"Am I Not Here, I Who Am Your Mother?"

I love Our Lady of Guadalupe. In the early 90s my husband, my mom, and I traveled with a Catholic group and visited the basilica. The old basilica was closed because of structural issues and I can't say I admired the architecture of the new basilica, but seeing the tilma up close was a grace and blessing. I bought a banner of the image which hangs in my office where I can look at her often and beg her intercession.

Year ago a friend sent me a Christmas ornament of Juan Diego. Today I put him and a small metal image of Our Lady on the Christmas tree. I love to reflect on the tender words of Mary to her little son:

“Listen, put it into your heart, my youngest and dearest son, that the thing that frightens you, the thing that afflicts you, is nothing: do not let it disturb you…Am I not here, I who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need something more? Let nothing else worry you or disturb you.”

The Queen of Advent, Our Lady of Guadalupe

What does Holy Mother Church give us halfway through Advent? The feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of America. What a gift! 

Do you know the story? 

On December 9, 1531 which was then the feast day of the Immaculate Conception, Mary appeared to Juan Diego in Mexico City and asked him to take a message to the bishop to build her a shrine there. The bishop asked for sign. In response, Mary gathered roses and arranged them in Juan Diego's tilma and told him to take them to the bishop.

When Juan Diego opened it before the bishops, the roses fell to the floor revealing the miraculous image imprinted there by heaven's power. 

What a gift and reminder Mary's feast is in the middle of Advent. She calls us in this holy season to prayer and penance. "Am I not here?" Mary asks us and "Am I not your mother?" 

Learning about the Electoral Process....It Ain't Over Til It's Over!

It's not time to give up. It's time to keep praying and to add a little fasting to those prayers!  It's not over until CONGRESS confirms the electoral college results in January.

Check out these articles which explain how the electoral process works.

Trump has more paths to victory than Joe Biden. 

Explainer: Dueling Electors and the Upcoming Joint Session of Congress

Sunday Meditation: The Privilege to be a Woman

What? You think I'm a misogynist?

I once had a conversation in the parking lot with a fellow parishioner. She's blunt and a bit crusty and I like her all the better for it. She lamented that we don't have altar girls. I disagreed saying there were too many women in the sanctuary already. Testily she responded, "You're a misogynist!" and stomped off. I laughed. It's the first time anyone has ever accused me of that. I know what the word means, but I looked it up anyway. The definition is even stronger than I thought:

misogynist: a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women.

Me a misogynist? Not hardly!

On the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe Reflect on her Intervention for our Country and our World

Fr. Paul Weinberger sent me the information below about Our Lady and world events. She so often is right in the midst of our "mess" interceding for us and giving us protection. I've added my comments in red.

Some fascinating dates AND the Blessed Virgin Mary in the years 1941 & 1945 & 1531

December 7, 1941 here in the U.S.A. and in the Western Hemisphere

1). The military naval base of the USA at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was destroyed during a sneak attack by air bombers from the Empire of Japan. [My dad, an ensign, was on the light cruiser, U.S.S. Detroit. Fresh out of the Naval Academy, he was the ranking officer on board that Sunday morning. Many of his classmates died at Pearl Harbor. Had my dad been on the Arizona I probably wouldn't be here today. Thank you, Blessed Mother, for protecting both my parents and my oldest sibling, Ray, who was an infant in the womb. My mom was later evacuated with the other Americans and Daddy's ship was one of the escorts back to San Diego where mom spent the rest of the war.]

Signs in the Heavens and Our Lady's Intercession

Mary will never abandon us!

I've been reading a lot about the Aztec empire and Our Lady of Guadalupe this past week as her feast day approaches. It seems to me that we are living in similar times. The evil, bloodthirsty empire in this country rivals the Aztecs. We have our own knife-wielding priests and priestesses who engage in human sacrifice on a scale never before seen in the history of the world. Their temples are adorned with the logo of Planned Parenthood; their holy of holies is the abortion chamber with its suction machine, sterilized curettes, and the altar of sacrifice where victims are ripped from their mothers' wombs.

We live in a time that the blood of the innocent cries out to heaven! Come, Lord Jesus, save your little ones!

Once before Our Lady came to this continent and converted a people committed to pagan practices. We know about her apparitions to Juan Diego, but Mary was active in Mexico decades before that. She had to be! How could a few thousand Spaniards defeat an empire of tens of millions? I have no doubt Mary was interceding and urging her Son to give signs from heaven that convinced Montezuma his nation would crumble. How else could the small Spanish force, even if they were willing to "risk something for God," defeat the demonic empire of millions with many trained warriors?

