Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary and Groundbreaking for the Construction of the Saint Juan Diego Pilgrim House

Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe

La Crosse, Wisconsin

7 October 2024 – Groundbreaking for the Construction of the Saint Juan Diego Pilgrim House

Acts 1, 12-14

Lk 1, 46-47. 48-49. 50-51. 52-53. 54-55

Lk 1, 28

Lk 1, 26-38

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We gratefully recall the victory of Christianity over the potentially devastating Islamic attack at the Battle of Lepanto on this day in 1571. Today’s feast was first given the title of Our Lady of Victory by Pope Saint Pius V who had asked the confraternities of the Holy Rosary at Rome to pray and conduct processions while the Battle of Lepanto was being fought. Pope Gregory XIII changed the title to Our Lady of the Rosary to underline more fully the powerful prayer which had procured so many graces for those who were engaged in battle to defend Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church.

The Battle of Lepanto took place some forty years after the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Saint Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill, from December 9^th to 12^th of 1531. In fact, Fray Alonso de Montúfar, O.P., Second Archbishop of Mexico City, deeply conscious of both the imminent threat of the Moslem conquest of Christian Europe and of the countless miracles wrought through the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, sent a small image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which he had touched to the Sacred Tilma of Saint Juan Diego, to King Philip of Spain, expressing confidence that the Virgin of Guadalupe would intercede powerfully for the victory of the Holy League. The image was mounted in the cabin of Admiral Giovanni Andrea Doria who was in command of the squadron from Genoa, together with those from the Papal States, Parma, and Savoy. Precisely at a moment when it seemed that the Moslems would destroy the fleet of Admiral Andrea Doria and would vanquish the Christian Navy a tremendous wind rose up against the Moslem Navy, giving the victory to the Christians. The crew of the Admiral attributed the victory to the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe.[1]

Clearly, the Virgin Mother of God, principally through the praying of the Holy Rosary but also through her miraculous image as Our Lady of Guadalupe, interceded powerfully before the throne of God Who delivered His people from the hands of a ferocious and seemingly unconquerable enemy. Devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe who ever draws her children to the only source of salvation in her Divine Son is naturally one with the devotion of the Holy Rosary by which we contemplate the mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation in the mysteries of the life of Our Lord and of His Virgin Mother.

In a similar manner, at the time of the rise of atheistic materialism or communism, and of the devastating First World War, the Mother of God, in her monthly apparitions to Saints Francisco and Jacinta Marto, and to the Servant of God Lucia de Jésus Rosa dos Santos at Cova da Iria near Fatima, from May 13^th to October 13^th of 1917, repeatedly urged them to pray daily the Holy Rosary in reparation for so many offenses caused to God by man’s sins and in supplication of the salvation of many souls. At her final apparition on October 13^th, after the Mother of God asked that a chapel be built to her honor as Our Lady of the Rosary and urged the daily praying of the Rosary, and repentance and reparation for sins, God provided the Miracle of the Sun to confirm faith in the message which Our Lady was bringing to the world.[2]

So, too, now, at a time when so much darkness and sin envelop the world and menace the Church, we are making a nine-month novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe, begging her to intercede for the conversion of our lives to Christ and the conversion of the millions who do not yet know, love, and serve Him Who alone is our Savior. Certainly, the daily Rosary is an inestimable tool in the saving work of our conversion and of the transformation of our world. We, with the confidence of Archbishop Montúfar and of so many Guadalupanos who have gone before us, pray that the Virgin Mother of Christ, whom He gave to us as our Mother when He died for us on the Cross, will obtain for us from Our Lord the many graces of which we have need in our time.

As Pope Saint John Paul II taught us in his Apostolic Letter “On the Most Holy Rosary” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae), the Rosary “is nothing other than to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ.”[3] It is a privileged way of contemplation of the face of Christ through prayer, by which we are able to bring Christ more fully into our lives and to the world, in order that He may transform us and the world. Through the Rosary, our Blessed Mother herself assists us to look upon the face of Christ as she did from the moment of His Birth, throughout His public ministry, at His Passion and Death, and in His Resurrection and Ascension to the right hand of the Father. Praying the Holy Rosary, we like the Apostles who prayed in the Cenacle for the Descent of the Holy Spirit, “with one accord [devote ourselves] to prayer, together with … Mary the Mother of Jesus, ….”[4]

Pope Saint John Paul II reminded us that the Rosary, while Marian in character, “is at heart a Christocentric prayer.”[5] In other words, although the prayer consists of a repetition of the Hail Mary, it centers on the mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation, the mystery of the coming of God the Son in our human flesh, in order to free us from sin and everlasting death. It is the contemplation of the Mystery of Faith declared to the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Archangel Gabriel at the Annunciation:

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end… The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.[6]

Pope Saint Paul VI, quoting the Venerable Pope Pius XII, called the Rosary “the compendium of the entire Gospel,” for the mysteries of the Rosary are the essential events of the work of our Redemption, especially as they were lived by the Mother of God.[7]

Praying the Rosary, we, with Mary, reflect upon the events of the Redemptive Incarnation and, thereby, look upon the face of Christ, as she did from the moment of His Birth to His Crucifixion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. Looking upon the face of Christ, we hear His invitation to unite our hearts to His Sacred Heart, to unite our lives to His, and, with Mary, we give our fiat to our vocation and mission, which is daily conversion of life to Christ in Whom we are alive from the moment of our baptism.

