By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY — During this “bitter time” of war, hunger, injustice and poverty, Our Lady of Guadalupe invites everyone to open their lives to her son, Jesus, and to learn to love others like he does, Pope Francis said.
“The Lord, through the Virgin Mother, continues to give us his son, who calls us to fraternity, to set aside selfishness, indifference and enmity, inviting us to get involved with each other ‘without delay,’ to go out to meet our brothers and sisters who have been forgotten and discarded by our consumerist and indifferent societies,” he said.
Today, just like five centuries ago when Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to St. Juan Diego, she “came to accompany the American people on this hard road of poverty, exploitation, socioeconomic and cultural colonialism,” the pope said in his homily during a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica Dec. 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
“She is in the midst of the caravans that walk northward in search of freedom and well-being. She is in the midst of the American people, whose identity is threatened by a savage and exploitative paganism, wounded by the active preaching of a practical and pragmatic atheism,” the pope said, in handwritten remarks that were not part of his previously prepared text.
Because of his difficulty with walking, Pope Francis did not take part in the procession into the basilica and was seated to the right of the altar.
Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, was the main celebrant at the altar. After he incensed the altar, he made his way to a replica of St. Juan Diego’s tilma, which bears the image of Mary, who appeared to the Indigenous saint in 1531.
In his homily, the pope reflected on the Gospel reading from St. Luke, which recalled Mary going “in haste” to visit her cousin Elizabeth after the angel Gabriel told Mary that she would conceive the Son of God through the Holy Spirit, and that Elizabeth was also with child.
“In Jesus, born of Mary, the eternal one becomes forever and irreversibly ‘God-with-us,’ and walks beside us as brother and companion,” the pope said in his homily.
“Our God guides human history at every moment; nothing remains outside his power, which is tenderness and providential love,” he said, and “he never stops watching over our world — needy and wounded — eager to assist it with his compassion and mercy.”
God sent Mary as messenger “nearly five centuries ago, at a complicated and difficult time for the inhabitants of the new world,” Pope Francis said.
“Our Lady of Guadalupe came to the blessed lands of America, presenting herself as the ‘mother of the true God,’” he said. “She is our ‘mestiza’ mother,” that is, a mother of mixed race.”
