developed into a conflict between
the Spanish and Native Americans, which threatened an increasingly
massive destruction of human life and goods. The story of the conflict
is quite complicated. It was marked both by the sincere desire to
evangelize a pagan people, including the elimination of the practice of
human sacrifice, and by the lack of respect for the human dignity of the
Native Americans, manifested in cruel executions and other violations of
human life.6
With her apparitions and her message, the work of the
Franciscan Friars who had been laboring diligently to evangelize the
Native Americans and to bring their fellow Spaniards to an ever greater
conversion of heart, under the spiritual leadership of their confrere,
Fray Juan de Zumárraga,
First Bishop of Mexico, bore fruit which was truly miraculous. While it
is estimated that until the time of the apparitions of Our Lady of
Guadalupe some 200,000 Native Americans had received the gift of faith
and Baptism, among them St Juan Diego and his wife, from the time of her
apparitions until the deaths of Bishop Juan de Zumárraga
and St Juan Diego, who died within days of each other in the Spring of
1548, some 9 million Native Americans were baptized.7
Our Lady of Guadalupe chose
as her messenger one of the Native Americans who had been evangelized
and baptized by the Franciscan Friars. When Our Lady first appeared to
St Juan Diego, he was, in fact, on his way to receive post-baptismal
instruction in the faith, on 9 December 1531, then observed as the Feast
of the Immaculate Conception in the Spanish Empire.
St Juan Diego advanced the
First Evangelization by following the Star, the Mother of God. He told
pilgrims about her apparitions and message over the remaining 17 years
of his life. The place of his catechesis was Our Lady's chapel,
constructed by both the Spanish and the Native Americans, the chapel in
which her miraculous image was enthroned by Bishop Juan de Zumárraga
on 26 December 1531, just fourteen days after her final apparition.8
St Juan Diego shows us how to follow the model of the Mother of God in
advancing the New Springtime of Faith.
Through the gift of faith
and Baptism, the Spanish and the Native Americans became one people, a
new race, the mestiza people whose distinctive features are seen
most perfectly in the face of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Since the time of
the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the unity of the people in the
Catholic faith has been severely tested, especially during times of
persecution of the Church in Mexico, but the Mexican people has remained
united, invoking the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
A sterling example of the
fruit of the unceasing spiritual maternity of Our Lady of Guadalupe is
seen in the martyrdom of Blessed Miguel Agustin Pro on 23 November 1927,
during a cruel persecution of the Church. On one of the walls of the
cell in which he awaited execution, Blessed Miguel Pro inscribed the
prayer: "¡Viva
Cristo Rey!
¡Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe!",9
"Long live Christ the King! Long live the Virgin of Guadalupe!".
The Present Context of Western Culture
Contemporary western
culture manifests a growing rebellion against God and his Law written
upon every human heart and revealed in his Church. The most innocent and
defenseless of our brothers and sisters, the unborn, are daily murdered
in the womb, and their murder is sanctioned by the laws and decisions of
courts of law. More and more, those whose lives are burdened by advanced
years, serious illness or special needs are under threat of so-called
"mercy killing" or euthanasia by governments in which those in power
decide for whom the right to life will be respected or for whom it will
not, without regard for the law of God which demands the ultimate
respect for every innocent human life, from the moment of its inception
to the moment of natural death, without boundary or exception.
What is more, the integrity
of the cradle of human life, the family formed by the indissoluble bond
of marriage between a man and a woman is more and more violated by
governments which assume the pretense of redefining marriage to include
disordered relationships between persons of the same sex, and which
permit the adoption of children and the artificial generation of
children to the partners of relationships which, unlike the God-given
marriage of man and woman, are not procreative and do not constitute the
fitting home in which a child can grow and develop as a man or woman.
Before the situation in
which we find ourselves, it is all too easy to give way to
discouragement, to lose hope. How must the faithful in 16th century
Mexico have been tempted to hopelessness before the widespread practice
of human sacrifice and the violations of human life in the conflicts
between the Native Americans and the Spanish explorers and settlers! But
we who have been called to life in Christ and who, in fact, live in
Christ, can never give way to discouragement.
