Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Holy Rosary

Last week I wrote about the festivities of the Virgin Mary as part of a Catholic's preparation for Christmas. One of such festivities is the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe whose feast day is December 11. The Virgin of Guadalupe, in case you don't know it yet, has been declared by His Eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal as the patron saint of Cebu, and solemnities in her honor are being organized at the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral in addition to those in barangay Guadalupe.

The Cathedral-based festivities include a fluvial procession and high mass (December 9), plus a religious procession from the Cathedral to the Guadalupe church (December 10). The feast day will be highlighted with a high mass at 04:30 in the afternoon with the Cardinal himself as celebrant.

The devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe has been observed in the Catholic world in the last 500 years. Like the other devotions to the Blessed Virgin, it started with her apparitions, this time in Mexico City in December 1531. The story goes that Our Lady appeared one day to an Aztec convert named Juan Diego in a hillside in the town of Tepeyac north of the city. There she asked the native to tell the bishop that she wanted a chapel built for her in the area. The native, after much difficulty in getting an audience with the church official, finally succeeded in seeing the latter. But the bishop's first reaction was disbelief.

Juan Diego told the Blessed Lady during her second apparition about the difficulty he experienced in trying to convince the bishop on the truth of what was happening. On the third apparition the Virgin Mary instructed Juan to gather some flowers that had suddenly bloomed nearby and take these to the bishop. Juan did as he was told, wrapping the flowers in a cactus-fiber cloth. In front of the bishop Juan unraveled his pack of sweet-smelling roses. But it was not the flowers that caught the bishop's attention; it was the life-size image of the Virgin imprinted on the cloth!

Convinced that a miracle had taken place, the bishop arranged for a public worship of the image. Later a church was built in the spot where the apparitions occurred and the devotion to Guadalupe started to snowball. In 1999 Pope John Paul II proclaimed Our Lady of Guadalupe as patron saint of the Americas. Whenever the Marian devotion is the subject of talk among church people, the matter of the Holy Rosary always comes up. The reason is that in almost all her apparitions the Mother of God has been asking her visionaries to pray the Rosary.

In Fatima, our Lady said, "Say the Rosary every day to obtain peace for the world". In his encyclical Mense Maio Pope Paul VI urged Christians to pray the Rosary, "the prayers so dear to Our Lady", he said. And Pope Pius XII declared: "There is no surer means of calling down God's blessings than the daily recitation of the Rosary".

Personally I have been a witness to the power of the Rosary in obtaining God's blessings. In 1990 I was serving my first assignment as DepEd director in Tuguegarao, regional capital of Region II. My family, being in Cebu, the assignment was a difficult one since I could come home only once every two or three months. However, I accepted it believing that it was God's will.

For more than a year, I buckled down to work for the improvement of education in the area. At the same time I started praying the Rosary. Every evening I would pray it alone in my room before the image of Our Lady of Piat (a dark one similar to that of the Virgin of the Rule), asking the Blessed Mother to have me transferred to a station nearer Cebu.

After months of prayers, my recitation of the "Hail Mary" became more inspired for somehow I would feel the Virgin Mary's presence during those moments. One evening, it was towards the end of May, I "sensed" in the midst of my prayer, a voice telling me that I would get a new assignment that June. Believing that it was just my imagination, I did not give the incident much thought. Yet every time I prayed the Rosary, the "message" became clearer and clearer. June came - first week, second week and third week came and went but nothing happened. Only an imagination, I told myself. But I kept on praying the Hail Mary's as usual.

On the last day of June, it happened: "Prepare to transfer to Region 8", the telegram from the secretary said!