Editor’s Note: Cardinal Raymond Burke spoke with Johnnette Benkovic Williams on Women of Grace last week. In this excerpt, adapted for print and reprinted with permission, His Eminence talks about his love for Our Lady of Guadalupe and the role she played in his own vocation story. 

I love to talk about Our Lady of Guadalupe. I came to know her a little later in life. I always knew about Our Lady of Guadalupe, but it was the letter that Pope St. John Paul II wrote, his post-synodal apostolic exhortation to America in 1999, in which he writes beautifully about how in the Americas, not just Latin America, but in all of America, there should be a strong devotion to Our Lady under her title of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

And so, I got to work and began to read about her; and the more I read, the more I wanted to learn. It’s the most wonderful apparition. Our Lady appears five times. The fifth time is to the uncle of the messenger, her messenger, St. Juan Diego, in which she tells him to tell the bishop that she’s to be known as Our Lady of Guadalupe; so it was the uncle, he was dying, and she restored him to health. 

She appears five times, but in the first apparition, she says everything immediately to St. Juan Diego. She appears with child, and all the symbols on her dress reveal this — they’re ancient Aztec symbols — but that she’s a woman with child, and she announces herself as the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God and that she’s come out of love for her children in order to bring them ... the mercy of God, namely the Son conceived in her womb, and that she will hear the cries, the pleas of her children; and she says, not only from this place, but from the surrounding area and all those who are devoted sons and daughters, if they come to her, she will hear their prayers and petitions and take them to her Divine Son. 

And then, in a most remarkable way, after the fourth apparition ... when St. Juan Diego went again [to the bishop], the bishop said, “Please ask Our Lady for a sign that what you say is true.” 

In the third apparition, she gives to St. Juan Diego these miraculous flowers, and it’s winter, so [at] the top of this hill that’s just covered with brambles and weeds and very rocky, he finds all these beautiful flowers. So he takes them to the bishop, and he opens his mantle, and these beautiful flowers fall forth, but at the same time, on the mantle, appears the image of Our Lady. 

How that image is on that mantle is not to be explained. It’s absolute miraculous that God wanted — this was so important: He wanted us to have her image always; and to this day, as you know, I think you told me you were just there on a pilgrimage, you can reverence the mantle and see Our Lady [at the basilica in Mexico City], and there’s really a sense in which she is there and alive for us and caring for us. 

The mantle itself is made of cactus cloth, which should have disintegrated within maybe 40 or 50 years after its confection; and, instead, it still holds [up] today with this miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

So I keep entering more and more deeply into the devotion where blessed St. Juan Diego had a good friend, Antonio Valeriano — he was actually a Native American himself, but he went to school and went to the Franciscan friars, became very well educated, and became a professor at the college that they founded — but he would visit with St. Juan Diego about the apparitions, and he wrote an account called the Nican Mopohua in the language of the Aztecs; but it’s translated, of course, in Spanish into English, and it’s a beautiful account of everything that happened in the apparitions and what Our Lady said to St. Juan Diego. 

One of the striking things that she said when he was doubting about his mission — that he asked Our Lady to send somebody more important, more impressive — [was], “No. I’ve chosen you.” And then, he was worried about his uncle, who was very sick and dying, and Our Lady said to him, “No, you must go to the bishop with these flowers.” And she said to him, “Am I not here? I, Who am your Mother? And do I not hold you in My arms and under My mantle?” And then, she said, “Do you need anything more?” 

And isn’t that the truth, that when we have the Mother, our Blessed Mother, who gives us our salvation, her Divine Son, [she] takes us always to him. That’s all we really need, and everything else will be put in order.

 

Yes. Our Blessed Mother is just so amazing, and many years ago, Your Eminence, I had the privilege, really, of going to Guadalupe, Spain, which is way up in the Extremadura, and there’s a Franciscan monastery there, and there is a little image of Our Lady, it’s a little cypress wood-carved image. Legend has it, or maybe it’s been verified, I don’t know, that St. Luke the Apostle carved this of her. It’s a miraculous image: It was carried through the streets, and they know her as Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

And it’s so interesting to me, and when Queen Isabella was considering sending Columbus, Christopher Columbus on journey, where they thought to the West Indies, she went and made retreat there in front of that statue, had the sense that, yes, indeed, God wanted her to do this. She sends Christopher Columbus then to the same monastery, and he makes retreat there before leaving, and he sailed — I don’t know if you know this or not, it’s very interesting to me — underneath her standard. And I just find it so fascinating that he comes and he ends up basically on this side of the world, and then ... a century later, not even really a century later, we have Our Lady of Guadalupe coming to Juan Diego, and it’s just like: We cannot comprehend the plan of God, nor his incredible display of showing us his love through our Mother.

Yes, yes, it’s beyond our ability to comprehend the immensity of God’s love for us and how it’s unfailing. He always is caring for us, especially through our Blessed Mother, who participated in an altogether unique way in his saving work because she was indeed his Virgin Mother.

And it’s interesting, too, just even the chronological timing of her coming. It’s right in the time when so many people were being led out of the Church because of the Protestant Reformation.

 That’s right.

And she comes to Mexico, and what is it, 6,000? Six million? I forget what the number is exactly.

I believe it was in eight years, 9 million …

 

Nine million ...

Native Americans received the gift of faith in baptism. They said the Franciscan friars were literally exhausted, catechizing, because the people then wanted to learn more and more about their faith, and it was just …

An amazing thing. I think of them baptizing 9 million people in a short period of time. Gracious.

Somebody said, “Well, were they mass baptisms?” I said, “No, they baptized each one.” 

 

That’s really quite amazing. You can imagine that, just based on your own priesthood. And I know that our Blessed Mother is so instrumental to you in the work that God has entrusted you and in your vocation. Share with us about that aspect of her love and affection for you.

Well, I grew up in a home in which there was a great devotion to our Blessed Mother. We had a strong sense of her presence with us, and I always felt that was my vocation, when I first became attracted to the priesthood; and then, as I was a little boy at the time ... I started to serve the Holy Mass when I was in fourth grade, and then I was very close to see everything the priest was doing, and that made an even greater impression on me. And our home parish was under the title of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so we had strong devotion to our Blessed Mother. 

It seemed like she was always confirming me in my vocation over the years, until, eventually, I was called to be ordained. And as you know, no one has a right to be ordained: You present yourself after the years of preparation, and then the bishop decides. Then I was called to be ordained, and I have always known that my priestly life was under her care and protection.

And I had a very powerful experience in 2021, and, of course, by that time, I had been a priest for many years, and I became very sick with the COVID virus, and was actually dying, and was nine days on the ventilator. 

And then, the during that time, the doctors had called my sister, Mary, and told her that there was no hope, that she should be prepared for my death, but oh, so many people were praying and invoking especially Our Lady of Guadalupe.

And so, when I regained consciousness; suddenly, I started to do better and regained consciousness. I had the very powerful sense — it seemed as if our Blessed Mother was holding me in her arms. I had the sense that she was the one who interceded with Our Lord to preserve my life for some more service as a priest.

Isn’t that beautiful?

It was absolutely … well, I just can’t express the deep gratitude that I have to Our Lady for the help that she has always provided, but especially in that moment. 

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