Salvation Has Come to This House
Common of the Anniversary of the Dedication of a Church
18th Anniversary of the Dedication of the Church
Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe
La Crosse, Wisconsin
31 July 2026
Ezek 43, 1-2. 3-7
Ps 84, 3. 4. 5. 10. 11
Heb 12, 18-19. 22-24
Lk 19, 1-10
Homily
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We celebrate the 18th Anniversary of the Dedication of this House of God during an important anniversary year for our nation, the United States of America: the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. As we thank God today for His dwelling in our midst here, the Shrine Church, and for the many graces which, in this holy place, have flowed from the glorious-pierced Heart of God the Son Incarnate into the hearts of countless faithful, it is fitting to reflect on the relationship of our citizenship in heaven, the ultimate fruit of divine grace, with our citizenship in the state and nation during the days of our earthly pilgrimage. Our reflection is an exercise of the virtue of patriotism in response to the Fourth Commandment of the Decalogue by which “we render due honor to God and, in Him, to those earthly bonds through which He has given us life, culture, and the first lessons in truth and goodness.”[1]
First of all, we are deeply grateful to live in a state and nation which respects man’s fundamental freedom to practice religion, that is, to practice a right relationship with God. The signers of the Declaration of Independence clearly recognized that the nation created by their action must be God-fearing and fully respectful of divine law. They took their historic action, “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of [their] intentions” and declaring “a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”[2] Establishing the nation as a democratic republic, the founding fathers knew that the future of the nation depended on the practice of religion on the part of the individuals and families constituting the individual states of the union. Citizens who ignore or violate the law of God fail to practice patriotism and, especially in a democratic republic, soon destroy the nation. The nation, therefore, rightly protects and fosters the practice of true religion. Pilgrimage to a holy place is one of the most powerful devotions of the faithful, leading them, through an extraordinary experience of faith, to a closer communion with God in their ordinary daily living, including the fulfillment of their civic duty.
At the same time, holy places of pilgrimage depend upon the essential goods guaranteed by the civil government. We think, for instance, of water and electricity, of the assistance of civil servants in the offices of government, and of the right order and security provided by our military, police, and firefighters. Today, therefore, is a day for us to thank God for our state and nation, and for the local civic authorities who make it possible for the Shrine to operate daily on behalf of the many who come here on pilgrimage. We pray for our nation and for our local community, and for our national and local civic leaders that they may carry out their duties in obedience to the divine law which secures right order in society and fosters the work of the Church on behalf of the salvation of souls.
Celebrating the anniversary of the Dedication of the Shrine Church during the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we are also deeply conscious of the Shrine’s mission to be a powerful sign of the presence of God in the midst of the world. We are conscious of the faults of our government and of the forces which threaten and compromise the exercise of the “unalienable rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”[3] In the popular patriotic hymn, “America the Beautiful,” whose lyrics were published by Katharine Lee Bates on July 4, 1895, we pray for our nation: “America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law.”[4] We must never forget that civil authorities need more than anything else to have a right relationship with God, and we must recognize the particular service of a holy place of pilgrimage in helping them to know God’s law and to put it into practice in their service of the state and nation. The flaws of our nation in safeguarding and fostering “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,”[5] in serving freedom by the enactment of just laws, can only be corrected by a daily conversion to God.
In the Gospel account, Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus. Clearly, his desire to see Jesus was not something idle or superficial. He was looking for God and for the reform of his public life in accord with God’s law. When Jesus welcomed the desire of Zacchaeus to know him, He revealed to Zacchaeus that God was, in fact, first in search of him and his love. The encounter with Jesus inspired in Zacchaeus a profound conversion. He declared to Our Lord: “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything I restore it fourfold.”[6] Our Lord responded:
Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.[7]
It is essential that the Shrine here, faithful to its mission of a holy place of pilgrimage, draw pilgrims to the Shrine Church, the House of God, for, as revealed in the vision of the Prophet Ezekiel, “the glory of the Lord” fills His holy temple.”[8]
Through the beauty of the Shrine Church, Jesus invites pilgrims to encounter Him, under the guidance of His Virgin Mother, Our Lady of Guadalupe, through prayer and, above all through the Sacraments, especially Penance and the Holy Eucharist. Meeting Our Lord in the Shrine Church is an anticipation of our ultimate destiny, the eternal liturgy of Heaven. Here, we have the experience of our ultimate call “to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of the just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel.”[9] Here, in the encounter with Christ, we experience our communion in His Mystical Body, the Church militant, suffering, and glorious: our brothers and sisters in Christ here on earth, in purgatory, and in Heaven.
Today, let us pray, in a special way, that those who have responsibility for our state and nation will, in imitation of Zacchaeus, enter here in search of Jesus, in search of God’s mercy, through the help of the Virgin Mother of God, Our Lady of Guadalupe, who unfailingly leads us to her Divine Son, as she did for the servants at the Wedding Feast at Cana, with the instruction: “Do whatever he tells you,”[10] the words inscribed on the cornerstone of this Shrine Church. In these times in which great evils threaten our nation, Our Lord Jesus, through His Virgin Mother, seeks to encounter those who have the care of the common good to bestow upon them the grace necessary to practice justice in the pursuit of peace. Let us pray that many of our civic leaders will seek Our Lord here, a holy place in which He is seeking them, and, thereby, will embrace the daily conversion of life, which their service demands. Let us pray, in a particular way, that the Shrine Church and the soon-to-be-completed Saint Juan Diego Pilgrim House may be the instruments of the many needed graces for the life of our nation.
Before the Final Blessing, I will induct some of our faithful acolytes as Pages and Knights in Our Lady’s Knights of the Altar, the corps of young men who, as acolytes, serve directly Our Lord at His altar here under the maternal guidance of His Virgin Mother, Our Lady of Guadalupe. May those to be inducted grow ever stronger in their service of Our Lord at the Altar of His Sacrifice and may every aspect of their lives reflect the holiness of their service of Our Lord as Our Lady’s Knights. May they daily ask the intercession of Our Lady, Mother of Our Lord and their Heavenly Mother, as they respond to the grace of serving at the altar of Our Lord.
Christ will now descend from His throne at the right hand of God the Father to the altar of His temple here to make sacramentally present His Sacrifice on Calvary. He invites us to be one with Him in His Sacrifice and to receive its incomparable fruit: His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity – the Bread from Heaven which spiritually nourishes us all along the way of our earthly pilgrimage to our eternal home with Him. Filled with gratitude for this holy place in which Our Lord dwells with us, let us pray, in a particular way, that it may be a beacon of His truth and love for our state and nation, and, in a special way, for government leaders in their service of the common good. One with the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin of Guadalupe, let us now give our hearts totally to the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, opened to receive us in the Eucharistic Sacrifice. So may we obtain blessings for all our brothers and sisters in the Mystical Body of Christ, blessings for our beloved homeland.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE
[1] Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, The Virtue of Patriotism, Special Jubilee Edition (La Crosse: The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 2026), p. 1.
[2] “Appendix: The Declaration of Independence” in Matthew Spalding, The Making of the American Mind: The Story of Our Declaration of Independence (New York/London: Encounter Books, 2025), p. 241. [Hereafter, Declaration of Independence].
[3] Declaration of Independence, p. 237.
[4] Katharine Lee Bates, America the Beautiful, and Edward A. Collier, O Peerless Flag (Boston: Oliver Ditson Company, 1917), p. 3.
[5] Declaration of Independence, p. 237.
[6] Lk 19, 8.
[7] Lk 19, 9-10.
[8] Ez 43, 5.
[9] Heb 12, 22-24.
[10] Jn 2, 5.