Archbishop Gomez calls Our Lady of Guadalupe’s image ‘an American icon’

Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez released a pastoral letter Oct. 22 urging Catholics to renew their missionary calling as the Church prepares for the 500th anniversary of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s apparitions.

The letter, The Wonder of America, comes as the Church begins a special Jubilee Year proclaimed by Pope Leo XIV to mark the 495th anniversary of the apparitions and the 50th anniversary of the dedication of the new Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, according to an archdiocesan press release.

Dated Sept. 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the letter was released on the feast of St. John Paul II, the first pope to visit the basilica.

“I consider the Guadalupe event to be one of the great turning points in the history of the West,” Archbishop Gomez wrote in an excerpt shared by the archdiocese. “It is the true origin story for the United States and the nations of the Americas. Guadalupe holds the key to understanding God’s original intentions for these continents. Five hundred years later, it also holds the key for discerning the Church’s continued mission here.”

The personal reflections come as Archbishop Gomez approaches his 75th birthday in December, the age at which canon law calls on diocesan bishops to submit their resignation to the Pope. 

The archbishop’s devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe began during his childhood in Mexico and remained central to his ministry, according to the release.

“I grew up loving Our Lady of Guadalupe. There was nothing forced about it, devotion to her came naturally,” the archbishop wrote.

The release also highlighted Archbishop Gomez’s reflections on “the struggle between ‘conquest’ and ‘faith,’” regarding the “earthly ambitions of the Spanish colonialists, who came seeking silver and gold and power and glory, and the missionaries who came to proclaim the love and salvation of Jesus.”

He credited early missionaries with defending indigenous peoples, writing that their “defense of indigenous peoples helped lay the foundations for modern international law and our belief in universal human rights.”

According to the release, Archbishop Gomez drew on the Nican Mopohua, an account of the apparitions, to tell of Mary’s appearances to St. Juan Diego in 1531 and the miraculous image left on his tilma, or cloak. He called the image “an American icon” and recalled the millions of indigenous Mexicans who converted in the decades that followed, the release noted.

“God wants you to do something beautiful with your life, something that only you can do. This is true for me, too, and for every person,” Archbishop Gomez wrote.

“Our Catholic faith is not simply an inheritance to be preserved; it is a mission we are called to carry out,” he wrote.

The archbishop also reflected on the encounter with Mary and her Son offered through the image.

“As we gaze on her image, we can feel Jesus’ heart beating beneath her own, beating for the love of you and me and for the love of all the peoples of the earth,” he wrote. “This is what the native peoples of that first generation felt when they gazed upon this divine image… The millions who still stream to Tepeyac each year are not coming to look at a picture in an exhibition. They are coming for that same encounter: to meet the Mother of God, to behold their mother,” he said.

The release also highlighted Archbishop Gomez’s account of Catholics who fled religious persecution in Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s and settled in and around East Los Angeles. Their processions with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to pray for peace began a tradition that marks its 95th anniversary this year.

Archbishop Gomez urged Catholics to follow St. Juan Diego’s example as they prepare for the apparitions’ 500th anniversary in 2031 and the 2,000th anniversary of Christ’s resurrection and the founding of the Church in 2033.

“Now is the hour to live our faith with attentive hearts, with new seriousness and new joy; to go deeper in prayer and study, to grow in our knowledge and love for Jesus and His mother; and to embrace more fully our responsibility to spread the faith and bring others to Jesus,” he wrote.

The letter concludes with a prayer he composed for the apparitions’ fifth centenary, which will be distributed on prayer cards during the Jubilee Year, the release said.

“Five hundred years on, Our Lady of Guadalupe is still looking for messengers,” the archbishop wrote. “Let each of us answer with our whole lives.”