Second Friday of Advent
Our Lady of Guadalupe
12 December 2025
Comfort to the Little Ones: God Draws Near
Every feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe reminds us:
God draws close to His people…
especially the little ones.
When Mary appeared on the hill of Tepeyac in 1531,
she did not choose a governor, a priest, or a wealthy noble.
She chose a poor Indigenous man:
Saint Juan Diego…
someone others would ignore.
She spoke to him in his own language.
She did not call him “servant,”
but “my dear son.”
Her message to him began with the same word we have heard all week from Isaiah:
Comfort.
“Do not be afraid,” she told him.
“Am I not here,
I who am your mother?”
That is Advent in a sentence.
God sees the lowly.
God comes close.
God comforts His children.
The first reading from Revelation gives us the cosmic picture of what we see on the tilma.
John describes:
-a woman “clothed with the sun,”
-“with the moon under her feet,”
-“and a crown of twelve stars.”
It is a vision of Mary,
but also of the Church.
She stands radiant,
not because of herself,
but because God’s glory surrounds her.
She is the bearer of the Child who will rule the nations.
And yet, the reading also shows us the struggle:
a dragon waiting to devour the child,
the woman fleeing into the desert.
This is the story of salvation:
God brings forth life,
and evil tries to destroy it.
But God always protects His own.
At Tepeyac,
Mary appeared as this same
“woman clothed with the sun.”
On the tilma she stands in front of the sun, over the moon, with stars on her mantle...
not in royal triumph,
but in compassion for a people suffering violence, oppression, and loss.
Revelation is dramatic and cosmic;
Guadalupe is intimate and tender.
But they proclaim the same truth:
When God’s people feel threatened or forgotten,
God draws even closer.
The Gospel brings us back to Nazareth.
The angel Gabriel appears to Mary with a message that seems impossible:
“You will conceive and bear a Son.”
Mary is troubled, confused, uncertain...
yet she is not abandoned in that uncertainty.
God is with her,
and she responds with the greatest human word ever spoken:
“Let it be done to me according to your word.”
That “yes” allowed the Eternal Word to enter the world.
That “yes” allowed God to draw close not only to her,
but to all of us.
At Guadalupe,
Mary continues that same mission.
She draws near to a wounded people in order to draw them to her Son.
She brings the Gospel
not by force,
not by argument,
but by presence…
by the tenderness of a mother who says,
“I am here.
You are not forgotten.”
Advent reminds us that God comes the same way:
quietly,
humbly,
personally.
Four truths that today’s feast and readings teaches us:
- God comes to the lowly.
- Mary’s Magnificat and the tilma both show God raising up the poor and humble.
- God protects His people.
- Just as in Revelation the woman is cared for in the desert, God leads us through our own deserts.
- God enters our fears.
- Gabriel tells Mary, “Do not be afraid.”
- Mary tells Juan Diego, “Do not be afraid.”
- Christ tells us the same.
- God asks for our “yes.”
- Not a perfect yes.
- Not a fearless yes.
- Simply a trusting one.
It is a reminder of what God is doing now:
- seeking the forgotten,
- lifting the downtrodden,
- strengthening the fearful,
- drawing the lost back home.
she illuminates it.
She stands before us and says:
“Do not fear.
My Son is near.
Let Him lead you.
Let Him carry you.
Let Him make your life flow like a river again.”
May Mary of Tepeyac help us to trust the God who draws near…
the God who comes especially for the little ones.
And so we pray…
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.