Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, December 12

About 500 years ago, Our Lady appeared to Saint Juan Diego amidst wide acceptance of infant sacrifice. We so need her intercession amidst the devaluing of human life and marriage/family in the North America of our own time....

• "Mary of Nazareth has always had a special place in the heart of the Church. She is theotokos, the 'God-bearer'; Scripture’s greatest human witness of courage, humility and grace. This is why Catholic life has honored her through the centuries in so many different ways: Our Lady of Consolation; Mother of Sorrows; Mother of Mercy; Our Lady of the New Advent; Queen of Heaven; Virgin Most Pure -- and in a special way..., December 12, Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of America, one continent north and south. All of these titles are true and richly deserved. But they can sometimes obscure the human reality of Mary’s life: a young woman of the rough Galilean hills, pregnant, with a seemingly implausible story before her marriage to Joseph, who gave birth to her child in the cold in a stable far from home and then, hunted by Herod, was forced to flee to Egypt. Mary – our mother; the mother of the Church – had an intimate understanding of suffering, flight, homelessness and uncertainty. At Guadalupe, Mary appeared not to the rich or powerful, or even to the local bishop, but to the poor peasant Juan Diego....
  
  "we need to remember that the Holy Family too was once a family of immigrants and refugees. And we need to treat the undocumented among us with the mercy and justice we expect for ourselves " (Archbishop Chaput, 12/12/14).