The U.S. bishops addressed their plan to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Guadalupan event and detailed their participation in the Intercontinental Guadalupan Novena.
The bishops discussed engagement with the novena at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) spring plenary session in Orlando, Florida, on June 11. The Intercontinental Guadalupan Novena is a nine-year novena called for by Pope Francis in 2022 that anticipates the fifth centennial of the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 2031.
“We will celebrate 500 years since the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and at the same time, all of the graces we continue even now to experience under her patronage,” Bishop Robert Brennan of Brooklyn, New York, chair of the USCCB Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church, said at the meeting.
The bishops of Mexico have been preparing for the quincentennial celebration and in the past year invited the U.S. bishops’ conference to participate in the celebration, Brennan said.
“The Mexican bishops are, together with the Vatican through the Pontifical Council for Latin America, calling this a … novena of years,” said Bishop Oscar Cantu of San José, California, chair of the USCCB Subcommittee on Hispanic and Latino Affairs.
“There is much depth to be plumbed for us in our diocese and our communities in these five years that remain for this novena,” he said.
As St. John Paul II said in his apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in America: “In blessed Mary, upon whom we see an impressive example of a perfectly inculturated evangelization.”
“Those are words that should echo in our hearts as we seek to evangelize our own churches in the United States,” Cantu said.
Cantu said bishops should reflect and ask, “How do we take the methodology that Mary used 500 years ago and adapt it to our own needs in the culture … in the 21st century here in the United States?” Cantu said bishops should consider not “only the message but the methodology of Mary.”
Cantu recalled Pope Leo addressed the Theological Congress a few months ago in Mexico City, saying Our Lady of Guadalupe is a lesson in divine pedagogy on the inculturation of saving truth. “‘La Morentia’ manifests Godʼs way of drawing close to his people,” Pope Leo said.
Plan for pastoral activity
Following the pope’s call, “the Subcommittee on Hispanic Latino Affairs is proposing three phases in the coming years for our pastoral activity, and weʼve looked to weave them into already existing activities,” Cantu said.
He proposed “Phase 1 of missionary activity in our dioceses and parishes … would lead up to the Eucharistic congress that is being planned nationally.”
The subcommittee proposed “having a tilma for each diocese that would be given to each ordinary for veneration in the cathedral … or in a designated place by the bishop,” he said. “The tilma can be used as a missionary presence to journey from parish to parish, or to key places in each diocese.”
The tilma would be “an exact replica of the original” and it will be “touched to the original, so it becomes a third-class relic,” Cantu said.
“Phase 2 would include the time from the National Eucharistic Congress to the Jubilee 2031, which will be the 500th anniversary,” he said. It would be initiated by the National Eucharistic Congress and would “then continue pilgrimages from parish to parish using the tilma that would go to each diocese,” he said.
Phase 3 would focus on “jubilee celebrations,” including the “2031 Jubilee to the … great jubilee of the 2,000 years of redemption,” he said.
Then “we are proposing some kind of national celebration for 2031,” he said. “Weʼre not sure what that would look like,” but “we would certainly like to be in dialogue with the administration of the USCCB in that regard.”
“We already know there will be an international celebration in Mexico City” and “we know that Pope Leo has been invited to participate,” Cantu said. “He has not responded yet … But weʼre pretty sure that he will be there.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.