Our Lady of Guadalupe – A Mother So Easy to Love!
Through sacred tradition, we learn that no sooner had Jesus ascended to the Father and Mary assumed into heaven did God decide to send Our Lady back to her earthly children. It seems that our Heavenly Father, who loves us so, knew how much we needed a mother.   
The first recorded Marian apparition was to St. James the Greater (one of the original 12), who was then struggling to bring the new Christian faith to an area we now know as Spain. According to Tradition, Our Lady appeared to Saint James on January 2 ^nd in the year 40 AD, while our Blessed Mother was still living in Jerusalem. She appeared to him while he was praying and was accompanied by angels and standing on a pillar. At the time, St. James was battling discouragement because he had not yet made many converts. It is said that she encouraged him and performed several miracles in his presence, assuring him that many people would come to the Faith through his influence. She even told him that the faith of his converts would be as strong as the pillar she was standing on! Thus, she is known as Our Lady of the Pillar.
Over the next 2,000 years, Our Lady would continue to appear often all over the globe, bringing with her a wide range of messages, encouragement and calls to action. It is especially interesting to note that the timing of many of her appearances and messages were always suited for a particular purpose and time in history.   
In 1214, she appeared in a dream to St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers. Appearing with three angels, she asked him, “Dear Dominic, do you know which weapon the Blessed Trinity wants to use to reform the world? If you want to win souls, preach the Angelic Psalter,” or what is now known today as the holy rosary.
In 1830, Our Lady appeared to St. Catherine Labouré in the city of Paris, France, where she directed her to have the Miraculous Medal struck in accordance with a vision that she received, inscribed with the words, “O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.” Then just 28 years later in 1858, Our Lady would visit France again, this time in a small market town called Lourdes, located at the foothills of the Pyrenees, to a 14-year old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous. Over the course of 5 months and 18 apparitions, the Blessed Mother revealed to her, “I am the Immaculate Conception,” a dogma then just recently defined by the Church but which was entirely unfamiliar to the poor and uneducated Bernadette. 
Then in 1917, just 3 years after the declaration of the first World War, Our Lady would appear again, this time in Fatima, Portugal, to 3 shepherd children, whom she encouraged to pray the rosary daily in order to bring peace to the world. She visited the children over the course of several months, and during her last apparition, she performed the great “Miracle of the Sun,” a well-documented event witnessed by tens of thousands of both believers and non-believers alike.
Throughout history, Our Lady would continue to appear time and time again to her children, reminding them that they have a heavenly mother who loves and intercedes for them. Looking back at Our Lady’s appearances and the words that she spoke to Saint Juan Diego in Mexico City in 1531, the essential character of her motherhood was especially front and center — First, as the Mother of God with her initial words to Juan Diego on December 9 ^th when she said, “I am the perfect and perpetual Virgin Mary, Mother of the true God through whom everything lives.” Next, when she expanded her role of Mother to all by telling Juan Diego that she was also his merciful Mother as well as “the merciful Mother of all who live united in this land, and of all mankind.” Then finally, as a loving Mother, she asked that a temple be built at the hill of Tepeyac, promising, “Here, I will hear your weeping, your sorrow, and will remedy and alleviate all your sufferings, necessities, and misfortunes.”  
On December 12 ^th, Our Lady appeared for the last time to Juan Diego, who at that time had been diverted from her instructions by the serious illness of his uncle, Juan Bernardino. She comforted him by saying, “Listen and put it into your heart, my littlest son, that what frightens you, what afflicts you, is nothing… Do not fear this sickness or any other sickness, not any sharp or hurtful thing. Am I not here, I, who have the honor to be your Mother?”
How appropriate that Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared in the “New World” when the Gospel of Jesus Christ was just being introduced. Through her loving appearances to Juan Diego and the on-going phenomena of her miraculous image left on his tilma, nearly 10 million indigenous people were baptized within a decade. They recognized immediately that she was both the Mother of God and their loving mother. 
This past February, Pope Francis decreed that the ancient devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title “Mother of the Church” be inserted into the Roman Calendar as a Memorial celebrated annually on the day after Pentecost. In the decree released by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Robert Sarah, its Prefect, said that the Pope’s decision took account of the tradition surrounding the devotion to Mary as Mother of the Church. The decree reflects on the history of Marian theology and quotes St. Augustine who said, “Mary is the mother of all the members of Christ, because with charity she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church,” while St. Leo the Great said that “the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church.”   Cardinal Sarah went on to say that the Holy Father wishes to promote this devotion in order to “encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety”.  This important decree depicts Mary at the foot of the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25). There she became the Mother of the Church when she “accepted her Son’s testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple, as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal.”
Mary’s spiritual motherhood is truly one of God’s greatest gifts to His children and the Guadalupe apparitions, perhaps more than any other of her appearances, demonstrates and highlights her motherhood to all humanity. We can take great comfort in her gentle and loving words to Saint Juan Diego for they were meant for each of us as much as they were for him when she said, “Am I not here, I, who have the honor to be your Mother? Are you not in my shadow and under my protection?  Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the folds of my mantle, in the crossings of my arms?  Is there anything else you should need?”
What wonderful words from a comforting and loving mother. Our Lady of Guadalupe is just so easy to love — a caring mother always is!