The Guadalupe Event

Saint John Paul II's trips to Mexico are featured in our exhibit. 

With the celebration of the feast of Saint Juan Diego yesterday, and the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Friday, this is a big week for the Church in Mexico.

Saint John Paul II canonized Juan Diego when he was on his 2002 pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. In his homily for the canonization, the Holy Father said:

“The Guadalupe Event,” as the Mexican Episcopate has pointed out, “meant the beginning of evangelization with a vitality that surpassed all expectations. Christ's message, through his Mother, took up the central elements of the indigenous culture, purified them and gave them the definitive sense of salvation.” Consequently Guadalupe and Juan Diego have a deep ecclesial and missionary meaning and are a model of perfectly inculturated evangelization. 

Let us pray with St. John Paul II, that “The Guadalupe Event” continues to feed the New Evangelization in Mexico.

St. Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pray for Us!

The Role of the Laity

Last week, the Vatican released a message Pope Benedict XVI sent to the 6^th Assembly of the International Catholic Action Forum. In this message, he reminded the laity that they are “co-responsible” for the Church’s mission, not merely “collaborators” with the clergy.  Lay people are therefore called to work in communion with Church leaders, and they are called to take formation very seriously. He said:

Feel the commitment to work for the Church’s mission to be your own…through prayer, through study, through active participation in ecclesial life, through an attentive and positive gaze at the world, in the continual search for the signs of the times.

Society needs courageous witnesses, he went on to say, so that people in darkness may see the light of the Gospel and find hope.

An example of this courageous witness can be seen in St. Juan Diego, who was canonized by Blessed John Paul II in 2002. Juan Diego was the poor, native of Mexico who reported the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe—an apparition that significantly inspired hope and the spread of Catholicism in Mexico, and one that still inspires people today.

In an address given to the Catholic Association of Latino Leaders (CALL) last week, Supreme Knight of the Knight of Columbus, Carl Anderson, encouraged his listeners to be like Juan Diego: