HOMILY--MASS FOR RELIC OF TILMA--JUAN DIEGO H.S.--November
6, 2003
--Many non-Catholics, and even some Catholics, do not understand why the
Catholic Church shows so much reverence for relics of the saints. Some people
criticize us for setting so much value on a physical object, because they
say it takes away from the worship we owe to God. But some of those same
critics see great value in “relics” of their own: a man may cherish
a gold watch because it belonged to his grandfather; a woman may treasure
a beautiful ring because it belonged to her mother. Because of the life
passed on in families, and the love there, “relics” of ancestors
have great value and are given a special place.
--We Catholics are a family of faith. Our special ancestors and heroes in
faith are the saints, and especially Mary, the Mother of Jesus, Queen of
Saints. If someone can value highly a picture of their grandparents, then
we Catholic can value the tilma of St. Juan Diego, with its picture of Our
Lady of Guadalupe. Our families gave us human life, but God has given us
a share in His own life through His Son Jesus Christ and through the Church
Jesus began. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is our mother in faith. She came
to St. Juan Diego to give her spiritual children in the Americas a powerful
help to their faith: her picture on his tilma, or cloak. A small piece of
that tilma, here with us today, brings that whole story to life again for
us. We know the relic is not Juan Diego and is not the Virgin Mary. In the
same way, your parents know that the pictures of you in their wallets are
not you. But those pictures are very precious to them, because you are precious
to them, and those pictures represent you in a way. So this relic moves
us to a deeper love of God, a deeper thanks to him, because it makes that
wonderful gift to our faith real all over again.
--What does the relic bring before us of this morning? Two special moments
in God’s saving plan for us: Mary, Mother of Jesus, at the time of
her bearing him for us, and the meeting between Mary and Juan Diego over
400 years ago.
--In the gospel reading from Luke we hear about Mary visiting her cousin
Elizabeth and she seems like Juan Diego. Mary was a peasant, hurrying on
foot through the hills, to help a relative, her cousin, who was herself
pregnant, late in life. We think of the image of Mary as Our Lady of Guadalupe,
and we remember that Mary is pictured as pregnant, bearing a child, our
Savior. We remember Mary ’s meeting with the peasant Juan Diego, as
he goes to assist his sick uncle.
--In the gospel story, Elizabeth greets Mary with the words that are now
part of our prayer, the Hail Mary, which you recited so often a few minutes
ago, during the Rosary. So these words are a kind of verbal relic--something
from the past that makes that past present for us, alive for us today.
--Mary was a peasant, then, like Juan Diego. And we hear her refer to that
fact in her prayer, the Magnificat, the first part of which closes our gospel
reading this morning. “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,”
Mary prays. Then she marvels at the contrast between her situation and God’s
wonderful gift to her: “God my savior has looked upon his servant in
her lowliness.” That happened again for Juan Diego, Mary’s spiritual
child, in Mexico, over fifteen hundred years later. In her prayer Mary becomes
a kind of prophetess, as she says, “all ages to come shall call me
blessed.” Indeed the Catholic Church has come to refer to her as the
Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of our Savior. In Mexico, through her gift to
Juan Diego, Mary made sure that this living faith in her Son would be made
new and strong again through the experience of Juan Diego. Through him the
devotion to Mary as Our Lady of Guadalupe would spread throughout Mexico,
the Americas, and the world.
--What does all of that have to do with us? St. Paul answers that question
in our second reading, as he writes to his recent converts among the Galatians.
He says that God’s divine, eternal Son was born of a human mother,
Mary, to become one of us. Why? So that Jesus, that Son, could free us from
slavery and make us children of the Father, his adopted daughters and sons
in Christ.
--What do I mean, “slavery”? We’re all free citizens in this
democracy. Well, yes, but there are all kinds of slavery: the traditional
kind, still happening in the Sudan, where little children are sold for about
$100.00; slavery to sin; slavery to poverty, to prejudice, and ignorance;
slavery to what others think, to class distinctions, to fashion and trendiness
and popularity; slavery to addictions; slavery to depression and despair
and loneliness. Not all prisons have bars on the windows. Jesus in his Good
News, through his sisters and brothers in his Church, still can act to set
us free through truth and hope and love.
--That’s why the story of St. Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe
is more than a pretty story. It is a call and a challenge to us, to look
on others the way God our Father looked on Mary, and see more than lowliness.
We are meant to see the potential for glory. We are meant to help set people
free of whatever enslaves them.
--How do we know God has made us free women and men in Christ? St. Paul
says the proof is that the Father has sent the Spirit of his Son into our
hearts, so that we can, if we will, call God “Abba,” that is,
“Father.” Now that’s an interesting, respectful translations,
“Father,” but it’s not quite exact. To this day, if you are
in a market place in the Middle East, and you see a little Arab boy fall
too far behind his father, you will see him run after him as he calls out,
“Abba! Abba!” So of course it means--”Daddy!” The good
news is Jesus has brought us so close in love to God that we can call him
“Daddy!” That’s how dear we are to him.
--And that’s what Mary emphasized once again when she appeared to St.
Juan Diego, so we in this new world would not forget it: “Am I not
your mother? Am I not life and health?”
--That’s why we show so much reverence to this relic of the tilma,
this reminder in 2003 of what God did in Christ two thousand years ago,
and reminded us of in Mexico nearly 500 years ago. And, of course, Jesus
feeds his life in us each time we gather around this altar, as we do here
this morning. Our reverence is serious, even a bit solemn, but the motive
is joy- joy in being the spiritual children of Mary our Mother and Christ’s,
and children who can turn to God in love and trust, and call out “Abba,”
“Daddy.” |
