Introduction
In the economy of salvation, the Blessed Virgin Mary, crowned at her Assumption as Queen of Heaven and Earth, is the Mediatrix of All Grace. She, the first and best disciple of her Divine Son, cooperates fully in His Redemptive work from the moment of His conception to the moment of His death on the cross, when her Immaculate Heart was mystically pierced at the piercing of His Sacred Heart by the Roman soldier’s spear. Always one in her glorious Immaculate Heart with His Most Sacred Heart, she continues, with maternal love, to be the channel of the immeasurable and unceasing graces that pour forth from His glorious pierced Heart into the hearts of all the faithful.
Our Lady’s work as Mediatrix became manifest with the establishment of a “sacred little house,” a place of pilgrimage, in Tepeyac in 1531, whence she might show the mercy of God to all of her children of America and of the world. As the great sign of her maternal desire to make us one with her Divine Son and, therefore, recipients of the immeasurable outpouring of God’s mercy, she left her image on the Tilma or mantle of Saint Juan Diego. To this day, the image, which has no human explanation as to its origin and whose fabric, cactus cloth, should have disintegrated some thirty to forty years after her apparitions, remains intact and radiates a miraculous maternal love.
Within eight years from the date of Our Lady’s apparitions at Guadalupe, nearly nine million Native Americans converted to the Catholic faith, giving up the diabolical practice of human sacrifice and embracing the Christian way of life with remarkable fervor and fidelity. What is more, the European explorers and settlers, and the Native Americans, who were on the verge of a most bloody conflict, united to form a new culture, the mestiza culture, which yet today looks to the Virgin of Guadalupe, La Morenita, as its source and inspiration.
I have personally experienced her maternal love while gazing upon the Tilma. Through her maternal love, Our Lady of Guadalupe brings her children to her Divine Son, the only Savior of the world, in whom we discover the wonder of our daily life in Christ, for God indeed dwells with us.
In four months, on December 12, I will be making the consecration to Our Lady at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I hope you can come to the Shrine to join me in this momentous event.
When you come to the Shrine, Our Lady of Guadalupe, with deepest maternal affection, manifests to us the great mystery of God’s love for us, inviting us to have complete confidence in His promises. Making our consecration to her, she draws us to encounter her Divine Son, the fulfillment of all of God the Father’s promises. She draws us especially to the Sacraments of Penance and of the Most Holy Eucharist, so that we may know directly in our lives the fulfillment of God’s promise of liberation from sin and death, His promise of eternal salvation.
Making our consecration at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe will be our response to her pure and perfect love by totally giving our hearts to her Immaculate Heart, through whom we are more perfectly united to the glorious pierced Heart of her Divine Son, Jesus the Savior.
