16th Anniversary of the Dedication – Cardinal Burke’s Homily

Common of the Anniversary of the Dedication of a Church

16^th Anniversary of the Dedication of the Church

Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe

La Crosse, Wisconsin

31 July 2024

Ezek 43, 1-2. 3c-7a

Ps 84, 3. 4. 5. 10. 11

Heb 12, 18-19. 22-24

Lk 19, 1-10

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Why did the Church choose the account of Our Lord’s encounter with the chief tax collector Zacchaeus, considered a public sinner by the people, as the Gospel for the Anniversary of the Dedication of a Church? The reason is found in the concluding words of the account, words of Our Lord Himself to Zacchaeus:

Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man came to seek and save the lost.[1]

From the moment of its solemn dedication on July 31, 2008, the Son of Man, God the Son Incarnate, has dwelt in this holy place to seek and save the lost for whom He died on the Cross and for whom He makes sacramentally present His Sacrifice on Calvary. He has been and He is here to heal and strengthen sinners who turn to Him with a humble and contrite heart.[2]

When we sinners enter here in search of Jesus, in search of God’s mercy, we encounter the Virgin Mother of God, Our Lady of Guadalupe, who unfailingly leads us to her Divine Son Who so much desires to encounter us, as He encountered Zacchaeus. His glorious-pierced Heart remains ever open to receive our hearts in the Sacrament of Penance and, above all, in the Eucharistic Sacrifice and its incomparable fruit: His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity as the Heavenly Bread of our earthly pilgrimage. Here, we experience directly the fulfillment of the Word of God to the Prophet Ezechiel: “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the sons of Israel for ever.”[3] In her very first words during her first apparition to Saint Juan Diego, the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God made clear that she wanted a sacred place, a chapel, to be built in which pilgrims could come to her and, through her, to God the Son Incarnate, Her Son, Our Lord and Savior. It was to be a sacred place for “all the people that live together in this land, and also of all the other various lineages of men.”[4] She promised: “Because there [at my sacred house] truly will I hear their cry, their sadness, in order to remedy, to cure all their various troubles, their miseries, their pains.”[5]

Today, beset with the darkness and sin which is ever more given place in the world and even in the Church, we come to Our Lord through His Virgin Mother. On this past Friday, we witnessed an unbelievable manifestation of the darkness and sin in our world: the abominable mockery of the Holy Eucharist at its Institution for the opening of the Summer Olympics in Paris. It is difficult to imagine anything more debased and blasphemous. That such an act could take place shows us, in a most painful way, how what was once a Christian culture has become the theater of Satan and those who cooperate with his thoroughly evil plans, the plans of “a murderer from the beginning” who “has nothing to do with the truth,” the plans of “a liar and the father of lies.”[6] Our disgust and anger about what happened at the Summer Olympics awakens anew our consciousness of so many other manifestations of the open rebellion against God and His plan for our salvation in the world in which we live: attacks on human life and its cradle in the family created by the marriage of a man and a woman, and attacks on religion itself and its free exercise. In the Church, too, we witness the deliberate spread of confusion and error regarding the truths of our faith, the secularization of the Sacred Liturgy, and the lack of respect for the irreplaceable foundation of charity in the respect for justice and the rule of law.

What are we, sinners yet humble and contrite of heart, to do? We must turn daily to Our Lord and seek from Him, through His Mother, the Mother of Divine Grace, the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit for the transformation of our lives and of whatever part of His vineyard Our Lord has entrusted to our care, beginning with our homes. We must never forget the words of Our Lord as He began His Public Ministry: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.”[7] Christ Who promised to remain with us in His holy Church until the Last Day speaks the truth to us and gives us the grace to live the truth. Through the unbroken line of the Apostles and their Successors, Christ is with us to heal and strengthen us for the battle against darkness and sin, the battle in which, in Him, we are the victors. It only remains for us, in the words of Saint Paul, to fight the good fight, to stay the course, and to keep the Faith.[8]

We are living members of the Church which is truly His Mystical Body.[9] We are alive in Christ. We are branches who draw our life from Him the Vine, according to the eternal plan of God the Father, the Vinedresser.[10] Before the seemingly apocalyptic character of the darkness and sin which beset us, we must not give way to useless fear and cowardly discouragement. For, as the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, we “have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers entreat that no further messages be spoken to them.”[11] No, as the same sacred author teaches, we “have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.”[12] Christ, “the mediator of a new covenant,” binding us in truth and love with God, teaches us, sanctifies us, and disciplines us in His holy Church, keeping us securely with Him on the pilgrimage to our eternal home with Him. Let us turn to Him, with a humble and contrite heart, so that He can win in us the victory over darkness and sin, the victory of eternal life.

Conscious of the gravity of the darkness and sin which would defeat and destroy us, and equally conscious of the victory over darkness and sin, which is ours in Our Lord Jesus Christ, I have invited Catholics throughout the world to make a nine-month novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe, asking her to bring us to her Son Who alone is our salvation and to bring many, many more who are not yet alive in Him to know, love, and serve Him through the gift of faith and Baptism. For you who have already joined the Nine-Month Novena, I urge you to persevere. If you have not yet joined it, it is never too late to join the thousands who are invoking Our Lady of Guadalupe to procure miracles of conversion and grace from Our Lord in our time as she did in 1531, when Our Lord sent her to us on Tepeyac, a time which also seemed to be without hope because of the darkness and sin which beset the people. Finally, I invite you to make the Act of Consecration to Our Lady of Guadalupe here on December 12^th, her solemn feast. If you cannot come here for the Act of Consecration, you may join me in making the Act of Consecration through the communications media.

Before the Final Blessing, I will induct two of our faithful acolytes, Michael Row and Luke Sueppel, as Knights in Our Lady’s Knights of the Altar, the corps of young men who, as acolytes, serve directly Our Lord at His altar here under the maternal guidance of His Virgin Mother, Our Lady of Guadalupe. May Michael and Luke grow ever stronger in their service of Our Lord at the Altar of His Sacrifice and may every aspect of their lives reflect the holiness of their service of Our Lord as Our Lady’s Knights.

Filled with gratitude for this holy place in which Our Lord dwells with us and welcomes us to unite our humble and contrite hearts to His Most Sacred Heart, and resolved to respond more fearlessly and courageously to His grace which cleanses our hearts of sin and inflames them with His Divine Love, let us now lift up our hearts, one with the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin of Guadalupe, to the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, opened to receive us in the Eucharistic Sacrifice. May we hear today and every day of our lives the words of Our Lord to Zacchaeus, the response of Our Lord to all who turn to him with a humble and contrite heart:

Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man came to seek and save the lost.”[13]

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE