Monday, December 12,, 2022
Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Handmaid of the Lord
Silence, all mankind in the presence of the Lord! For he stirs forth from his holy dwelling.
December, 1531.
The young man on a hill outside Mexico City saw Mary four times, and at last, when he brought roses in December to his bishop, his bishop believed him. Like Francis, Juan Diego was told to build a church for his mother, Mary. What’s more, an image of the Virgin was stenciled onto the boy’s cloak.
See, I am coming to dwell among you, says the Lord. Many nations shall join themselves to the Lord on that day, and they shall be his people, and he will dwell among you, and you shall know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you.
A chapel was built, and then a basilica, and then another basilica. Because of this vision, in 1999, Pope John Paul II named the Lady of Guadalupe Patroness of the Americas, uniting Americans north from Alert on Ellesmere Island in Canada all the way south to Puerto Williams on Navarino Island in Chile, starting point for trips around Cape Horn.
And I must say it’s refreshing to think of myself as an American in this way for a change, as part of two continents full of men, women and children brought together under God, indivisible, with a mother figure who does not brandish weapons or shields. She does not idolize power or wealth. She worships her son Jesus and inspires us to build chapels and churches and cathedrals where we can worship him too.
In 1982 Argentina and the United Kingdom went to war for two months over the Falkland Islands, a bastion of British subjects about 300 miles east of the southernmost part of Argentina. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her sailors were “victorious,” although about 2000 people were killed during those two months.
We can read the history of many other wars and war zones in the Americas before and after 1999. Our Lady of Guadalupe continues to weep over lost human beings, killed for no real reason. And that includes aborted babies too, as well as soldiers and civilians killed by machine guns or bombs.
A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth.
This picture from Revelation breaches the walls we have built around ourselves, to hide what Pope John Paul II called the “culture of death, where societies devalue human life to the point of a commodity.” Not just in the Americas but around the world, this culture conquers much of what it touches. God is not pleased. Mary weeps. And waits.
The dragon stood before the woman, ready to devour her child when she gave birth, but her child was caught up to God and his throne. The woman herself fled into the desert where she had a place prepared by God.
Listen. Mary’s words echo inside us.
May it be done unto me according to your word.
Beyond the facts of life, beyond the days of our lives, as the world turns and turns and turns, Mary waits and invites us to wait with her. Without bloodshed we wait with her for the loud voice in heaven:
Now have salvation and power come, and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Anointed!
(Zechariah 2, Revelation 10-12, Judith 13, Luke 1)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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