Last week Father O’Connor and I visited our four seminarians studying Spanish in Mexico City. We attended class with Joe Hubbard, Tim Hynes, Joe Ferme and Brian O’Hanlon, after which they showed us around the Seminary where they are living before heading out for supper.
Each of them are enjoying Mexico City, where Father O’Connor and I spent a morning praying at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. As we sat gazing in silence and praying before the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I thought back to the words of Pope Francis when he did the same thing last year: “When the image of the Virgin appeared on Juan Diego's tilma, it was the prophecy of an embrace: Mary’s embrace of all the peoples of the vast expanses of America – the peoples who already lived there, and those who were yet to come.”
May each one of us, sons and daughters of the Americas, accept her maternal embrace and seek to do the will of her Son and Lord.
And please keep our four brothers in your continuing prayers during their final weeks of study. Here they are pictured after serving Mass at the Shrine last week:
