Welcome - Our Lady of Guadalupe Celebration

The Most Rev. José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
Los Angeles, California
August 5, 2012

Greetings Guadalupanos!

It is a great joy to welcome you to this beautiful celebration of our faith in Our Lady of Guadalupe!

I want to express publicly my gratitude to Carl Anderson, the Supreme Knight, and to all of the Knights of Columbus. They have been so generous, and so apostolic in co-sponsoring this beautiful event with our great Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

This reminds us that the Knights of Columbus have always had a deep love for our Mexican people and a strong zeal for the “continental mission” of the new evangelization.

I thank the Knights today, on behalf of all of us, for all that they have done in this past century — to spread faith in Jesus Christ, to defend his Church, and to inspire love for Our Lady of Guadalupe.

So here we are today, my dear Guadalupanos!

We are here to thank our Mother.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is not only the Mother of the people of Mexico. She is the Mother of all the peoples of the Americas! She is the New Eve. She is the Mother of all the living!ⁱ She is our Mother!

She has been with us from the beginning of our journey in this life. She is still watching over us and our families — with her gentle gaze and her loving eyes. She is guiding us and protecting us in all the challenges and joys of our lives.

Our Lady of Guadalupe will never leave us! She will be with us when we open our eyes for the first time in heaven!

Today we ask Our Lady to move our hearts to a new conversion. To a deeper love for her Divine Son, Jesus Christ. To a new obedience of faith so that we really live by his teaching and by his example.

We ask Our Lady of Guadalupe to move us to make a new commitment to live out our responsibility towards the mission of his Catholic Church. The continental mission of the new evangelization.

We are called to carry the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe to our world today. So that Jesus Christ may live in the hearts of all who hunger for God!

So right now, my brothers and sisters, we need to settle our hearts and minds so that we can pray the holy Rosary of the Virgin Mary together — as one family of God.

Our beloved Blessed John Paul II said that when we pray the Rosary we contemplate the mysteries of Jesus Christ through the eyes of his mother.

Let us try, as we pray today, to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ. Let us try to sit “in the school of Mary.” So that we can “contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and experience the depths of his love.”ⁱⁱ

Let us ask in this Rosary for the grace to be good Guadalupanos. Let’s pray for the courage to do God’s will in our lives. And may the Virgin of Guadalupe accompany us always!

^i. Gen. 3:20.

^ii. Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 1.