Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Today's Feast: Mother of the Americas


“It is my heartfelt hope that she whose intercession was responsible for strengthening the faith of the first disciples will by her maternal intercession guide the church in America, obtaining the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as she once did for the early church, so that the new evangelization may yield a splendid flowering of Christian life.”

"In America, the mestiza face of the Virgin of Guadalupe was from the start a symbol of the inculturation of the Gospel, of which she has been the lodestar and the guide. Through her powerful intercession, the Gospel will penetrate the hearts of the men and women of America and permeate their cultures, transforming them from within.”

"How can we fail to emphasize the role which belongs to the Virgin Mary in relation to the pilgrim Church in America journeying towards its encounter with the Lord? Indeed, the Most Blessed Virgin 'is linked in a special way to the birth of the Church in the history... of the peoples of America; through Mary they came to encounter the Lord'".


-Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia in America


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