Nuestra Senora Guadalupe

Escritura:  Revelacion 12:1

Una grande senal aparacio en el cielo:  una mujer vestida del sol, y la luna debajo de sus pies, y sobre su cabeza una corona de doce estrellas.

Scripture:  Revelation 12:1

A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet,  and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

In 1531 at Tepeyac, Mexico, Mary appeared in a vision to Juan Diego, a poor, baptized native boy who was on his way to religious instructions.  In 1999 Joh Paul II proclaimed Our Lady of Guadalupe patroness not just of Mexico but of all the Americas.  “We South Americans and North Americans are one.  We share  a hemisphere of the earth.  We have common blessings and common problems.  Mary stands with us to protect and help us, especially the lowly and poor with whom she identifies.  With Mary as our Mother, all of us are sisters and brothers:  indigenous peoples,  Latinos,  Anglos, and all races and cultures that have come to claim some part of the Americas as home”.   (Sister Mary Katherine Howard OSB)

As many families in Mexico are taking time from their work and school to walk in processions through Mexico this week in honor of the Virgen of Guadalupe,  let us remember them and pray for them.  Let us pray for Mexican-American  families, those  living in the United States, as they struggle each day to build  a better life.  Let us pray for ourselves that we grow in  respect and appreciation of cultures different from our own.