Saturday of the First Week of Advent
“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”
In today’s Gospel, Jesus challenges us to listen and act on what God is asking us to do to build the Kingdom of God. In the above quote, we are the laborers and God is the master of the harvest. Further in the passage, Jesus instructed that the Twelve apostles (and us) are to be generous with what God asks us to do since God generously gave to us: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”
St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin is an example of that. He obeyed Mary by asking the bishop to build a shrine at Tepeyac in Mexico and when she told him to pick flowers and put them in his tilma as a sign of the apparition to the bishop. From these flowers, an image of Mary depicted as an indigenous/mestiza pregnant woman appeared on his tilma. As a result, a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe was built. St. Juan Diego took care of it and the pilgrims who would visit and pray there. Our Lady of Guadalupe is significant in the story of Christ’s coming to the people of Latin America. This event indicates that God is for all people, giving them mercy and hope as described in today’s first reading.
We also see in St. Juan Diego, an indigenous man in Mexico with no power, that God can call anyone even the humblest of people. As St. Pope John Paul the Great said in his homily during St. Juan Diego’s canonization:
What was Juan Diego like? Why did God look upon him? The Book of Sirach, as we have heard, teaches us that God alone “is mighty; he is glorified by the humble” (cf. Sir 3:20). St. Paul’s words, also proclaimed at this celebration, shed light on the divine way of bringing about salvation: “God chose what is low and despised in the world…so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor 1: 28, 29).
If God can call St. Juan Diego, God can any of us too to be laborers in building the Kingdom of God.
I’d like to end this reflection with a prayer at the end of St. Pope John Paul the Great’s homily:
Happy Juan Diego, true and faithful man! We entrust to you our lay brothers and sisters so that, feeling the call to holiness, they may imbue every area of social life with the spirit of the Gospel. Bless families, strengthen spouses in their marriage, sustain the efforts of parents to give their children a Christian upbringing. Look with favor upon the pain of those who are suffering in body or in spirit, on those afflicted by poverty, loneliness, marginalization or ignorance. May all people, civic leaders and ordinary citizens, always act in accordance with the demands of justice and with respect for the dignity of each person, so that in this way peace may be reinforced.
Beloved Juan Diego, "the talking eagle"! Show us the way that leads to the "Dark Virgin" of Tepeyac, that she may receive us in the depths of her heart, for she is the loving, compassionate Mother who guides us to the true God. Amen.
-Sr. Emily Sandoval, FMI