Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Today we celebrate another Marian feast day, this one under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe. In 1531 our lady appeared to Juan Diego in Mexico and shortly after, miracles began to happen. The roses in his tilma to prove to the bishop that what Juan was reporting was real, his uncle being cured of a deadly disease and nearly six million Native Mexicans being baptized Christians!
Our Lady of Guadalupe is patroness of the Americas and of the unborn.
We here in the United States need her intercession now more than ever. Our unborn children and their parents need her intercession.
The Franciscan Friars of the renewal of Our Lady of the Angels Friary in the South Bronx, NY decided to pay our Lady homage in a big way last Spring. A 40 ft. x 23 ft. mural divided into 600 12"x18" spaces was painted on the side of the friary. In order to help with the cost of the project, a space could be "adopted" for a donation of $35. The dress of our Lady was reserved for those who had lost children to abortion or miscarriage. There is also a prayerbook with the intentions of the mothers who memorialized their children.
The mural can me seen for miles! It is a beautiful reminder to pray to our Blessed Mother and ask her intercession as well as a beautiful memorial to our children in heaven.
This picture doesn't do it justice, but I haven't made it out to the Bronx to see it in person yet.
I am grateful to the friars for undertaking this project and for all their work in the pro~life movement and post~abortion healing ministries. Above all I am eternally grateful for our Blessed Mother's intercession in my own healing and in bringing me back to her Son.

Prayer of Pope John Paul II To Our Lady of Guadalupe

O Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the true God and Mother of the Church!, who from this place reveal your clemency and your pity to all those who ask for your protection, hear the prayer that we address to you with filial trust, and present it to your Son Jesus, our sole Redeemer.

Mother of Mercy, Teacher of hidden and silent sacrifice, to you, who come to meet us sinners, we dedicate on this day all our being and all our love. We also dedicate to you our life, our work, our joys, our infirmities and our sorrows. Grant peace, justice and prosperity to our peoples; for we entrust to your care all that we have and all that we are, our Lady and Mother. We wish to be entirely yours and to walk with you along the way of complete faithfulness to Jesus Christ in His Church; hold us always with your loving hand.

Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas, we pray to you for all the Bishops, that they may lead the faithful along paths of intense Christian life, of love and humble service of God and souls. Contemplate this immense harvest, and intercede with the Lord that He may instill a hunger for holiness in the whole people of God, and grant abundant vocations of priests and religious, strong in the faith and zealous dispensers of God’s mysteries.

Grant to our homes the grace of loving and respecting life in its beginnings, with the same love with which you conceived in your womb the life of the Son of God. Blessed Virgin Mary, protect our families, so that they may always be united, and bless the upbringing of our children.

Our hope, look upon us with compassion, teach us to go continually to Jesus and, if we fall, help us to rise again, to return to Him, by means of the confession of our faults and sins in the Sacrament of Penance, which gives peace to the soul.

We beg you to grant us a great love for all the holy Sacraments, which are, as it were, the signs that your Son left us on earth.

Thus, Most Holy Mother, with the peace of God in our conscience, with our hearts free from evil and hatred, we will be able to bring to all true joy and true peace, which come to us from your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Amen.

His Holiness John Paul II
Mexico, January 1979. Visiting Her Basilica during his first foreign trip as Pope