“The solidness of a house depends on its fundamental rock,” Bishop Emeritus Eduardo Maria Taussig of San Rafael, Argentina stated in his homily during the annual Spanish Mass in Honor of Our Lady of Lujan, patroness Argentina, on Sunday, May 7 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. 

Bishop Taussig served as the Mass’s principal celebrant, and cited the importance of the family home, the parish home, “and the temple, the house of God.”   

He spoke of the rocks upon which the Church was founded by Christ, the human rocks that were the Apostles, and all who were baptized in the earliest days of the Church. “As today’s Gospel reading says (John 14), Jesus is the way, the truth, and life,” the bishop noted.        

“Through baptism, we are grafted onto Jesus; with living rocks, there is construction in the Church. And this is why that wonderful life of the Trinity, the family that is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is what we live in the Church, what we live in the family as a domestic Church – the life that we are all called to live as Christians when we are joined with Jesus.”

Bishop Taussig went on to talk of the significance of honoring Our Lady of Lujan, honoring Mary under all of her titles. “His mother, elevated with Him in body and spirit to heaven…With baptism, we are called to that joy, to that fullness…Throughout the centuries, the Virgin Mary makes her presence known to accompany the Church.”

May is traditionally the month during which Mary is honored throughout the Church with special devotion.

At the start of his homily, Bishop Taussig thanked all who were present, including his concelebrants and diplomats from Argentina based in New York. 

Joseph Paladino, a leading member of the archdiocesan Our Lady of Lujan Committee, told The Good Newsroom after Mass that he and his fellow committee members were thankful to Bishop Taussig for traveling from Argentina to celebrate the liturgy.    

“It was a very good Mass; we are very grateful,” Paladino said. “In his homily, the bishop demonstrated the strength and the wonder of our faith,” Paladino added that he appreciated Bishop Taussig’s message about the importance of praying for the Virgin Mary’s intercession under the Lujan title and all the Marian titles. 

The figure of Our Lady of Lujan is a small statue that has been venerated in Argentina since 1630. According to tradition, in 1630, a rancher, a member of a caravan, was taking the Marian figure from Buenos Aires to his ranch in Santiago del Estero. But the oxen pulling the wagon stopped inexplicably by the Lujan River.               

The oxen didn’t move again until the statue was taken out of the wagon, despite the unloading of all other items from the wagon. After repeating this action and realizing the oxen would not move while the statue was in the wagon, the caravan members concluded that this was a sign that Blessed Mother Mary wanted the statue to stay in Lujan.             

In 1887, the figure was crowned canonically and was moved to its current sanctuary, which was given the title of basilica in 1930 by Pope Pius XII. The feast day of Our Lady of Lujan is May 8. And it was on May 8, 2013, that Pope Francis (who is originally from Argentina) visited the Basilica of Lujan to commend Argentina to the protection of its patroness. St. John Paull II visited the basilica as pope in 1982.