Building the Church
Honor Our Lady of Guadalupe – December 12The Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe is the perfect time to pause and reflect how each one of us is helping build the Church – sweet, simple, and genuine evangelization with our invitation and our actions.
A prayer for the feast day:
Mary, wrap me in your mantle, just as you wrapped Juan Diego. May you wrap me in your love, too, so that I might grow in the same courage and hope as Juan Diego to seek Christ and love others in this life, sharing Jesus Christ and His Church by my words and actions. And may you guide me closer to your Son, so that I might more fully love Him as you do. AMEN!
Back in 1531, God chose an unlikely messenger—St. Juan Diego, a humble Indigenous peasant living near what is now Mexico City. Juan Diego had recently embraced Christianity thanks to the work of Franciscan missionaries in a land still rooted in ancient traditions. Quiet, faithful, and sincere, he was exactly the kind of heart that pleased the Blessed Mother.
Mary appeared to him on Tepeyac Hill, not as a distant heavenly figure but as an Aztec princess—with dark skin, native clothing, and visibly expecting Jesus. Speaking Juan’s own language, she asked him to tell the bishop that she desired a church built on that very spot.
The bishop, unsure that such a miracle could happen to an ordinary man like Juan, hesitated. But Juan returned to the hill, troubled yet trusting. Mary appeared again and instructed him to gather roses—an impossible task in that cold season on that rocky terrain. Yet he found them blooming. He did as she said. When Juan opened his cloak before the bishop, the roses spilled out, and the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared on the fabric.
A small chapel was built on Tepeyac Hill, and today the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe stands there, visited by millions every year. Beneath it remain the foundations of the original chapel, lovingly preserved as part of this sacred story.
It’s believed that nearly nine million people in the Americas converted to Christianity within ten years of the apparition—an incredible wave of faith that still continues.
Sister Martha Gomez, Delegate for Consecrated Life and a native of Mexico, shares that families begin celebrating as early as 4 a.m. Children dress as St. Juan Diego or Indigenous people of the time, carrying roses—symbolic of Mary’s miracle—to be placed before statues and images of Our Lady of Guadalupe found in every parish. Pilgrims who travel to the Basilica often arrive on their knees, offering prayers of gratitude, petitions, and heartfelt devotion.
So, on this beautiful Marian feast day, ask yourself:
“How am I helping to build the Church, and how can I share the love of Christ in our world?”
May we follow the example of St. Juan Diego—humble, faithful, and always ready to serve God with a trusting heart.
