Father Joseph Illo, pastor of Star of the Sea parish in San Francisco gave a 15-minute homily on December 13, Gaudete Sunday.
I’m wearing a veil – the chausible is a veil, just as Christ has the Church as a bride.
I’m an old guy, so I knew Mother Teresa. I knew her in India, but she used to come here in San Francisco to visit her Missionaries of Charity. Her order had a special devotion to Mary, Cause of our Joy. Mother Teresa was called to go into the darkest holes of the poor, where no one else would go. I was in Calcutta in 97 outside of the convent in which she was the principal and geography teacher for about 28 years at an upper-middle-class school. Across from the school there is a terrible slum.
She herself had a darkness for 50 years in which she felt the absence of God. But she carried the love of Mary cause of our joy.
I am giving mission on the 18 approved apparitions of Our Lady. Tomorrow and the next two days I will give talks on these, beginning with Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Why are these apparitions important to us? Because we need to be filled with grace to get to heaven.
On December 12, 1531, Juan Diego, one of few who were not children to see Our Lady, was on his way to Mass early in the morning, and he saw a golden light. He heard a voice, a woman’s voice. He asked “what would you have me do?” She said build a chapel here in the middle of the Americas.
Juan Diego ghosted Our Lady on their next appointment because he was taking care of his sick uncle, Juan Bernadino.
But she did not give up on him. “Am I not here, your Mother?”
He took the roses she gave him to prove to the bishop. Eight million indigenous people were converted to the faith over the next seven years.
You don’t need to believe in any of those apparitions to get to heaven.
That is true. But Our Lady can help you get to Heaven swiftly, with millions of beautiful and holy graces, through praying her Rosary, and other beautiful and holy Marian devotions.
In my experience, it’s the parish crazy ladies who are into this sort of thing. One woman tried to talk my ear off about Garabandal and the “warning”. They feel like everything is falling apart and they want to cling to a secret message that gives them hope. Or they want God to punish all the other sinners who are living it up while these crazy ladies have wasted years or decades engaging in foolish, even spiritually dangerous speculations about flimsy allegations of apparitions and special revelations.
Don’t pay any attention to the “crazy ladies.” Church-approved apparitions of Our Lady can be very helpful to your faith. Stick with intelligent Catholics and good priests and prelates, regarding Marian apparitions. You can also gain a great deal, spiritually, by wearing a blessed Miraculous Medal, saying your daily Rosary, and consecrating yourself to Our Lady as Pope St. John Paul II did, along with millions of others, using the method of St. Louis de Montfort’s “Total Consecration.”
To know who Jesus is, we find his Mother who guides us to him.No one gets to God except through him. If it were not for Mary, we cannot know Jesus.Hail Mary full of grace.