Our Lady of Luján

 1.  Who is Our Lady of Luján? Our Lady of Lujan is an image of the Immaculate Conception, originally venerated in Argentina. History tells us that in 1630, close to Buenos Aires, a wagon pulled by oxen was going north. They stopped one night on the road, by the Lujan River, and when they wanted to continue the day after, the oxen could not move the wagon. They began to lighten the load, but in vain. After much work, they removed from the wagon one small box, containing a statue of the Immaculate Conception. Immediately, the oxen move the cart. Everybody understood that it was a sign of our Lady, who wanted to remain there.

Since then many other miracles were confirmed and are reported by the historians. Nowadays almost 2 million people walk every year to the Shrine of our Lady of Lujan.

2.  Why is she Patroness of the IVE? St. Louis Orione, the founder of the Little Work of Divine Providence in Italy, pupil of St. John Bosco, visited Argentina twice. The first time he spent a few months, the second time three years, 1934-1937. He once said, and it is considered one of his prophecies: “Missionaries will go to the world from Argentina.”[1]

Fr. Buela, born in 1941, the founder of the IVE,[2] had always been a devout son of Our Lady of Lujan, the Patroness of Argentina, and now the Patroness of the IVE. In his early years at the seminary, Fr. Buela prayed many, many times to Her for the grace of helping many men and women to find their religious or priestly vocation. In 1984 he founded the IVE order, and 4 years later the sisters, the Servants of the Lord and of the Virgin of Matará (SSVM). Today the IVE family is in almost 40 countries, including Syria, Gaza and Iraq, China, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, and Guyana.

Our Lady of Luján granted Fr. Buela his request of helping many young people to discover and follow their vocation, and here we are, two congregations in 40 countries, 40 years later. As a recognition of this, and as a request for her protection and guidance, Fr. Buela and the majority of the members of our order asked the Holy See to have Our Lady of Luján as Patroness of our Institute, and this request was granted a few years ago. This is why today’s Mass is celebrated as a solemnity, as a Sunday Mass.

Fr. Buela also desired that Our Lady of Luján goes to every mission where we are. Replicas of the original image in Argentina are now everywhere in the world, where the IVE or the sisters have a chapel. She is the Patroness of Tajikistan, and of our Parish in Kalookan city, Philippines. Her image is a sign of her protection for us, for our people and for our missionary work as a religious order.

The Image of Our Lady of Luján

Let me say a couple of things about her image, which may look a little bit different.[3] The   original image is of clay, and although it is a fine work, it is not necessarily a masterpiece of sculpture. St. John of the Cross said that usually our Lord and our Lady work their miracles through images that are not the best, artistically speaking, so that the attention of the faithful stays not on the image, but on what the image represents. The first miracle of our Lady of Luján (year 1630) was that she stopped the oxen and the cart that was carrying her image at a certain point, and the cart and the oxen could not be moved until the box with the image was removed from it. The National shrine is now at that place. After that, many other miracles took place, that we could refer to in another opportunity.[4]

The Sunrays piece is at the back of the "woman clothed in the sun," (cf. Revelation 12:1ff) and represents precisely the rays of the sun, because our Lady is totally immersed in the inaccessible light of God. She is full of grace, clothed in the sun, radiant with the light of God.

The dress of our Lady follows the Spanish custom of dressing the images, and in this particular way and shape. Because it is an image of the Immaculate Conception, the dress is white and the mantle is blue. It is not because of the Argentinian flag. Rather, the colours of the Argentinian flag have been taken from the mantle of our Lady of Luján, as it is historically documented.

May we be loving children of our Mother in Heaven. She is the best way to go to Jesus. She always says: “Do everything He tells you to do” (John 2:5).

 

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[1] Juan Carlos Moreno, Vida de Don Orione, Ed. Dictio, 1980, pág. 258.

[2] Spanish initials of “Institute of the Incarnate Word” (Instituto del Verbo Encarnado), religious order to which I belong.

[3] Cf. Carlos Buela, María de Luján: El Misterio de la Mujer que Espera, IVE Press: New York, 2011, pp. 15-23.

[4] Some of them are referred in Carlos Buela, op. cit., pp. 85-105.