Una Semana Mas....

...and while the Old Guard dozes, a packed, devoted -- and, above all, young -- Church is counting down:



For the record, eso es de Grand Rapids, en Michigan.

On his first trip to Mexico in 1979, John Paul II remarked that "Guadalupe will be the center from which the light of the gospel of Christ will illuminate the entire world by means of the miraculous image of His mother." Or, as one of La Morenita's children -- now in Indiana -- witnessed to her more simply, "We were poor. [And] nobody listened to us. Suddenly somebody from the sky came and showed us her love."

High praise, indeed... in retrospect, though, the former statement could be seen as prophetic -- far beyond the Americas, a peregrino copy of the tilma will be spending this year's 12th in London's Westminster Cathedral after a trek across Britain... not to mention, of course, that -- their Census-gauged population more than doubled in the US over the last two decades -- some 60 percent of American Catholics under 35 are Hispanic today and, within the next decade, the community stands set to reach the Stateside church's ultimate tipping point: half the Catholic population on these shores, some 60 percent of them come North from Mexico.

What's more, though, this year's 12 December is especially historic -- as never before, a Guadalupano nativo, born in Monterey, stands in waiting to lead the largest local church American Catholicism has ever known, and the US bench now boasts two Latin archbishops named in the same year for the first time in history.

Come June, the Mexican-born duo will receive the pallium together, in the most high-profile Roman appearance of the nation's "new Catholic moment" -- at least, that is, until the elevation of the first Hispanic cardinal del Norte, now just a few years away.

It's no secret, Stateside church -- at least, it shouldn't be -- that we live in amazing days... and even if -- as a handful have, admittedly, cabled in -- the exponents of a "Boutique Catholicism" as small as it can be loud have dared to say "Lord help us" on seeing the change in our midst, even that response is telling, for it fails to grasp our time's most powerful lesson of all: namely, that in sending this mass infusion of youth and energy (and, above all, renewal) among us, He. Already. Is....

...and, clearly, to a degree far more significant than any critics -- especially those ad intra -- could ever hope to muster.

And along those lines -- Matachines de Texas, go:



...y de Milwaukee...



...y Kentucky tambien...



...y los "NetCats" en LA:



Que viva la Virgen de Guadalupe... y muchisimas gracias, queridisima Morenita -- Madre de todas las Americas -- por esta nueva vida para la fé entre nosotros.

And, well, 'nuff said.

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