December 12, 2025
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12, 2025 at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chicago, IL. There are several options for the Scripture readings at the Mass For Our Lady of Guadalupe. At this particular Mass, the community proclaimed the following passages: Revelation 11:19a, 12:1-6a, 10ab; Psalm 122; Luke 1:39-56.
In his book about Our Lady of Guadalupe, Virgil Elizando wrote that Guadalupe was the most “revolutionary, profound, lasting, far-reaching, healing, and liberating” event in the history of Christianity since the first Pentecost. [Pause.] When I first read his claim, I was skeptical. Greater than the conversion of St. Paul and his ministry through the Empire? Greater than Constantine allowing the open practice of the faith? Greater than Vatican II recognizing the priesthood of the baptized? But over time, I came believe that Fr. Elizando may be correct.
For most of Christian history, the faith was primarily spread by having political leaders accept the faith, and then they forced their subjects to convert. That all changed on December 12 in 1531. The Spanish conquistadors and the Aztec warriors had known each other for only 10 years, 10 years filled with violence and atrocities. Yet the image of Our Lady and her conversations with Juan Diego show a sophisticated understanding of both Nahautl religion and Christianity, combining all that was good in both while rejecting all the violence of the Aztecs and the Spaniards. Today, the Church still struggles to separate the good of propagating the faith from the evil of colonialism — even the Spanish did not immediately stop abusing the Aztecs after Guadalupe. But since 1531, it has become the norm for the lowly and the hungry to pass the faith on to the mighty and the rich, just as it was in the centuries immediately following that first Christan Pentecost.
Our God is a God of unexpected reversals, a God of love, a God of mercy. Let’s celebrate that!
In recent decades, the Church has used the word “encounter” a lot. Most often, encounter or encuentro means a deep, personal, transformative experience of Jesus Christ. The Church challenges all of us to have a genuine encounter with Christ every time we interact with another person. We need to do this to keep growing as disciples. When Elizabeth greeted Mary, she had a deep, personal, transformative experience with someone who literally carried her Lord. That’s pretty remarkable: I think most people in Elizabeth’s condition — inexplicably pregnant in old age, in seclusion with a husband struck mute — would have made this moment of greeting about themselves, not about their visitor.
Nine years ago, on my first full day working at St. Austin Parish in Austin, TX, I had a powerful encounter with the fledgling Our Lady of Guadalupe committee. The four of them were talented, passionate, determined leaders from Mexican-American backgrounds with lifelong commitments to Guadalupe. I was stunned to be asked to shepherd this committee that night: their goal was nothing short of sharing the devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe with the entire world. I barely knew anything about Guadalupe. There were so few Hispanics in my native town of Pittsburgh that we only had one Mexican restaurant. When I took my first Spanish lesson in New York, my teacher said that I was her first student in 30 years who didn’t know what the word cerveza meant. That fall in Texas, I had an intensive crash course — or call it an encounter, if you will — with the events and the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. And the more I learned, the more devoted I became.
There is no scientific explanation for how the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was created. It was not painted. As mentioned earlier, the details of the image show a sophisticated understanding of both the Nahautl religion and Christianity. The stars in the image are arranged in exact mirror image of how the stars would have appeared in Mexico City on the night of the miracle. The fabric, now 494 years old, should have disintegrated after 10 years. It was barely damaged when someone accidentally spilled acid on it in 1785, and it withstood an explosion of 29 sticks of dynamite in 1921.
But the miracles of Guadalupe reach far beyond the fields of science, art, and comparative religion. More than anything, it is the story of encounter, an encounter as remarkable as Mary’s encounter with Elizabeth. The young pregnant virgin, dressed as royalty, looking to be of either indigenous or mestiza race, appears to the elderly, humble Juan Diego, at a location long associated with one of the most important nonviolent deities in the Nahautl religion. In Juan Diego and Our Lady, we have an encounter of people of different genders, different ages, different socio-economic levels, different cultures, different religions, and different hemispheres. Despite the intense efforts of conquistadors and missionaries to bring the Christian faith to the people of the New World over the previous 39 years, Our Lady accomplished more in her encounters with Juan Diego over a 4-day span in December of 1531.
As John Paul II summed it up well, “Guadalupe and Juan Diego… are a model of perfectly inculturated evangelization.” Instead of the strong and the mighty forcing their subjects to become Christians, Guadalupe ushered in the new template of conversion. Christ comes to the poor and the humble, and through them, the world inches forward towards the new creation God intends for the earth.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is the example par excellence of encounter. She perfectly encapsulated all that was good in two different cultures while not affirming anything that was contrary to goodness, justice, or Truth. Today in our country, when our rhetoric has become so negative and divisive along the lines of gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, politics, race, and religion, we need Our Lady of Guadalupe more than ever to lead us towards a vision of inclusiveness.
And that inclusiveness is not just for the secular world. We need it within the Catholic Church of the United States. Old St. Mary’s is the rare American Catholic parish that eagerly embraces cultural, ethnic, racial, and age diversity. While we have a reasonable amount of political and economic diversity, these values are not as enthusiastically embraced by our entire community. How often, on our own parish doorstep, are we will to re-enacting the encounter between Mary and Elizabeth or Our Lady and Juan Diego, especially with someone who is poor, or with someone who disagrees with our politics?
When we encounter neighbors or strangers — regardless of their age, gender, socio-economic level, politcal beliefs, culture, religion, or hemisphere of origin — can we be filled with the Holy Spirit, like Elizabeth or Juan Diego? Can we recognize that Christ is present in the other person, as Christ was present in Mary?
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!