Fr. Louis Bulletin Letter - December 11, 2005 - Evangelization and Our Lady of Guadalupe
In 1975 Pope Paul VI – after having gathered representative bishops from around the world – issued an important document entitled On Evangelization in the Modern World. The Holy Father wrote: “Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. The Church exists in order to evangelize” (14). But just what does it mean “to evangelize”? While on pilgrimage in Mexico fifteen years later, Pope John Paul II gave this succinct definition: “To evangelize means to announce the Good News. And the Good News which the Christian communicates to the world is that God, who alone is Lord, is merciful to all His creatures, loves man with limitless love and has sought to intervene personally in his history by means of His Son, Jesus Christ, who died and rose for us, to free us from sin and from all its consequences and to make us sharers in His divine life” (7 May 1990). Thus, Jesus Christ Himself – the Good News of God incarnate – is “the very first and the greatest evangelizer” (Paul VI, On Evangelization in the Modern World, 7). The Church is born of the evangelizing activity of Jesus and those He chose as Apostles: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 27:19). To the Church is entrusted the gift and the task of proclaiming Christ the Savior to the world. As the Apostles prayed with the Blessed Virgin Mary at Pentecost (see Acts 1:14), God had Mary watching over – with her prayer – the beginning of the evangelization prompted by the Holy Spirit. I invite all members of Saint Peter Parish, to gather together in prayer with Mary preparing for a new Pentecost at 6:30 pm on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Monday, December 12. But why that date at this busiest time of year!?
In 1531 there was no such thing as the United States of America or Canada or Mexico. There was simply this vast land of the New World. At that time, in what we now call Mexico, the Aztec Empire was flourishing. Their judicial system was remarkably like our own and their legislative system was very effective. The Aztecs were quite advanced in science and the fine arts, in agriculture and the mechanical arts. Their religion, however, involved worship of multiple gods, some of whom demanded human sacrifice. And not just an occasional ritual killing of another person, but brutal murder on a scale never seen before in the history of the world. At the very least, 50,000 people had to be sacrificed to the gods annually. One early Mexican historian estimated that one out of every five children in the Empire was sacrificed. Having arrived less than 40 years earlier, missionaries from the Old World labored intensely in this milieu but made very little progress. Then, between December 9-12, 1531, in what we now call Mexico City, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a native convert named Juan Diego. Mary left Juan Diego with an image of herself imprinted upon his cloak and she came to be known under the title “Our Lady of Guadalupe.” As the story of her apparitions spread and her image displayed, miracles abounded. Without a doubt, the greatest miracle was the conversion of the Aztecs and the neighboring tribes – eight million souls in less than seven years! What is more, the wholesale sacrificial slaughter of innocents ceased.
In our own day, Pope John Paul II prophesied: “The light of the Gospel of Christ will shine out over the whole world by means of the Miraculous Image of His Mother.” To Our Lady of Guadalupe, Star of the New Evangelization, we, the members of Saint Peter’s Parish entrust our renewed efforts to proclaim the Gospel. May she, who converted millions in the First Evangelization of America, do the same as we embark upon a New Evangelization in our parish! We go forth in this task with the assurance “that in Mary we will surely find the strength necessary for undertaking the New Evangelization to which we are called” (John Paul II, 20 May 1992).
Saint Peter, pray for us! Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!