Experiencing Divine Providence on a Family Pilgrimage
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jer 1:5). The wonders of Divine Providence extend to every aspect of human life, including the time before birth. The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Unborn, was recently privileged to witness a remarkable example of God’s gentle intervention on behalf of an unborn child and his family. While visiting the Shrine to pray for a safe delivery, Payton and Rachel Simons received unexpected signs regarding their soon-to-be-born son.
Praying for a Safe Delivery
Payton and Rachel, high school sweethearts who married shortly after graduating college, had made many visits to the Shrine before. Their pilgrimage in September 2023, however, had a special nature: A year after suffering a miscarriage, and shortly before their next baby was due, the couple came to ask the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe for a safe delivery. “In the image, Our Lady is pregnant,” Rachel comments. “We just felt called to come here to pray after our miscarriage, [especially in] the area for the unborn.”
Divine Providence
In their time in prayer, they found an unexpected gift: a name for their child. “We didn’t know what we were having, boy or girl,” Payton explains. “We had a girl name … but we couldn’t agree on a boy name. I remember praying specifically, ‘God, if it’s a boy, what do you want us to name him?’” On arriving, they discovered that the traveling relic of Saint Jude’s arm was being venerated at the Shrine that day, and followed directions to the church crypt, where veneration was taking place. When they came down, Payton recalls, “a man working the table looks at Rachel, who’s almost nine months pregnant, and says, ‘Oh, is that a little Saint Jude in there?’”
Until then, neither of the parents had considered the name Jude. Yet, as they each read the displayed information on his life, certain details stood out as significant. “One of the things was that he was martyred and went on mission with Saint Simon,” says Payton. “Well, that’s our last name!” The timing of their pilgrimage, they discovered, was another striking factor: that day was the only one on which the arm-relic would be at the Shrine. Husband and wife took separate paths around the crypt, yet came to the same conclusion: On leaving, they looked at each other and understood that their son’s name would be Jude.
The Feast of Saint Jude
Little Jude Simons was born in late October of 2023, shortly before his patrons’ feast day, and attended Mass for the first time outside the womb on that feast day. In a further indication of Providence, this Mass was a memorial for miscarried infants and lost children. For his parents, Jude himself is a miraculous sign of God’s love, another reason his patronage is fitting. “We found [Saint Jude] was the patron saint of impossible causes, and after our miscarriage, it … kind of felt like a miracle just to have a baby,” Payton shares. “I’m sure he was interceding for us before we were even asking for it.”
Family Pilgrimage
Like the Simons family, many couples travel to the Shrine to pray for a safe birth, for the gift of a child, or for healing from miscarriage. Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of the Unborn, always waits with open arms “to cleanse and nurse all their different troubles,” as she said to Saint Juan Diego. Many also seek the intercession of Saint Gianna Molla, honoring her first-class relic in one of the side-altar shrines in the church. In the painting of Saint Gianna above this shrine, the children surrounding her have the faces of real little ones whose births were attributed to her.
Openness to Receiving Grace
For Payton and Rachel, as for so many, the value of their pilgrimage was in a concrete experience that helped open their hearts to receive precisely what God wanted to give them. “If you go to where holy things are or a beautiful place where God has made himself clearly very available, he’ll work in your life,” says Payton. “I love the embodiment of our faith; I mean, it’s so physical … it’s not just in our minds. We live it out in where we go and our bodies and what we experience.” Rachel adds in a similar line of thought, “You just get so drawn in by the beauty and it really opens you up to God … You can open yourself up to God more, let him speak to you.”
God’s Love for Us
Jude Simons, and the providential circumstances surrounding his birth and his name, show God’s ever-attentive love for His tiniest children and their families. Our Lady’s Shrine works to help them encounter that love in a variety of ways. Among these, the veneration of relics, like those of Saint Jude or Saint Gianna, proves for many a powerful way to bring close the Communion of Saints. These friends and intercessors continually support those on earth in all their needs, as Saint Jude did for the Simons family.
