Vatican: Our Lady of Guadalupe Star of the New Evangelization
(Vatican Radio) Wednesday evening representatives of the Church from North and South
America gathered for Mass in St Peter’s basilica to celebrate the feast of Our Lady
of Guadalupe and the conclusion of a three day International Conference on the state
of the Church in the Americas today. Emer McCarthy reports Listen: One
of the overriding themes of the conference was inculturated evangelization, particularly
in light of the growing Hispanic population north of the Mexican border. Again and
again during talks and working groups, representatives of the churches in the US and
Canada spoke of the positive impact of immigration on the life of the Church in their
local realities, while also calling for a more human understanding of problems connected
to immigration. An issue of concern for Church leaders is that the “wealth of
faith” of many Hispanic immigrants is being absorbed into a secular culture. So much
so, that by the third or fourth generation, faith is no longer relevant in their lives.
“The reality of the diversity of the Church in the American continent is a wonderful
thing” Says Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, Canada. “I think that
the challenge is always when you have people from other countries bringing their own
culture and the wealth of their faith, then you have the second generation or the
third and fourth and there is the danger that they will be absorbed into a secular
culture. Apart from being secular, it is also less rich. It is plastic; it is not
something to celebrate. A lot of it is very, very superficial with a distorted anthropology
and a distorted sense of the human person. So what a tragedy it is when people come
with a very deep and fruitful culture and it gets watered down. But that need not
happen. The various communities are working hard to be sure that they can enrich
the culture of the local area before it dilutes their spiritual, intellectual and
cultural wealth. That’s not an easy thing to do, it’s a constant challenge”. “I
think it’s very true too that when a country or a community depends upon a religion
based upon a culture, then it’s not a lasting thing. There have to be deeper roots.
When a faith is largely cultural, then it will disappear when it is absorbed by another
culture. We really only have a certain amount of time to develop the deep roots and
hope that they can be strong enough to resist the secularized nature of their surrounding
environment”. The conference, was co-sponsored by the Pontifical Commission for
Latin America and the Knights of Columbus, with assistance from the Institute for
Guadalupan Studies in Mexico City. Addressing participants, Supreme Knight Carl A.
Anderson called for an “inculturated evangelization in which our diversity is sanctified
and purified in its communion in the Church by orienting us toward Christ and therefore
to our brethren as well”. And he told them, thy need look no further than Our Lady
of Guadalupe as a perfect example of this: “Five centuries ago, our hemisphere was
given the perfect example of an inculturated evangelization when Mary appeared to
Saint Juan Diego. Her message of reconciliation, unity and love brought forth the
great evangelization of an entire hemisphere. By her very presence, Our Lady of Guadalupe
became the first and great model of Christian unity presented to all peoples and rising
above national and ethnic partisanship. As the mestiza Virgin of Tepeyac she called
herself the compassionate mother of ―all the people that live together in this land,
and also of all the other various lineages of men.
And yet the ―star of the
new evangelization is an evangelist like no other. She is not, at the moment of encounter
with Juan Diego, working out her own salvation. She is the evangelist par excellence,
in part because she enters the world, as it were, from the beatific vision, a state
of supreme closeness to God. Her example and continued motherhood of all peoples is
a sure path today for the new evangelization”.