Homily of H.E. Most Rev. Charles John Brown D.D., Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines
Eucharistic Celebration Feast of St. Luke the Evangelist
and Visit of the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Manaoag
October 18, 2024 | Nuestro Señor De Longos-Mission Station, Diocese of Kalookan
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
For me as your Apostolic Nuncio, that is, as the representative of Pope Francis here in the Philippines, it gives me a lot of joy and happiness to be with you this evening, here in the Diocese of Kalookan, here in Malabon City, here in your wonderfully, newly constructed mission station, Nuestro Señor De Longos.
Let me begin by congratulating everyone who has labored and worked to build this beautiful mission station. Dedicated, I think, to Saint Joseph. We see beautiful windows of Saint Joseph. We see a statue of St. Joseph. So, thank you to everyone who worked. Thank you especially to all the benefactors. Thank you, benefactors. God bless you. Thank you to our wonderful parish priest, who met me as we were walking. Thank you to the chaplain, Father Arvin Lacson de Jesus, who invited me to be with you this evening.
So, tonight, dear brothers and sisters, we kind of celebrate, really three things. We celebrate first of all, this beautifully, newly constructed mission station-chapel dedicated to Nuestro Señor De Longos, and also with a special devotion to Saint Joseph. So, we celebrate the completion of the work here. We also celebrate the fact that Our Lady has come to visit you. Nuestra Señora del Santísimo Rosario de Manaoag is here with you for nine days, and these are nine days of great blessings, graces, and all kinds of heavenly favours will be showered upon you, because of the visit of Our Lady. So, we have the beautiful, newly constructed chapel here, mission station, we have Our Lady here, and then the third thing we celebrate is the Feast of Saint Luke.
This evening, tonight, October 18 is the Feast of Saint Luke. Who was Saint Luke? Saint Luke was the one who wrote the Gospel, which we call the Gospel of Saint Luke. He wrote down everything that Jesus did. We call that the Gospel of Saint Luke. He wrote another book which talked about the early Christians, which we call the Acts of the Apostles. Saint Luke did two books, The Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles.
We can make a connection between Saint Luke and Our Lady, between Saint Luke and Mama Mary, whom you are honoring during this Novena to her, Our Lady of Manaoag, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.
How, and in what way is there a connection between Saint Luke and Mary? I'll tell you. The tradition is that Saint Luke painted a number of images of Mary. When he was still alive, he knew Mama Mary, and he made images. He painted some paintings of Mary, of Our Lady. So, Saint Luke was one who wanted to, not only write the story of Jesus and write the story of the early church, the first Christians, he also wanted to paint some images of Mary. One of those images is the famous image that you find in Rome. Now, maybe some of you have been to Rome on pilgrimage, maybe not many of you, but maybe some of you have. If you’ve gone to one of the big churches in Rome called Santa Maria Maggiore, there you will see an image of Mary, of Mama Mary, a painting which has the title in Latin, Salus Populi Romani.
It's an image of Mama Mary, a beautiful image of Mary holding a Gospel Book with the child Jesus. Why is that image important? Because the tradition is that Saint Luke himself painted that image. Infront of that image, our dear Holy Father, Pope Francis, whenever he's going to go on an international voyage. (You know, he came recently to Southeast Asia. He was in Indonesia. He was in Singapore. He was in different countries: Papua New Guinea and others, East Timor.) Whenever he goes on an international voyage, Holy Father, Pope Francis goes to the Church of Maria Maggiore, and prays in front of that image of Mary, that was traditions tells us painted by Saint Luke.
So, today's feast and Our Lady's presence in her beautiful image from Our Lady of Manaoag, Nuestra Señora del Santísimo Rosario, there's a connection. Saint Luke wanted to show us Mary. He wanted to show us how beautiful Our Lady is. When we look at this image of Our Lady of Manaoag, we see how beautiful Mary is. When we look at Mary, we remember that all of us have a human mother. Each and every one of us, no one doesn't have a mother. Everyone has a mother, and our mother loves us very, very much, our human mother, and we're so thankful for our mothers. Let's give all the mothers a big round of applause right now. Thank you, dear mothers. Thank you for the gift of your children. As I was walking here to the mission station, I saw many young mothers with their children, with their babies in their arms, and that really moved my heart. It's beautiful to see a young mother with a baby in her arms, because it makes us think of Mama Mary.
So, we all have a human mother, but we also have a heavenly mother, a mother in heaven: Mama Mary, Our Lady, who has the same kind of love for each and every one of us. Because all of us as Catholics are children of Mary. We are children of Mary. We love Mary. We try to pray to Mary. We ask Mary to help us. That's why these nine days of novena, of Mary's presence, Mama Mary's presence here in your mission station chapel is so important.
So, I encourage all of you: pray to Our Lady, especially, try to pray the rosary. What a beautiful prayer. The rosary comes from the word for roses. Roses are flowers, right? All the mothers here present know how happy they are when one of their children brings them flowers. If you want to make your mother happy, bring her flowers. She'll be very, very happy, especially on her birthday or on Mother's Day. We also make our heavenly mother happy when we pray the rosary. Because the rosary is like 50 flowers that we offer Our Lady, 50 little roses, the Hail Marys that we offer Our Lady of the Holy Rosary. When we pray the rosary, just like when we give roses to our earthly human mother, when we give the rosary to our Heavenly Mother, she smiles on us, and she blesses us, and she points us to Jesus. Because Mary always directs us to Jesus. That is what's so wonderful about Our Lady. She's not taking all the glory to herself. She's always pointing us to Jesus. She's showing us Jesus. We can see Jesus in the arms of Nuestra Señora del Santo Rosario. We see Jesus in the arms of that beautiful image in Rome, Salus Populi Romani, traditionally painted by Saint Luke himself, whose feast day we celebrate this evening.
So, my dear brothers and sisters, for me as your Papal Nuncio, as I said, it makes me so happy to be with you this evening. In this joyful celebration, we celebrate the Holy Mass, we will receive the Body, the Blood, the Soul, the Divinity of Jesus in every Mass. There is no greater gift to us as Catholics in this world than the gift of the Eucharist, which we celebrate here in your wonderful mission station-chapel.
So, remember brothers and sisters to pray for Pope Francis. I'm going to Rome next month, in November, when I see him, I want to tell him that all the people in Nuestro Señor De Longos-Mission Station are praying for you, Holy Father. I was with them on October 18, just about three weeks ago, and I can assure the Holy Father that all of you are praying for him, because he needs your prayers. He asks for your prayers.
So, God bless you. Thank you once again for the invitation. Thank you to the benefactors, the workers, the servers, the social communications people, the priests, the lectors, who read so well in English, which is always a challenge.
Thank you, God bless you and have a wonderful novena with Our Lady of Manaoag.
Transcribed by Joel V. Ocampo
photo from Nuestro Señor De Longos-Mission Station Facebook page
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