Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Advent 2024

Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe

La Crosse, Wisconsin

14 December 2024

Is 7, 10-15

Lk 1, 26-38

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

How fitting that, during the Season of Advent, the Solemn High Mass, according to the Ancient Usage (Usus Antiquior) is offered, in all its beauty, in this Church of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Sacred Liturgy is the highest and fullest expression of the sublime mystery which we prepare to celebrate at Christmas: the Mystery of Faith, the Mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation. Like every mystery, the mystery of our redemption through the Incarnation of God the Son in the womb of the Virgin Mary is beyond our comprehension. The divinely inspired Sacred Scriptures and, above all, the Sacred Liturgy, help us to recognize the mystery, to wonder at it, to glimpse some part of its infinite truth, beauty and goodness, and to participate in the grace it signifies. That is why the Sacred Scriptures and, above all, the Sacred Liturgy always bring us to recognize anew the mystery, to wonder at it all the more, to appreciate more deeply its immeasurable and unceasing richness, and to unite our whole being with it.

The Virgin of Guadalupe proclaimed the Mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation from the first moment of her apparitions to Saint Juan Diego. She declared to him:

Know, know for sure my dearest and youngest son, that I am truly the ever perfect Holy Virgin Mary, who has the honor to be the Mother of the one true God for whom we all live, the Creator of people, the Lord of all around us and of what is close to us, the Lord of Heaven, the Lord of Earth.”[1]

Her image, which God has miraculously left for us on the mantle, the tilma, of Saint Juan Diego makes visible the truth of the Virgin Mother’s unique cooperation in Christ’s work of the Redemption.

The Virgin of Guadalupe is with child, the Divine Child, Who took a human heart under her Immaculate Heart. She was, from the moment of her Immaculate Conception, totally for Christ and thus totally for us whom He redeems from our sins. She accompanied Our Lord as His first and best disciple throughout His public ministry. She was at His side throughout His cruel Passion and Death, and, as His divine and human heart was pierced by the Roman soldier’s spear, after He had died, so also was her Immaculate Heart mystically pierced. As Our Lord was about to die on the Cross, he signified the Virgin Mary’s continuing mission as Mother of God in the Church, declaring to her and to Saint John the Apostle, representing the Church, as they remained with Our Lord at the foot of the Cross: “Woman, behold your son! … Behold, your mother!”[2]

The Virgin Mother’s irreplaceable and altogether unique cooperation in the work of our Redemption is announced in the Prophecy of Isaiah: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his named Immanuel.”[3] What God announced through the Prophet Isaiah he accomplished at the Annunciation, as His messenger the Archangel Gabriel announced to Mary: “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”[4] Immanuel, God-with-us, in the Prophecy of Isaiah is Jesus, God saves, in the Gospel.

The Virgin Mother of God never ceases to be the chosen instrument, the all-pure channel, by which the grace of our salvation, the grace of Christ which is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit from His glorious-pierced Heart into our hearts, comes to us. We express our faith in the Virgin Mary’s vocation and mission in the Collect after the chanting of the Salve Regina:

Almighty and everlasting God, by the cooperation of the Holy Spirit you prepared the body and soul of Mary, glorious Virgin and Mother, to become the worthy habitation of your Son; grant that by her gracious intercession, in whose commemoration we rejoice, we may be delivered from present evils and from everlasting death.[5]

The Virgin Mother of God is Mother of the Church. She is the Mother, the Mediatrix, of All Grace.[6]

In preparing to celebrate the Birth of Our Lord, we venerate with all our heart His Virgin Mother, and we ask her to intercede for us that we, with her, may more and more wonder at the Mystery of Faith at work in our lives and, above all, in the Eucharistic Sacrifice which Christ now offers on our altar, by which He makes sacramentally present the saving grace of His Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension. We ask the Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, to lead us sacramentally to the Foot of the Cross, and to help us, by her motherly love, to give our hearts totally to Christ through the Eucharistic Sacrifice, even as her Heart was always totally in His Sacred Heart from the moment of her Immaculate Conception. 

