Sing and rejoice, O daughter Zion! See, I am coming to dwell among you, says the Lord. From December 9^th-12^th, 1531, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego, a native peasant, at the hill of Tepeyac, Mexico. Her appearance couldn’t have come at a better time, for the native Indian population was in need of healing due to the various challenges (mainly poverty) that the natives were facing. Our Lady’s appearance indeed brought a change, a change that was reflected in the people’s mass conversion to the Christian faith (Catholicism). Even though the natives were not instantly turned into millionaires or their struggles obliterated, they nonetheless found in our Lady a friend. In our Lady’s apparition and message, the natives encountered a God who understood their struggles and challenges because he could speak their language. Our Lady of Guadalupe “brought” God close to the people and made the Lord accessible. He became a God who was ready to accompany the people in the struggles and challenges of their daily lives. The great Catholic faith among the people of the Americas that can still be witnessed even today emerged as a result of the assurance brought about by our Lady’s apparition. 
In the First Reading, the prophet Zechariah, after relaying his vision of the New Jerusalem, exhorts the eternal city (and her inhabitants) to rejoice in the knowledge that the Lord her God was coming to dwell in her midst. And although the Lord coming to dwell in Jerusalem wasn’t something new (Jerusalem had been understood as God’s earthly dwelling place), the Lord’s impending visit was an important one. Not only was the Lord’s upcoming visit a proof that the Lord had not forsaken the holy city, the Lord’s promises to Jerusalem (and indeed to the entire creation) was also going to be fulfilled. Jerusalem had been chosen by the Lord to be the place where all creatures of the earth would converge as one family in order to offer praise and thanksgiving to God. The Lord had chosen Jerusalem to be the eternal holy city, the place where men and women of the earth would come to meet their God (their salvation). It was a promise that came to be fulfilled in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Accordingly, the Blessed Virgin Mary, as the mother and bearer of the author of life, has been dubbed the New Jerusalem about which God had promised through the prophets. For it was through Mary’s child that God’s salvific act towards creation was ultimately realized. Her several apparitions around the world which have changed for the better the lives of the people are thus a testimony to God’s salvation reaching the ends of the world through her.