Trust God always, share Jesus with others

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
 As we enter this final month of preparation in our year of awakening before consecrating our diocese to Jesus through Our Lady of Guadalupe, I want to share with you my opening homily from our pilgrimage to her shrine in Mexico City. I think it applies to all of us and can help us all prepare for the graces Mary wants to share with us:
What a beautiful start to our pilgrimage with Mass here at the original shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe, which hosted the “Tilma” for almost 300 years until the new shrine was built in the 1970s. And what a joy it is to worship God here today and to thank Him for the gift of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  
Our Gospel today is the reading of Our Blessed Mother going in haste to visit her cousin Elizabeth. When she arrived, Elizabeth recognized something extraordinary about Mary’s visit as John leapt in her womb. Incredibly, even in the womb, John was fired up to be in Jesus’ presence! So, Elizabeth immediately cried out “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” a prayer we say at least 50 times a day as we pray our daily rosary!
Elizabeth’s cry is the recognition of a sacred moment — a moment of encountering God and knowing that something incredible has just taken place. It calls forth humility, gratitude, reverence, and praise. What a great moment! The prophets spoke about how God would one day “visit” his people. Now, Elizabeth is “visited” by God present in Jesus in the womb of Mary, and Elizabeth recognizes that this encounter with her cousin is nothing ordinary at all – rather, it is a sacred moment.  
My brothers and sisters in Christ, we too all have sacred moments when we realize that God has touched our lives in extraordinary ways. These are moments for us, like the encounter in the Gospel today, that evoke within us that same sense of humility, gratitude, reverence, and praise — moments when we realize and understand that God is in control of our lives … and always has been and always will be – until He calls us home. Moments when we know we are loved, forgiven, and not alone. We don’t live all day caught up in those “moments” but gratefully God does provide them for us every now and then to sustain our faith and invite us to trust the Lord during our difficult times as well.  
Mary is declared “Blessed” by Elizabeth because she trusted that the Lord’s word to her would be fulfilled. Mary’s discipleship is defined by her confident trust in God’s promises. It is easy for us to trust in the Lord’s promises when we are experiencing success and the praise of others. It can be difficult to trust in God’s promises when we asked to embrace sacrifice, confusion, disappointment, conflict and rejection. The enduring quality of Mary’s discipleship is that she trusted the Lord even when it meant accepting such difficulties. Brothers and sisters, we too need such trust in the Lord, and our visit here today reminds us that our Mother Mary is the one who can help us to trust.  We ask Mary to surround all of us with her maternal love and that she provide us with the graces we need to persevere and emulate her, who trusted in joyful moments like in today’s Gospel, but also in moments of darkness, confusion and evil, like when she held the body of her lifeless Son at the foot of the cross. Yes, Mary is a model of trust in God for all of us.  
However, Mary is not just a model of trust for us, she is also a model of discipleship, as she is the first missionary – she hears from the Angel that Elizabeth, her cousin is pregnant with John the Baptist and she immediately goes to Elizabeth to share the good news of the Annunciation. She takes the Word within her and speaks that Word to Elizabeth. That Word brings life deep in Elizabeth’s person and being and John leaps in her womb.  
That’s what we’re supposed to do as disciples as well my brothers and sisters in Christ – be missionaries who trust in God and receive the Word and then speak the Word in such a way that it gives life, meaning and hope to others. We are to be people of prayer, who speak and listen to God often. Then, we are supposed to bring the presence of Christ to the world.  
St. Juan Diego gives us good example of this as well. It was St. Juan Diego whom the Blessed Mother of Guadalupe asked to build a church so in it she could show her love, compassion, aid, and defense to all her children, especially the least among them. After seeing apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1531, Juan Diego told the local Bishop of Mary’s visitations and her desire to have a church built where she appeared to him. In response to the bishop’s request that he ask Our Lady for a sign, Juan Diego went back to our Lady in prayer and implored the Virgin Mary to provide something to convince the bishop of her wishes. The Virgin instructed him to gather flowers from the hillside, and even though roses in December are rare, he was able to fill his cloak with them. When Juan Diego returned to the bishop and opened his cloak, the fresh roses fell to the ground and miraculously revealed an imprint of Our Lady’s image on his “Tilma.”
Yes, Mary is pronounced blessed in the Gospels because she believed and acted on the Angel’s message – she didn’t go home and discuss it with her family or just write about it in her journal – she acted on it. She trusted. She went to Elizabeth with it. Juan Diego was declared blessed by the Church, for he too took what he received from our Lord without fear or hesitation, and in faith presented it to the Bishop.  
So, to whom do we need to go? Our year of spiritual awakening has prepared us to hear the Word of God too, to listen more attentively to Jesus. Perhaps we are being prepared for an encounter with Christ in a brother or sister who is in need, who is suffering from a loss or difficulty/tragedy in life. Perhaps our next prayer could be an encounter with a beggar, an immigrant, a person afraid or who is ill or lonely, even a stranger. Perhaps our next encounter with Christ will be with someone in our family or a friend, with whom we have had a conflict or disagreement and need to reconcile, or has fallen away from a faith filled relationship with Jesus in His Church. We are asked to be like Mary, and share the Word, the presence of Jesus in our lives. That is what discipleship is about; sharing the presence of Jesus in our lives. Perhaps our next encounter is just that we too live and witness to what we have received as faithful disciples of Jesus and His Church in a world which needs that witness greatly.
May our pilgrimage here at Guadalupe help us to trust God always, like Mary, then to share Jesus with others, as the first disciple, Our Blessed Mother did, as St. Juan Diego did, as he kick started a whole movement of evangelization in our Church.   Indeed, God has a purpose and a mission for each of us. He will share it with us through Mary. We are listening Mary; we are here! As we prepare to consecrate ourselves and our diocese to Jesus through our Lady of Guadalupe, may we always follow Mary, may we too carry the love of God within us so that others will be astonished and filled with joy—and so together we ask our Blessed Mother’s help for us:  Hail Mary, full of grace….




The Most Reverend James F. Checchio, JCD, MBA Bishop of Metuchen