# A melody of hope: Saint Juan Diego and paying it forward
*2008-12-08*

> Bill Young reflects on a prayer from his late aunt and the inspiring story of Saint Juan Diego, urging listeners to carry hope to the poor during Advent.

## Opening prayer from Aunt Mary Teresa

I begin with a prayer my aunt, Sister Mary Teresa, gave me many years ago. She taught me to ask the Blessed Virgin for courage and commitment, especially when faced with skeptics and mockery. The prayer goes: “Hail and blessed be the hour and the moment in which the Son of God was born to the most pure Virgin Mary at midnight in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour of utmost safety, O God, hear my prayer; grant my desires through the merits of our Savior Jesus Christ and of His Blessed Mother. Amen.”

## A personal encounter with love and joy

A few years ago, while praying the Rosary at work, I asked my aunt for help between the beads. I experienced an overwhelming sense of love and joy, even hugging my son in the middle of the day. The feeling returned the next day when I prayed in my car at lunchtime, hidden from view. Later, my sister Susie, visiting from New York, told me that she had felt the same love at our aunt’s funeral fourteen years earlier. Those moments reminded me that God’s love fills us in a way the world cannot.

## Saint Juan Diego and the miracle of Guadalupe

Our reflection today focuses on Saint Juan Diego. In 1531, near Mexico City, Juan Diego, a humble indigenous peasant, received a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She spoke to him in his native tongue, calling him “my little son,” and asked him to build a shrine on the hill of Tepeyac. The local bishop initially doubted him, but after Juan Diego presented the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on his tilma, the bishop was convinced. The shrine became a sign of hope for the oppressed and a turning point in Mexican history, leading many to the faith and demonstrating God’s preference for the weak and humble.

## Pay it forward this Advent

Remember a time when you felt crushed in spirit. Who offered you a kind word or deed? This Advent, let us respond by giving encouragement to someone in need. As the prayer for Saint Juan Diego asks, “Juan Diego, you faced skeptics and the mockery of crowds to bring hope; pray for me that I may have courage and commitment.” May we, too, become instruments of hope for the poor, the homeless, and the forgotten, for “whatever you do for the least of them, you do for me.”

*In this season of Advent, let us pay forward the hope we have received by reaching out to those who need it most.*