Reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. Jesus said to the crowds, to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to their playmates. We piped to you, but you didn't dance. We wailed and cried, but you did not mourn.
For John came, John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, and they said about him, he has a demon. The son of man came eating and drinking, and they say about him, behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Yet, says our lord in conclusion, wisdom is justified by her deeds. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.
This is a great feast day for The Americas. Our Lady of Guadalupe, admittedly it doesn't mean for us what it means for the people of Mexico. If any you those of you who have visited Mexico will realize how this devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe dominates their religious life in many ways. The first bus I got on in Mexico City, there was a a very elaborate insignia of Our Lady of Guadalupe hanging in front of the driver. And I prayed as we got underway, I prayed that it would be effective.
I at least a little bit, well you need more than Saint Christopher down there. Now, Guadalupe is just outside of Mexico City. It's a long walk and a short taxi drive. I had one very curious experience there that I want to share with you as we say. They were building this new basilica because the old one was sinking.
And I got there early in the morning, rather early not 04:00 but around eight, nine, something like that. And of course you had this long, long, long procession of people and coming up and most of them on their knees moving along this hard surface, not smooth vinyl or polished marble, but rough stones on their knees. Many of them elderly, not all, and some of them so old that they had to have help. And you saw elderly people with young children on each side helping them to move towards the basilica, the old one, on their knees. And when they got to the church, they went up the steps on their knees and straight down the middle aisle to the main altar on their knees because this famous cape is hung over the main altar.
All around you, the place was swarming with you. This was just an ordinary weekday in winter. Many of the pilgrims had little charcoal fires going trying to cook up something in the way of hot coffee for breakfast. So the air was filled with the charcoal, the smell of charcoal smoke and you could see the little flames all around. It was a dark drizzly sort of morning.
Well, of course, coming from North America, you know, where we are so unemotional, so aloof to sentiment and all that rock. Why I was sort of taken in by this, anybody would have saw it you know, and I wondered what it was all about. What was it all about? Fortunately, I met one of the priests who spoke English. That's important that you have a line of communication in a common language.
And we got talking and I asked him about these pilgrimage. I said, what are they praying for? And he said, they're not praying for anything. He said, most of these people you see are coming here to give thanks. Well, this was a very different concept.
Believe me, this shook me. He said, these people that you see for the most I'm merely giving you what he gave me. I have no way of verifying it, but I know I was understanding that we were both speaking my mother tongue and he was pretty good at it too. So there was no misunderstanding of what the man was saying. But he was said that these people have made promises.
They they came from all over Mexico. And he said they had they made promises that they would make this pilgrimage during their lifetime if what they prayed for was granted to them. He said, here they are. And he said, that is what is most common with these people coming here. They are coming to give thanks for the favors received.
That was an eye opener to me. Maybe I just being ignorant anyway, had a very false concept, but this was a new one to me. I thought these people were going through all these contortions in order to get favors. But on the contrary, according to him, he belonged there. He was one of the priests.
He said they are here to give thanks. Now many people going to Mexico, Catholic and especially non Catholics, are quite astonished with this devotion that you see all around you to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Of course, some of the men and women who had this great devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe scarcely ever put a foot in church. That may well be true. I have no way of knowing whether they do or they don't.
I didn't ask the bus driver when he was in church last. My Spanish isn't up to that, and I wanted to complete the ride too. But the point is this, it's very easy to get a misconception of these things, and the same goes for Lord. Except that this this devotion to Our Lady Guadalupe is is it it just sweeps all over Mexico. Now I don't know whether it's in other parts of South America or not.
I did I haven't found it much in Colombia or in Guatemala, but the thing in Mexico it is big. It is it you find it every place. Our Lady Of Guadalupe. And the point I would like to make is this, as I had a very false conception of what these good pilgrims were trying to do, so it's easy for anybody to get a very false impression because they make rash judgments about a fact, about a fact. The fact is that this devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe is real.
It is there. It is universal. And you may say anything you want, but you better be very careful how you refer to Our Lady of Guadalupe. It isn't taken facetiously at all. Now, I know there can be exaggeration.
This is one of the great problems in Newman's time in England about the Roman Catholic Church. Every educated Englishman took the grand tour before he came home and got married and settled down to respectable English life. Now on that grand tour, remember this eighteenth century, I mean the nineteenth, why they saw especially in Italy many repulsive religious practices which they identified with Roman Catholicism. Exaggerations. So they came back to England all fired up.
Now this is one of the great problems that Newman had to face because when he went down there he tells us what he thought of it. It was just before he came back to England and got involved in the Oxford Movement. Now, you see it's easy to grasp upon an overemphasis and then to exaggerate one's own impression about it and forget what may be the underlying substance to it because there is substance. Because let me tell you those pilgrims who came down that middle aisle, that old church which which is being held up by and I'm this is literally the truth. They had huge wrought iron bands around these huge columns to keep the thing up.
It wasn't safe for human habitation. So here these people are coming down on their knees, but they come up to the main altar. And this famous cape and this insignia of Mary of Guadalupe is over the main altar where the blessed sacrament is reserved. Now here's I was just dinner the other evening I met some friends who are very devoted to a Benedictine monastery up in New York State up near Cornell. And they were saying that the main altar is pretty big.
But when you go down into the crypt holding up the main altar of this priory, you have a number of pillars around it. In the center of the pillars, underneath the big altar, you have a statue of our lady. This is a very symbolic architectural phenomenon because we are we have devotion to Jesus Christ. And where did he come from? He came from the womb of a virgin Jewish girl.
You can't go far wrong in having devotion to the mother of God. And Newman himself made this statement that where you have devotion to Mary, you have devotion to her son Jesus Christ. And where Mary is forgotten, where she is not given her due, there you have also Jesus Christ her son being shortchanged. And so today, as we honor Our Lady of Guadalupe, let us join with our Mexican friends, brothers and sisters. She belongs to us too.
We're on the same continent. And let us pray for her help. Let us go to her as the mother of God. And Jesus Christ being our brother, she surely is our mother also. In the name of the father, son, the holy spirit.
Amen.