His Eminence has authored two short, written reflections for each of the nine-months in this novena. In addition, he has recorded short video meditations examining the theological and spiritual significance of the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe to help guide you as you journey through these grace-filled months.
This page will serve as a kind of library to help you access all of this material as it is made public.
Originally published on March 12, 2024.
The first lesson which Our Lady of Guadalupe teaches us to equip us for today’s grave crisis is the inseparable unity of truth and love. We cannot truly love another person while also disregarding or betraying the truth which should inform every relationship. The fundamental approach to the crisis of the family, of society, and of the Church is the knowledge of truth and the practice of it with love.
Originally published on March 24, 2024.
Our Lady’s mission for Saint Juan Diego’s time and place is just as much for ours today. Her mission, which is in total union with the saving mission of her Divine Son, is ongoing, until the Last Day. Our Lady does not propose some idea or some political action to address the various crises confronting us. No, she proposes a person, the person of her Divine Son.
Originally published on April 12, 2024.
In the battle for the truth, we must never give way to discouragement which is always the first temptation of the devil. When we are tempted to be discouraged or to be defeated, let us recall the vision of the final victory of Christ’s Redemptive Incarnation: He brings his victory over sin and death to its fullness.
Originally published on April 23, 2024.
From Our Lady of Guadalupe, we, together with Saint Juan Diego, learn that we are called to become bearers of God, heralds of Christ, in the world. As bearers of God, we, like Saint Juan Diego, are servants of the Mother of God. May we become ever more her faithful servants, so that all of our brothers and sisters may know her as the Mother of God.
Originally published on May 12, 2024.
In our daily struggle to be faithful and generous co-workers with Christ in His saving work, let us call upon the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe and her heroic messenger, Saint Juan Diego, even as we seek to follow their example. Christ will never fail us.
Originally published on May 28, 2024.
We consider Saint Juan Diego, heroic messenger of Our Lady of Guadalupe, as our model in showing forth the mercy of God in our homes, in our local communities, and in our world. The best way to know Saint Juan Diego is to study the account of the apparitions of the Mother of God to him.
Originally published on June 12, 2024.
Great are the difficulties we are called to face in the Church and in the world. When such difficulties seem overwhelming, prayer might appear to be one more difficulty, but that is a snare of Satan. The truth is that prayer, which is a union of our hearts with the glorious pierced Heart of Jesus, is the balm of all our burdens.
Originally published on June 25, 2024.
Our Lady does not propose some idea or some political action to address the various crises facing man. No, she proposes a person—the person of her Divine Son. She proposes the most intimate union of heart with Him as the only way to obtain mercy and ultimately eternal life. She tells Juan Diego that Christ is in fact her “compassionate gaze,” even as He is her “help,” her “salvation.”
Originally published on July 12, 2024.
The work that the Virgin of Guadalupe gave to Saint Juan Diego is the work that he asks us to continue today: It is the work of evangelization in the Church and in the world. The Queen of Heaven can choose anyone to accomplish her desire, but she has chosen you and me, her children, to be her messengers, to carry the Word of God so that they might unite their heart to her Immaculate Heart and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Originally published on July 24, 2024.
Take Saint Juan Diego as your model in your every thought, word, and action, so that you may serve God in all things, both great and small. Commit yourselves to be a messenger of God’s merciful love in your homes, in your offices or schools, and in any place in which you find yourselves. Be humble, recognizing that all that you are and have comes from God. Be confident that, if you respect God’s plan for you and for our world, you will be blessed, and you will bring a blessing to others.
Originally published on August 12, 2024.
Our Lady’s work as Mediatrix became manifest with the establishment of a “sacred little house,” a place of pilgrimage, in Tepeyac in1531, 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.
Originally published on August 17, 2024.
Being Our Lady’s messengers, bringing people to her so that she can “show Him” and “give Him to all people,” also means offering ourselves as channels of her maternal love, just as she is a channel of Divine Grace. So, too, as her servants, as her messengers, we must make visible the truth of the Virgin Mother’s work by, in a sense, wearing a spiritual Tilma for all the world to hear through our words and see in our actions.
