NINE-MONTH NOVENA October 26th – 16th Reflection from Cardinal Raymond Burke
Our Lady of Guadalupe’s direction in 1531 was to build a “sacred little house,” a chapel, a church,” in order to draw people into a profoundly personal encounter with her Divine Son, Jesus Christ, in the Sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist. This is because she understands that the Church exists to call the culture to conversion and to transform it. She knows, too, that in the struggle to row the boat of the Church against the troubled waters of the confusion and error which surround us, there is the temptation to give up and to let the boat move with the times, with the result that the same confusion and error enters into the very life of the Church.
Yet, by giving us her image on the Tilma, so that people might be drawn to see her, so that she can draw them to her Divine Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lady shows that she also fully comprehends that, if we strive every day to give our lives completely to Christ, our great High Priest, Who has made us His brothers and sisters, then we can be confident that the turbulent waters which we are unable to navigate on our own become, with Christ, indeed navigable.
The purification and strength for our daily conversion of life and for meeting the challenge of teaching the truth of the faith and ministering the saving mysteries come solely from the Holy Eucharist, from our union with Christ in His Eucharistic Sacrifice and our communion with Him in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.
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.
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.
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.
NINE-MONTH NOVENA October 12th – 15th Reflection from Cardinal Raymond Burke
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. “I want very much that they build my sacred little house here,” Our Lady instructed the Church in Mexico through her messenger Saint Juan Diego. Her intention for the church is to “show” her Divine Son, Jesus Christ, “exalt Him upon making Him manifest,” and “give Him to all people” in her maternal love through the Sacraments of the Church and in the Sacred Liturgy (Cf. Nican Mopohua, no. 26-28).
In the Sacred Liturgy, Christ Himself acts in our midst for the glory of God and for our eternal salvation. In fact, it is only in the House of God that our greatest hunger and thirst are satisfied. In His dwelling with us through the Church, we know God in the forgiveness of our sins through the Sacrament of Penance and in the incomparable gift of the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, the fruit of the Eucharistic Sacrifice given as Heavenly Bread to us in Holy Communion. This is because Our Lady understands that the Church’s doctrine and discipline are the irreplaceable conditions for the encounter with Christ and the daily conversion of life to Christ by following Him on the only way which leads to eternal life, the way of the Cross (Cf. Mt 16, 24).
Mary, our Mother, preserved from all stain of original sin, understands better than any of us the wiles of Satan and the profound harm and eternal death itself, which comes to us through sin. She witnessed the effects of the sin of our First Parents and of our actual sins in the Passion and Death of her Divine Son. She, therefore, stands ever ready to point out to us Satan’s allurements and deceptions, and to sustain us in times of great trial and temptation by leading us to her Son alive for us in the Church, especially through the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist.
By drawing close to the Immaculate Heart of Our Blessed Mother, under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 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. (Cf. Lc 9, 48).
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.
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.
