This third Sunday of Advent occurs on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She is the patroness of all the Americas, and the Gospel for her feast is the same as that for the Immaculate Conception, patroness of the U.S., whose feast day was last week. There is a link between this Guadalupe Lady and the Gospel of Luke, the main Gospel we hear read on Sundays during this liturgical year C. Each Gospel has certain characteristics or themes or flavors, created by which stories about Jesus are included in it, how they are arranged, and so on. Some of Luke’s themes are his emphasis on the forgotten — people like widows — and his distinction between the rich and the poor and concern for the poor in general. Guadalupe is the Virgin of the Poor. At the time of her appearance in December 1531, the Spanish conquistadors had just occupied Aztec Mexico. Juan Diego was a lowly Indigenous person sent on a mission from the Virgin to convince a high-born Spanish bishop to build a place of worship for the Indigenous. Shades of Moses and Pharoah! In Luke’s Christmas story, Jesus is born in humble circumstances, and low-caste shepherds receive the good news from angels singing Gloria. Today and tomorrow many U.S. Catholics of Hispanic heritage will be celebrating the great feast of Guadalupe with their brothers and sisters through the Americas. Let’s remember them in prayer this Sunday. And may their devotion awaken and affirm our own concern for the poor, and our compassion for Hispanic refugees, fleeing oppressing poverty in their home countries today.
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia