OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE: ROSES IN WINTER

OUR LADY OF GUADUALUPE: ROSES IN WINTER
Today, compassionate Lady, we celebrate the anointed moments when, between December 9 and December 12, 1531, you manifested yourself on four occasions to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, the “least of your children,” the member of an oppressed people. Afflicted as he was by the seeming incoherence of your demands, and the infirmity of his uncle, you spoke to him words that echo across the centuries, whispered into the ears of the hungry and the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized of this world: “LET NOT YOUR FACE OR YOUR HEART BE PERTURBED . . . AM I NOT HERE, YOUR MOTHER? ARE YOU NOT UNDER MY SHADOW AND MY PROTECTION? AM I NOT THE WELLSPRING OF YOUR JOY? ARE YOU NOT IN THE HOLLOW OF MY MANTLE, IN THE FOLD OF MY ARMS? HAVE YOU NEED OF ANYTHING ELSE?
Show us the face of your Son, Jesus Christ, Lady of the Tepeyac. Keep all the despised, outcast, leftovers, anguished, afflicted, poor, hungry, deep in the hollow of your mantle. Call the oppressors, the wealthy, the arrogant, the racists, to conversion, and safely shelter the victims within the fold of your arms.
Call us to climb the Tepeyacs of our lives, ascending by sheer faith, as Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin did, hoping against hope to find the roses in winter, the pledge of faith you chose for the bishop of Mexico, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, who had demanded a proof of the authenticity of Juan Diego´s message. Just like we do, always demanding empirical footprints of truth, no longer allowed, in our cultures of death, of arrogance and demonic pragmatism, to feel the awe and wonder of unexpected grace. Place all the hungry, the poor, the despised migrants crossing deserts and facing racism, place them all in the hollow of your mantle, shelter them within the fold of your arms, all of us, that we may believe, and continue to climb our Tepeyacs, firmly trusting against all logic, that there, at the summit, we will find the roses in winter, the roses of your Son´s mercy, compassion, forgiveness and healing.
Hail, Lady of the Tepeyac, Lady of Guadalupe, full of grace, the Lord is with you!
Oremus pro invicem

Sixto