Seminarian Dennis Schenkel writes about his experience as an on-call hospital chaplain last summer:

At the ICU, I found the boy's mother in tears, desconsolada ("inconsolable") for her precious little child, and the father standing stoically in one corner of the room. Over the next two hours, I talked with the boy's mother in Spanish. She and her husband were so far from their home in Mexico, and were not sure who they could trust. But more than that, they were afraid for their son, and it seemed the mother would never run out of tears.

We spoke about her faith, and about Mary, la Virgen de Guadalupe. I reminded her that Mary was a mother, just like her. And like her, Mary loved her son very much, and that Mary knew exactly what she was going through. I reminded her of what Mary said to St. Juan Diego at Tepeyac Hill that December morning in 1531, "Am I not here, who am your mother?" She told me that she had been praying so hard, asking the Virgin of Guadalupe to grant a miracle for her son, because she had always been gracious, and had interceded before God so many time times for so many other families. ...