NINE-MONTH NOVENA
August 26th – Twelfth Reflection from Cardinal Raymond Burke
How does Our Lady propose that we know and serve her Divine Son Who alone is our salvation?
Having announced to Saint Juan Diego the truth about herself and her relationship with God, and the truth about her Divine Son, Savior of the World, she asks that a chapel be built in which she will draw the faithful to encounter Jesus Christ. She does not propose that he start a movement or some other initiative for the carrying out of Our Lady’s mission but rather that he ask Bishop Juan de Zumárraga to build a chapel:
“Know, know for sure my dearest and youngest son, that I am truly the ever-perfect Holy Virgin Mary, who has the honour to be the Mother of the one true God for whom we all live, the Creator of people, the Lord of all around us and of what is close to us, the Lord of Heaven, the Lord of Earth.” (Nican Mopohua, no. 26)
In what context does the Virgin of Guadalupe propose to teach us the mystery of God’s ever-faithful and all-merciful love?
It is in the context of our entrance into the House of God to pray and to offer to Him the worship which He Himself inspires in us and strengthens us to carry out, under the maternal gaze of the Mother of God, especially looking upon us from the Tilma, for she draws us to her Divine Son alive for us in the Church, above all, in the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist. “I will show Him,” Our Lady of Guadalupe tells us by her apparitions, and “I will give Him to all people in all my personal love.”
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. Her image, which God miraculously left for us on the mantle, the Tilma of Saint Juan Diego, makes visible the truth of the Virgin Mother’s unique cooperation in Christ’s work of Redemption.
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. In this, we offer all people her invitation to make a pilgrimage to her so that she can bring them to her Divine Son, since the ultimate goal of every pilgrimage to a shrine or holy place is to unite our hearts with His Most Sacred Heart, especially through the Eucharistic Sacrifice. Our Lady makes clear that the mercy of God, incarnate in her Divine Son, is experienced by us in a pre-eminent way in the House of God, through prayer and divine worship:
“Because truly I am honoured to be your compassionate mother, yours and that of all the people that live together in this land, and also of all the other various lineages of men; those who love me, those who cry to me, those who seek me, those who trust in me. Because there [at my sacred house] truly will I hear their cry, their sadness, in order to remedy, to cure all their various troubles, their miseries, their pains.” Nican Mopohua, no. 29-32
Accordingly, I am inviting you to make a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on December 12, for the Holy Mass at 12:15 pm Central Time. At that time, under the mosaic of Our Lady of Guadalupe, created by the artists at the Vatican Mosaic Studio to be a likeness of the image of Our Lady on the Tilma, I will lead the congregation in the act of consecration to Our Lady of Guadalupe by reciting the Official Prayer of this Nine-Month Novena. Come to the Shrine to make the consecration with me.
Those who can join should take a brief moment to RSVP on the Shrine’s Site guadalupeshrine.org/
Let us pray
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.
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.
August 12th – Eleventh Reflection from Cardinal Raymond Burke
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 fervour 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. 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.
Let us pray
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.
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.
Invitation from Cardinal Raymond Burke:
In four months, on December 12, I will be making the consecration to Our Lady at the Shrine of Our Lady 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 fulfilment 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 fulfilment 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 Saviour. Those who can join should take a brief moment to RSVP on the Shrine’s Site guadalupeshrine.org/