To our prayer and fasting
for the protection of human life and the safeguarding of the integrity
of the family in our nation must be joined our daily obedience to the
moral law, in the family and in the many places of our human activity
and endeavor. We must not only be obedient to the moral law, but
we must also give an account of our obedience, be ready to defend the
truth of the divine moral law in the many contexts in which it is daily
under attack and actually violated.
St Juan Diego devoted the
remaining years of his life, after the wondrous days of the apparitions
of Our Lady of Guadalupe, to recounting her message and inviting his
brothers and sisters to her all-loving embrace. He gave daily witness to
the truth of God's mercy and love, shown to him by Our Lady of
Guadalupe, for the sake of all, without boundary or exception. Let us,
invoking the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of Life, and
following the example of St Juan Diego, be faithful witnesses and
teachers of the Gospel of Life.
Finally, we must engage
ourselves in civic life for the sake of innocent and defenseless human
life and for the sake of the family. Too often, we give way to the
temptation to abandon the work of transforming public life. There are
those, too, who would tell us that what the faith teaches has no place
in the political order. Fundamental to our Catholic faith is the natural
moral law which can also be known by reason alone. It is not possible
for any man to live a responsible civic life, if he does not acknowledge
and obey the law which God has written upon his heart.
Our Catholic faith gives us
inspiration and strength to witness to the truth of the moral law, also
in civic and political matters. It demands that we never cease to work
for laws which safeguard and promote human life and respect the
integrity of marriage and the family. In our civic action on behalf of
our most defenseless brothers and sisters and of marriage as the first
and irreplaceable cell of the society of our nation, Our Lady of
Guadalupe, Mother of Life, is the Star who leads us to live in Christ,
to live as he loves, purely and selflessly.
Notes
1 "[Y]o
soy la Perfecta siempre
Virgen Santa María,
Madre del Verdaderísimo
Dios por quien se vive, el creador de las personas, el dueño
de la cercanía
y de la inmediación,
el dueño
del cielo, el dueño
de la tierra". Nican Mopohua, tr. Fr Mario Rojas Sánchez,
México,
D.F.: Design & Digital Print S.A. de C.V., 2001, n. 26. English
translation from A Handbook on Guadalupe. New
Bedford, Massachusetts: Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, 1997, p.
194.
2 "Mucho
quiero, mucho deseo que aquí
me levanten mi casita sagrada. En donde lo mostraré,
lo ensalzaré
al ponerlode manifiesto". Nican Mopohua,
nn. 26-27. A Handbook on Guadalupe,
p. 194.
3 "Lo
daré
a las gentes en todo mi amor personal, en mi mirada compasiva, en mi
auxilio, en mi salvación:
Porque yo en verdad soy vuestra madre compasiva, tuya y de todos los
hombres que en esta tierra estáis
en uno, y de las demás
variadas estirpes de hombres, mis amadores, los que a mí
clamen, los que me busquen, los que confíen
en mí,
porque ahí
les escucharé
su llanto, su tristeza, para remediar, para curar todas sus diferentes
penas, sus miserias, sus dolores". Nican Mopohua,
nn. 28-32. A Handbook on Guadalupe,
p. 194.
4 Mt
10:38 and 16:24; Mk 8:34; Lk 9:23 and 14:27; 1 Cor
1:17-18; Gal 6:14; Eph 2:14-16; Phil 3:18; and
Col 1:19-20.
5 Warren H.
Carroll, Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness,
Front Royal, Virginia: Christendom Press, 1983, pp. 12-14.
6 Cf. Our
Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness, pp. 64-86.
7 Our Lady of
Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness,
pp. 104-105.
8 A Handbook on Guadalupe, p.
46.
9 Antonio
Dragon, SJ, Vida
íntima del Padre Pio,
6a ed., tr. Rafael Martínez
del Campo, SJ, Mexico, D.F.: Obra Nacional de
Buena Prensa, A.C., 1993, P. 234.
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