Within the Nombre de Dios Mission in St. Augustine, Florida, rises the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche, built in 1609. This Catholic Marian shrine was built in 1609 in Spanish Florida and is the oldest shrine in the United States. Long before the shrine rose here, Spanish explorers under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, with spiritual chaplaincy of Fr Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, OFM, arrived in northern Florida in 1565.
Grajales celebrated the first Mass in what would become the United States, and the mission established here, Nombre de Dios, was the first mission in that regard. The early settlers brought a particular devotion: Nuestra Señora de La Leche y Buen Parto—"Our Lady of the Milk and Good Delivery"—named for the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary nursing the infant Jesus; the reference to "la leche" means breast milk. The shrine you face was elevated to national shrine status in 2019 and received a canonical coronation in 2021.
Stand quietly and imagine those first services, and let your attention move across the mission grounds, the shrine itself, and the landscape that has held this devotion for centuries.