Return to Our Lady – Fourth Reflection by Cardinal Burke – April 23

https://novena.cardinalburke.com/novena/reflection-four

Introduction

Making the Nine-Month Novena to the Blessed Virgin Mary under her title of Our Lady of Guadalupe, entrusting ourselves to her guidance and protection and confiding to her intercession our many intentions for the Church and for the world, we rejoice in the perfect union of her Immaculate Heart with the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Lord and Savior.

As the Virgin Mother of God was totally for Christ from the very first moment of her conception, so we, following her example and seeking her intercession, desire to be more and more totally for Christ. We rejoice in the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah regarding the Virginal Conception and Birth of the Savior: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7, 14).

These words attained their fulfillment at the Annunciation. The Virgin Mary, with her “Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum” (“Let it be done to me according to your word,” [Luke 1, 38]), became the Mother of God, the Theotokos, “God-Bearer” to the world. She exercised her mission of God-Bearer, in a most extraordinary way, on Tepeyac Hill from December 9th to 12th of 1531 by means of her apparitions to Saint Juan Diego and his uncle Juan Bernardino. Her exercise of the mission continues to our day through the miraculous imprint of her image on the mantle (tilma) of Saint Juan Diego which has been faithfully venerated in her “sacred little house” (Nican Mopohua, no. 26) from the time of her apparitions to the present day.

When, after his first visit with the Bishop, Juan Diego begged Our Lady to choose another more efficacious messenger, Our Lady responded to him:

Listen my youngest son, know for sure that I have no lack of servants, of messengers, to whom I can give the task of carrying my breath, my word, so that they carry out my will; but it is necessary that you, personally, go and plead, that by your intercession, my wish, my will, become a reality. (Nican Mopohua, nos. 58-59)

From Our Lady of Guadalupe, we, together with Saint Juan Diego, learn that we are called to become bearers of God, heralds of Christ, in the world. As bearers of God, we, like Saint Juan Diego, are servants of the Mother of God. Through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, may we become ever more her faithful servants, so that all of our brothers and sisters may know her as the Mother of God and may experience her unconditional maternal love for them, so that, through her maternal care, they may know, love, and serve her Divine Son.

I hope you will share this message with others.

Cardinal Raymond Burke