One Mother, Many Peoples 2024

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles
 
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
September 7, 2024
 
My brothers and sisters in Christ,^[1]
 
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.
 
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.
 
As we know, the first families of Los Angeles included Native Americans, Africans, Europeans, and Asians from the Pacific Islands.
 
So 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.^[2]
 
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 the 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.
 
The prophet tells us in the first reading that a Child has been born who will have dominion over all the nations.
 
This Child is Jesus Christ, who in the fullness of time, was born of a woman, Mary. She is the Queen we see in today’s second reading — clothed with the sun, the moon beneath her feet, her head crowned with twelve stars.
 
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 us.
 
It is true, we live in troubled and uncertain times. But nothing should frighten us or disturb us because we are Mary’s children. Nothing should frighten us because we have found “favor with God” just as she did.
 
So 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.”
 
My dear brothers and sisters, Mary is our mother, and like a mother 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, as we prepare to celebrate the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary tomorrow, 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!
 
And may Mary, our Lady of the Angels, protect all of us and give us the certainty that we are her children.