In the most troubled time in which we are living in the Church, our only hope is in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The confusion, error, and division which daily multiply in the Church cause us to fear, to feel abandoned and betrayed, to be angry, and even to consider leaving the side of Christ on the Cross. Sadly, in the Church today there is ever more discussion of schism, of a radical split in the Church, as an evitable result of the undisciplined confusion and division. But schism is never justified. Schism is never the will of God for us. We are never justified in abandoning Christ in His holy Church. No matter what we are asked to suffer, we must remain with Him, even if those in the highest positions of authority in the Church should abandon Him, should commit the grievous crime of apostasy from the Catholic faith.

We know the Gospel, the authentic teaching of the Church, as it has been handed down to us in an unbroken line from the Apostles. It is memorialized for us in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. We hold firm to Christ, to the Sacred Tradition by which He continues to act on behalf of our salvation in the Church, to that Sacred Tradition as it comes to us most perfectly and fully in the Sacred Liturgy.

In a particular way, today, let us ask the Mother of God, Our Lady of Guadalupe, to intercede for our holy Mother Church and for each of us, her living members, so that she and we will be protected from attacks from within her body, and so that sound doctrine and right discipline will be restored in the Church for the salvation of countless souls. Let us storm heaven with this prayer brought to the Throne of God by our heavenly Mother. In a special way, let us storm heaven with the praying of the Rosary for the Church and the world.

If you have not yet consecrated yourself to Our Lady of Guadalupe, I invite you to do so today. Consecrated to Our Lady of Guadalupe for the glory of God and the salvation of our souls and the souls of many, pray the Daily Prayer of Those Consecrated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Be confident. Our Lady will never fail to receive your prayer and to intercede for all the graces which you need to be more perfectly of one heart with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, her Divine Son, and to draw other souls to Him Who alone is our salvation.

Under the all-loving care of Our Lady of Guadalupe, let us now lift up our hearts, one with her Immaculate Heart, to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus as He now makes sacramentally present His Sacrifice on Calvary. May our hearts, resting securely in His Most Sacred Heart, find the wisdom and strength to be His prudent and courageous soldiers, defending the truth and grace of our Redemption through His Incarnation, Birth, Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, each day of our lives.

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

Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE

[1] “Sábelo, ten por cierto, hijo mío, el más pequeño, que yo soy en verdad la perfecta siempre Virgen Santa María, que tengo el honor de ser Madre del verdaderísimo Dios por quien se vive, el Creador de las personas, el Dueño de la cercanía y de la inmediación, el Dueño del cielo, el Dueño de la tierra.” “Apéndice A - El Nican Mopohua” in Carl Anderson y Eduardo Chávez, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Madre de la civilización del amor (México, D.F.: Random House Mondadori, S.A. de C.V., 2010), p. 214. English translation: “Appendix A – The Nican Mopohua” in Carl A. Anderson and Eduardo Chávez, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love (New York: Doubleday, 2009), p. 173.

[2] Jn 19, 26-27.

[3] Is 7, 14.

[4] Lk 1, 31.

[5] “Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui gloriosae Virginis Matris Mariae corpus et animam, ut dignum Filii tui habitaculum effici mereretur, Spiritu Sancto cooperante, praeparasti: da, ut cuius commemoratione laetamur; eius pia intercessione, ab instantibus malis et a morte perpetua liberemur.” “Ordinarium divini Officii, pars generalis: Antiphonae finales B. Mariae Virginis, IV,” Breviarium Romanum ex Decreto Ss. Concilii Tridentini restitutum Summorum Pontificum cura recognitum, Editio iuxta typicam). English translation: James Socias, ed., Handbook of Prayers, 4^th ed. (Princeton, NJ: Scepter Publishers, Inc., 1997),

[6] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 969.