Carlos Caso-Rosendi describes the omens in the skies before Cortez landed:

Guest Post: "We Must Risk Something for God." Hernando Cortez facing the Aztecs!

Human sacrifice at the Aztec temple

We live in an age every bit as bloody and diabolical as the Aztec Empire where tens of thousands of
captured enemies could be sacrificed to their demon-gods in one religious ceremony spanning a few days. Their pyramids, visible for miles, flowed with blood as they ripped the hearts out of their victims and rolled their bodies down the steep steps. 

Are we more "civilized" than the Aztecs? Does the fact that we sacrifice smaller victims who are often hidden from view make our demonic blood-letting more acceptable?

NO!

In fact, it may make our killing worse. The Aztecs sacrificed prisoners taken in war. That doesn't justify their brutal murders, but they were combatants. The murder of a tiny baby ripped from his mother's womb and harvested for his heart and other organs is even more diabolical.

Guest Post: The Queen of Heaven Clothed with the Stars

The Heel of Our Lady

of Guadalupe upon the Global Serpent

By David Martin

The first and perhaps greatest prophecy given after the fall of our first parents is contained in Genesis 3:15, where God speaks to the serpent: "She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel." This verse of scripture references the Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception and the great power she would exert over the devil, especially in the latter times.

The Virgin's appearance at Guadalupe is certainly no exception to this. The word "Guadalupe," derived from the Aztecan word quatlasupe, providentially means "to crush the head of the serpent," which was precisely the work of the Blessed Virgin in her apparition to St. Juan Diego on December 9, 1531. She appeared on the hill called Tepeyac outside of Mexico City, which formerly was the site of the Aztec temple dedicated to the idol Tonotzin. Her mission was to dispel the magic and indigenous practice that had bewitched that part of the world, and bring the One True Universal Faith to the people. Some 9,000,000 Mexican Indians were converted to the Catholic Faith through her intercession, assisted by the clergy of Mexico. She truly stood upon the hill and conquered the serpent!

Monday Miseries...but Hope in Our Queen

It must be Monday...and a Monday after a bad night of not much sleep. The day outside my window is beautiful, but it can't hide the fact that our world is falling apart. And why?

Well...I'll give my opinion from the perspective of a beekeeper. We have three hives. Two of them are "queen right." That means they each have a laying queen who is doing her job keeping the hive populated with busy little bees to collect nectar and pollen for the hive. All is well in those two "queen right" hives. In one sense, those hives are "pro-life" with the queen laying up to 1200 eggs a day. And it's thrilling to inspect the frames and see the tiny larva curled up at different stages of development before being "capped."

But we have a third hive that has no queen. For a month we've tried to remedy the situation. The hive swarmed (The queen left with about half the bees.) but there were "swarm cells" that should have provided a replacement queen. She never appeared. Then we put in two queen cells that hatched, but nothing came of that either. Now, a month later, that hive is still queenless and there is no brood -- no babies to replace the aging workers. Unless we can remedy the situation, that hive is doomed. Oh, they continue to collect nectar, but with no new workers developing they are in a demographic collapse. The death of their hive society is inevitable without a queen.

Yup...it takes a queen. Which reminds me of another culture of death that was saved by a queen. When Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared in Mexico in 1531 the people were still enslaved in the pagan mentality of the Aztecs. The Church had made little headway against the prevailing culture of death. But after Mary appeared robed in the garments of an Aztec princess in an image that indicated her supremacy over the sun, her mantle decorated in the southern constellations and the cross at her neck, eight million conversions took place in the next ten years.

Isn't that what we need here in the United States? Our pagan culture of death desperately needs Mary. Please pray the rosary and beg for her intercession. Let us not be like a queenless hive of bees working away as if all as well while we collapse and face inevitable death. Let's look to Mary for hope and call upon her, our never-failing mother. Remember..."Never was it known that anyone who fled to [her] protection, implored [her] help, or sought [her] intercession was left unaided."

Mary, Queen of the Americas, pray for us.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of Life, Pray for Us

Our Lady of Guadalupe,

Mystical Rose,

make intercession for holy Church,

protect the sovereign Pontiff,

help all those who invoke you in their necessities,

and since you are the ever Virgin Mary

and Mother of the true God,

obtain for us from your most holy Son

the grace of keeping our faith,

of sweet hope in the midst of the bitterness of life

of burning charity, and the precious gift

of final perseverance.

