Events are planned for feast day of 'Our Lady'
Numerous festivities surrounding the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe are planned in the coming days at the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine, 700 SE 89. These observances typically include dancing, singing and prayers as parishioners pay tribute to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Our Lady of Guadalupe is considered the patroness of the Americas. Activities for the feast day, which is Dec. 12, are particularly popular in Roman Catholic parishes that include a large number of Hispanic parishioners, particularly those of Mexican descent.
The Rev. Don Wolf, pastor of Sacred Heart Church at the Rother Shrine, said activities will begin Dec. 9, with a procession to the shrine. He said the procession of horses and horsemen will honor the feast day of St. Juan Diego. It will start in the morning and end at 1 p.m. at Tepeyac Hill at the shrine.
The Sacred Heart Guadalupe Festival will be noon to 6 p.m. Dec. 10 in the shrine plaza. The event will feature prayer, entertainment and food. An outdoor performance of the Apparition Story play will be 2 p.m. Dec. 11, and evening prayer will be at 7 p.m. at the shrine.
Activities on the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12, will include an outdoor Mass with Archbishop Paul S. Coakley at 4 p.m. at the base of Tepeyac Hill. The Mass will be preceded by the Apparition Play at 3 p.m.
The Apparition Play is a performance of how, according to traditional accounts, an apparition of the Virgin Mary appeared in 1531 to an Aztec peasant, Juan Diego (declared a saint by Pope John Paul II in 2002), in Tenochtitlan, Mexico, now Mexico City. The apparition was brown-skinned and pregnant.