Thank you very much, O loving Father, in giving us in this season of Advent the wonderful feasts of Mary and the saints who inspire us to always create a room for your Son Jesus Christ in our hearts.
On this feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, we remember your wondrous way of calling the Blessed Virgin Mary, her cousin Elizabeth, and St. Juan Diego for your specific mission. All were “ordinary” people just like most of us. Mary was a young maiden from an obscure town you have chosen to be the Mother of Jesus Christ while Elizabeth her cousin was already old and barren when you blessed her to conceive the Lord’s precursor, John the Baptizer. Like these two women of simplicity and humility was St. Juan Diego, an Aztec Indian who became the visionary of Guadalupe.
Like Elizabeth, I always ask myself and, you, O Lord my God, “how does this happen to me that you my Lord should come to visit and call me (Lk.1:43)?” St. Juan Diego also asked the Blessed Mother to call somebody else for her mission but she replied, “My little son, there are many I could send. But you are the one I have chosen.”
Loving Father, please bear with me if I always ask you with many whys, always unbelieving in my abilities to do your work and fulfill your mission. Help me to keep following you, cover me with your mantle of grace and protection like the Blessed Mother as seen by John, “a woman clothed with the sun” (Rev.12:1) so that like her I may “to give birth to Christ” (Rev.12:2) to this world deeply in sin, totally forgetting you. Wrap me also like St. Juan Diego with your mantle of love and affection so that from my words and deeds would come the fragrant blooms of your kindness and charity in serving others. AMEN.Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II,Parokya ng San Juan Apostol at Ebanghelista, Gov. F. Halili Ave., Bagbaguin, Sta. Maria,Bulacan 3022.
*Photos from Google.
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