Originally published on September 12, 2024.
If we are to be messengers of Our Lady, our hearts must be in union with her Immaculate Heart. Let us, therefore, build a “sacred little house” to Our Lady of Guadalupe in our hearts, setting a spiritual Tilma in a place wherefrom, under the interior contemplation of her maternal gaze, she can prepare our hearts to make a pilgrimage to a holy place, where we can truly encounter her Divine Son, Jesus Christ, come to know Him more fully and to love Him more ardently, especially in the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist.
Originally published on September 25, 2024.
Although the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe occurred nearly 500 years ago, Our Lord still desires that we continue coming to Our Lady of Guadalupe because He desires to speak to us through her as Mother of Divine Grace. We realize that Our Lady’s message is as critical today as it was then. At the same time, Our Lady’s remedy for the crisis of that time remains our own remedy today.
Originally published on October 12, 2024.
By drawing close to the Immaculate Heart of Our Blessed Mother, we come to understand ever better the effects of sin in our lives and upon our world; we come to understand our need to go to her Son for the grace of conversion of life and the transformation of our world. In her maternal love, she leads us in the way of the humility which Our Lord teaches us in the Gospel, so that we give our hearts totally to Him, with confident trust in His never failing and all-merciful love.
Originally published on October 25, 2024.
Contemplating her maternal gaze from the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, we see the face of Christ and hear His invitation to unite our hearts to His Sacred Heart, and to unite our lives to His, and, with Mary, give our fiat—“be it done to me according to thy word” (Lc 1, 38)—to our mission, which is daily conversion of life to Jesus Christ, so that, by exercising His pastoral charity, the world might be transformed into a civilization of love.
Originally published on November 12, 2024.
Coming to the Shrine on pilgrimage, the pilgrim leaves familiar surroundings to climb the Pilgrim Way leading to the Shrine Church out of a desire for a personal encounter with Our Lady, who draws us into an even more personal encounter with her Divine Son. The pilgrim indeed sees Our Lord, and encounters Our Lord, while praying in the Shrine Church before the Blessed Sacrament reposed in the tabernacle, in the Sacrament of Penance and, most wonderfully of all, in the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist.
In these early days of the novena, carry the events of the first apparition in your hearts as you pray the following each day:
O Virgin Mother of God, we fly to your protection and beg your intercession against the darkness and sin which ever more envelop the world and menace the Church. Your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, gave you to us as our mother as He died on the Cross for our salvation. So too, in 1531, when darkness and sin beset us, He sent you, as Our Lady of Guadalupe, on Tepeyac to lead us to Him Who alone is our light and our salvation.
Through your apparitions on Tepeyac and your abiding presence with us on the miraculous mantle of your messenger, Saint Juan Diego, millions of souls converted to faith in your Divine Son. Through this novena and our consecration to you, we humbly implore your intercession for our daily conversion of life to Him and the conversion of millions more who do not yet believe in Him. In our homes and in our nation, lead us to Him Who alone wins the victory over sin and darkness in us and in the world.
Unite our hearts to your Immaculate Heart so that they may find their true and lasting home in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Ever guide us along the pilgrimage of life to our eternal home with Him. So may our hearts, one with yours, always trust in God's promise of salvation, in His never-failing mercy toward all who turn to Him with a humble and contrite heart. Through this novena and our consecration to you, O Virgin of Guadalupe, lead all souls in America and throughout the world to your Divine Son in Whose name we pray. Amen.
Write in your prayer using the form below. Cardinal Burke will pray for your intentions every day and offer Mass on the 12th of each month for your prayer requests.
Those wishing to learn more about the Apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe can find the text of the Nican Mopohua at the link below. The translation that we cite in this novena is found in Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love (New York: Doubleday, 2009) by Carl A. Anderson and Msgr. Eduardo Chávez..
Those interested in learning even more might enjoy a presentation that His Eminence recently delivered, which examines the the immense literary and spiritual merit of the Nican Mopohua. It is available at the link below.