Amen.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pray for Us

I have always loved the tender messages of the Blessed Mother to her "little son," Juan Diego. She called herself his mother and promised that she had him wrapped in the folds of her garment. Doesn't that remind you of little ones who hide themselves in their mommies' skirts? What a good reason for a mother to wear a skirt instead of pants - so much easier for children to wrap themselves up in their mothers' protection. And don't we desperately need that protection today? North Korea just had a successful missile launch and are close to having a warhead that can reach our west coast. The Middle East is boiling over with violence. The whole world is groaning with lust and hate.

 It sure makes me want to hide in Mother Mary's skirts and listen to her say, "Am I not here, I who am your mother?"

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

Our Lady of Guadalupe Continues to Witness Miraculously

Our Lady of Guadalupe ‘completely beyond' scientific explanation, says researcher

Juan Diego's tilma should have disintegrated years ago, but still it witnesses to Our Lady's visit to Mexico almost 500 years ago. Its existence is "completely beyond any scientific explanation."

Mary told Juan she was his mother and her image reminds us of that still. She wants to bring us straight to her Son. She is the patroness of the Americas.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us and for our poor country.

Go here for extensive information about Mary and her apparitions to Juan Diego in 1531.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Protector of the Unborn, Pray for Us

Today is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, mother of the Americas and patron of children not yet born. Run to the Blessed Mother when you are in trouble or fear anything. She is a strong protector. Under her title of Our Lady of Guadalupe she is a powerful advocate, especially against the wickendness and snares of the devil. If you know anyone who favors abortion ask the Blessed Mother to intercede and here are several websites (below) where they can get more information. There are many others. There is no excuse to be ignorant about the reality of abortion. And those who know the reality and still defend it need our prayers and sacrifices. The Lord promised to treat us the way we treat the least among us. Can there be anyone littler or more helpless than the child in the womb? We have an obligation to defend those being led to the slaughter. If you want justice for yourself, defend life. If you want peace, defend life. If you want eternal life in heaven, defend life. The alternative is indifference and apathy (lukewarmness) toward one of the gravest moral evils of our time. And the Lord made it clear what he would do with the lukewarm - "I will vomit you out my mouth."

Abort73.com
The Center for Bioethical Reform
Priests for Life
Abortion Facts
After Abortion

St. Juan Diego, Pray for Us

The feast of St. Juan Diego is an instructive one for Americans living in the culture of death because he also lived in a culture of death. Juan may very well have witnessed, as a young teenager, the three-day pagan festival held in 1487 when the Aztec priests offered 80,000 human sacrifices. They cut out the still-beating hearts from the chests of their victims before thrusting their bodies down the stairs of the pyramids.

After the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs by Cortes in 1521 human sacrifice and devil-worship were banned, but the native population continued to practice its pagan rituals in secret. Although Juan Diego was among the first to convert to Christianity, little progress was being made by the Catholic missionaries. That is until the Blessed Mother appeared to Juan four times on Tepeyac Hill in 1531.

Juan Diego was up early on the morning of the first apparition to walk the 15 miles to daily Mass. As he passed the hill he saw a glow and heard music and a woman's voice calling to him, "Juanito." Juan met the Blessed Mother dressed as an Aztec princess. She told him to go to the bishop and ask him to build a church there. Juan Diego obeyed, but the bishop, although kind, did not believe him. On another visit the bishop asked for a sign. When Juan told the Blessed Mother, she promised to give him one the next morning.

But on that day Juan's uncle was deathly ill so he attempted to avoid Mary by rounding the hill on the other side in order to hurry and fetch the priest. Our Lady, however, met him on the side of hill. "Where are you going, my little son?" she asked. When he told her about his uncle's illness, she replied, "Nothing should frighten or grieve you. Let not your heart be disturbed. Do not fear that sickness, nor any other sickness or anguish. Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything." She assured him that his uncle would get better and again commissioned him to take her request to the bishop.

Although it was winter, Mary sent Juan Diego to gather roses as the sign the bishop sought. He did and Mary herself arranged them in his tilma before sending him off as her ambassador. When he opened his cloak in the bishop's office and the roses fell to the floor, there embedded in the weave was the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

In the next few years millions of natives converted to Catholicism because of the miracle. The symbolism of the image spoke a clear message that God had visited His people through the Holy Virgin.

St. Juan Diego, on your feast day we beg for your intercession to build in America a culture of life. Please ask the Blessed Mother to act as she did in Mexico to end the human sacrifice of abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and all other assaults against human life.