Speaking on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, December 12, at the Shrine church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Burke noted how America has become reliant upon communism and the communist state of China.

“Praised be Jesus Christ!
We come to Our Lady of Guadalupe on her feast day with troubled and heavy hearts. Our nation is going through a crisis which threatens its very future as free and democratic. The worldwide spread of Marxist materialism, which has already brought destruction and death to the lives of so many, and which has threatened the foundations of our nation for decades, now seems to seize the governing power over our nation.

To attain economic gains, we as a nation have permitted ourselves to become dependent upon the Chinese Communist Party, an ideology totally opposed to the Christian foundations upon which families and our nation, remain safe and prosper.

I speak of the United States of America, but evidently many other nations are in the throes of a similar, most alarming crisis.

Then there is the mysterious Wuhan virus about whose nature and prevention the mass media daily give us conflicting information. What is clear, however, is that it has been used by certain forces, inimical to families and to the freedom of nations, to advance their evil agenda. These forces tell us that we are now the subjects of the so-called ‘Great Reset,’ the ‘new normal,’ which is dictated to us by their manipulation of citizens and nations through ignorance and fear.

Now, we are supposed to find in a disease and its prevention the way to understand and direct our lives, rather than in God and in His plan for our salvation. The response of many bishops and priests, and of many faithful, has manifested a woeful lack of sound catechesis. So many in the Church seem to have no understanding of how Christ continues his saving work in times of plague and of other disasters.

What is more, our holy Mother Church, the spotless bride of Christ, in which Christ is ever at work for our eternal redemption, is beset by reports of moral corruption, especially in matters of the sixth and seventh commandments, which seem to increase by the day. In our own nation, the reports about Theodore McCarrick have rightly tempted many devoted Catholics to question the shepherds, who in accord with Christ’s plan for the Church are to be their secured guides by teaching the truths of the faith, by leading them in the fitting worship of God and in prayer to him, and by guiding them by means of the Church’s perennial discipline.

Too often the faithful receive nothing in response, or a response which is not grounded in the unchanging truths regarding faith and morals. They receive responses that seem to come not from shepherds but secular managers.

The confusion regarding what the church truly teaches and demands of us in accord with Her teaching, generates ever greater divisions within the Body of Christ. All of this cripples the Church in Her mission of witness to divine truth and divine love, at a time when the world has never needed more, the Church to be a beacon. In encountering the world, the Church falsely wants to accommodate Herself to the world, instead of calling the world to conversion in obedience to the divine law written on every human heart and revealed in fullness in the redemptive, incarnation of God the Son.

These grievous troubles of course present a formidable challenge to daily Christian living. The impact of the crisis in the world and in the Church is profound for all of us. Many are enduring the most painful suffering, physical, emotional, and spiritual, which such a situation necessarily causes.

At a time when we need to be close to one another in Christian love, worldly forces would isolate us and have us believe that we are alone and dependent upon secular forces which would make us slaves to their godless and murderous agenda.

Yes, our hearts are understandably heavy, but Christ, through the intercession of his Virgin Mother, lifts up our hearts to his own, renewing our trust in him, who has promised us eternal salvation in the Church. He will never be unfaithful to his promises. He will never abandon us. Let us not be beguiled by the forces of the world and by false prophets. Let us not abandon Christ and seek our salvation in places where it never can be found.

Let us never forget the words by which Our Lady identified herself at her first apparition to St. Juan Diego: ‘Know, know for sure my dearest and youngest son, that I am truly the ever perfect, holy virgin Mary, who has the honor, to be the mother of the one, true God for whom we all live, the creator of people, the Lord of all around us, and of what is close to us, the Lord of heaven, the Lord of earth. I want very much that they build my sacred, little house here, in which I will show Him, I will exalt Him upon making Him manifest, I will give Him to all people in all my personal love - Him that is why compassionate gaze, Him that is my help, Him that is my salvation.'

May the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe here, be always a worthy instrument by which the Immaculate Heart of Mary draws hearts to herself and brings them to the glorious, pierced heart of Jesus, to the only source of healing, and strength in this life, and unto eternal life.”