Pope Saint John Paul II commended to us the Rosary as a daily prayer, asking us to pray for two special intentions: peace and the family. The late Holy Father reminded us that the new millennium began with the unspeakable terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and that terrorism, civil strife and warfare are found throughout the world.[8] Today, we are witnesses to the devastation of war in the Holy Land and in the Ukraine, leading us to beg Our Lord for peace throughout the world. The Rosary is our means of looking upon Christ Who alone brings us peace.[9] Through the Rosary, peace will be attained in our personal lives and in the world.

Secondly, the saintly Pontiff asked us to pray for the family, “the primary cell of society” and the first place in which we come to know, love and serve God.[10] He reminded us of how family life is under constant attack today and needs the help which comes from praying the Rosary. Pope John Paul II commended especially the praying of the Family Rosary as an antidote to the many forces which can easily distance family members from one another and even destroy family life.[11] At this time, when an ever greater confusion and error regarding the Church’s teachings on marriage and its incomparable fruit, the family, spreads throughout the entire Body of Christ, procuring grave harms to souls, let us turn especially to Our Lady, both her apparitions and message at Tepeyac and at Fatima, asking her intercession by praying the Rosary.

Today marks a significant event in the history of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s work at her shrine here. At ten o’clock, this morning, I will bless the ground upon which the Saint Juan Diego Pilgrim House will be constructed and then, together with several others key to the work of its construction, will break the ground to begin this sacred work. Today’s Holy Mass is offered for the intention of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe here and especially for God’s blessing on the work of the Saint Juan Diego Pilgrim House. Please join me in praying for the guidance and safety of all who will work on the construction of the Pilgrim House. Please pray that the Pilgrim House may be a worthy instrument of hospitality to pilgrims, those who wish to spend some days at the Shrine on spiritual retreat, those who come to take part in conferences under the inspiration and protection of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and those who come for celebrations in the life of the Shrine and of her pilgrims.

Let us now, one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, lift up our hearts to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. With Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of the Rosary, let us place in the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus all our prayers for the conversion of our lives and the conversion of the world. Let us then extend, throughout the day, our union of Heart with the Divine Heart by praying the Holy Rosary, contemplating the Face of Christ and discovering in Him the deepest truth about ourselves and our world. May the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe confirm our trust in God’s promise of salvation, in His victory over darkness and sin in us and in the world.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE

[1] Cf. Charles Wahlig, “Our Lady of Guadalupe at the Decisive Moment in the Battle of Lepanto,” A Handbook on Guadalupe (New Bedford, MA: Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, 2001), pp. 101-105.

[2] Cf. Carmelo de Coimbra, Um Caminho sob o Olhar de Maria. Biografia da Irmã Maria Lúcia de Jesus e do Coração Imaculado O.C.D. (Marco de Canaveses: Edições Carmelo, 2013), pp. 86-93. English translation: Carmel of Coimbra, A Pathway under the Gaze of Mary: Biography of Sister Maria Lucia of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart O.C.D., tr. James A. Colson (Washington, NJ: World Apostolate of Fatima, 2015), pp. 87-93.

[3] “… nihil aliud plane est nisi Christi vultum una cum Maria contueri.” Ioannes Paulus PP. II, “Epistula Apostolica Rosarium Virginis Mariae, de Mariali Rosario data,” 16 Octobris 2002, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 95 (2002) 7, n. 3.  [RVM]. English translation: Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Letter on the Most Holy Rosary, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, Vatican translation (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2002), p. 10, no. 3. [RVMEng].

[4] Acts 1, 14.

[5] “… precatio tamen ex animo oritur christologico.” RVM, 5, n. 1. English translation: RVMEng, p. 7, no. 1.

[6] Lk 1, 31-33. 35.

[7] “… totius Evangelii breviarium.” Paulus PP. VI, “Adhortatio Apostolica Marialis Cultus, “de Beatae Mariae Virginis cultu recte instituendo et augendo,” 2 Februarii 1974, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 66 (1974) 152-153, n. 42. English translation: https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p-vi_exh_19740202_marialis-cultus.html, no. 42. Cf. Pius PP. XII, “Epistula ad Excmum P. D. Michaelem O’Doherty, Archiepiscopum Manilensem Philippinas Insulas, ob Marialem Conventum tertio vertente saeculo a parta victoria « La Naval » celebrandum,” 31 Iulii 1946, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 38 (1946) 419.

[8] Cf. RVM, 9, n. 6. English translation: RVMEng, p. 12, no. 6.

[9] Cf. RVM, 32-33, n. 40. English translation: RVMEng, pp. 49-51, no. 40.

[10] “… cellulae ipsius societatis.” RVM, 9, n. 6. English translation: RVMEng, pp. 12-13, no. 6.

[11] Cf. RVM, 9, n. 6, and 33-34, n. 41. English translation: RVMEng, p. 13, no. 6, and pp. 51-52, no. 41.