Local Nigerian Catholics with the Statue of Our Lady of the Angels featured at the 20th anniversary “One Mother, Many Peoples” Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels on Sept. 7. The multilingual event celebrates the many ethnic and cultural groups in the archdiocese. (Victor Alemán)
On Sept. 7, Archbishop Gomez celebrated the annual “One Mother, Many Peoples Mass” at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The following is adapted from his homily.
Today we rejoice as the family of God, the Church. We are many peoples and we have one mother, who is the mother of God, the mother of Jesus, and the mother of all of us who believe in his holy name.
We also remember today the founding of this great city of Los Angeles in our mother’s name, as the City of Our Lady of the Angels.
So, we praise the Lord today for his many blessings, and we thank him for the witness of St. Junípero Serra and the Franciscan missionaries who brought Jesus Christ and his Gospel to this New World.
It was a brave and devoted band of settlers, missionaries, and natives who processed from the San Gabriel Mission to what is now the first Church in La Placita to establish this city 234 years ago this week, on Sept. 4, 1781.
The first families of Los Angeles, as we know, included Native Americans, Africans, Europeans, and Asians from the Pacific Islands.
The beautiful diversity of those founding families is reflected in your families gathered here today.
The family of God in Los Angeles is an encounter of cultures and peoples, fulfilling the promise of the early Church in Jerusalem, the Church of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down upon men and women gathered from every nation under heaven.
That’s what the word “Catholic” means; it means universal, it means international, it means one family drawn from every race and language and tribe and people to the ends of the earth. This is God’s dream for his people. We are God’s dream for humanity.
Today in Los Angeles and throughout this great country, we need to renew our commitment to this beautiful dream of God, we need to uphold and celebrate this amazing diversity of peoples who call this land their home.
Every one of us is a brother or a sister to everyone else. We are one family, we are all in this together. We are many peoples, and we have one mother.
Our mother is the Queen of Heaven, our father is God Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth! Our brother and savior is Jesus Christ, who rules the nations from the rising of the sun to its setting, both now and forever!
When the angel says to Mary today in the Gospel, “Do not be afraid,” he is also talking to you and me.
We live in troubled and uncertain times. But nothing should frighten us or disturb us because we are Mary’s children. We are sons and daughters of the most high God!
Jesus suffered, died, and rose from the dead for every one of us! That’s how precious you are to him. We can never ever forget that!
This is who we are, this is our true identity. No matter where we came from, we are children of God! Jesus loves us, and his mother loves us, with a love that is beyond anything we could ever imagine.
Our mother Mary said to the Angel: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”
These are the words of faith, words of mission; they are a pledge to God.
Mary didn’t know exactly what her promise was going to mean. All she knew was that she wanted to do God’s will, she wanted to follow his plan for her life, not her own. Not my will, but thy will be done.
Mary is our heavenly mother, and like our earthly mothers, we must let her be our teacher.
Our mother shows us the path to walk, the way to live. Mary always leads us to her Son, and to his word, to his plan for our lives: “May it be done to me according to your word.”
Jesus is the only path for us, the only way to live.
Like Mary, none of us knows what God might ask of us. But we do know that if we walk with Jesus, we have nothing to fear. Nothing will be impossible for us, because we can do all things with the strength he gives us!
So, let us ask our mother to keep us always close to Jesus!
And let us ask her to commit us more deeply to love our brothers and sisters and to lead all the peoples of the earth to know him and to love him!