Wednesday, August 22, 2012
A Reflection on the Queenship of Mary
Brothers and Sisters: Peace be with you.
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Today's the liturgical feast of Mary, Queen of Heaven. First, I want to share with you an image of that event as contained in our family Bible which has always captivated me and I think it is both different and rare. I tried to enhance the colors a bit because the picture is fading. I hope that by making it available in the Internet, others may be able to draw inspiration from it, as as well as preserving it "for ever". Second, I want to reflect a bit on the mystery of Mary's Queenship. Why is Mary of Nazareth "Queen of Heaven" and in fact "Queen of Creation." She is so not because she's some sort of goddess or quasi-deity. Far from it! Mary of Nazareth's dignity derives from her divine motherhood of the Word made Flesh. Her queenly dignity is extrinsic, it comes from without, by grace. Her Son's Kingship, on the other hand, is intrinsic to Him, for He's both God and Man. We should reflect also that Christ's kingship is one of humble service and abasement, without guile; so is Mary's. When we talk about Christ being a King - and Mary being a Queen - we're not talking about "authority" as we normally understand it. We're not talking about a set of legal strictures that our King and Queen apply coercively to their subjects - us. In fact, it is in Christ where mercy and truth, and justice and peace meet both eternally and in history (cfr. Psalm 84:11, Douay-Rheims). Our Queen's "authority" lies on her powerful intercession, on her ability to intercede for everyone, a grace granted by the Triune God as her badge of queenly office. This is what queens usually did in antiquity, everyone understood that, as they also understood that the Messiah's mother will somehow participate of His glory. Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Langrange -of blessed memory- even referred to the BVM as the "supplicant omnipotence" (cfr his work, The Mother of The Saviour ). By divine dispensation, there is "no case" that she cannot raise before the Throne of the Lamb, her son. She also gets what she asks for, always. Again, I want to belabor the fact that these exercises of kingly and queenly authority by the Lord and his Mother are not what we associate with the acts of secular monarchs - King George VI comes to mind immediately to Americans, mind you. No, theirs are exercises in mercy and service: the Queen asks for it and the King grants it. One more thing to reflect upon: Salvation, for a Catholic, is first and foremost deification: what Jesus is by nature we become by grace. We first receive the grace of deification through Baptism: 1999 The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification: (CCC). By the grace of Christ, we have been made partakers, sharers, of the divine nature: 2 Grace to you and peace be accomplished in the knowledge of God and of Christ Jesus our Lord: 3 As all things of his divine power which appertain to life and godliness, are given us, through the knowledge of him who hath called us by his own proper glory and virtue. 4 By whom he hath given us most great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature: flying the corruption of that concupiscence which is in the world. (2 Peter 1: 2-4, Douay-Rheims). Furthermore, the Bible tell us that every one of us will get a crown. In the Book of Revelation, those who are faithful until the end will receive "the crown of life" (2:10); as well as those who "hold fast" (3:11); the twenty-four "ancients" wore "crowns of gold" (4:4) and they would take theirs off when worshipping the Lamb (4:10) as well as the first horseman (6:2). The "woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet" wore "a crown of twelve stars" (12:1) and, finally, He who sits upon the white cloud "like a Son of man" had on his head a "crown of gold" (14:14). We note immediately that the crown wore by the Woman was not made of gold, but of "stars". The nature of her crown sets her apart, even from the Son of man. It is a unique crown, a special crown, denoting special royalty. In this figure we see both Mary, the Mother of the Messiah and the Church, who gives the Messiah/Christ to the world as a mother. Crowns will be common in heaven, but the one worn by the Queen stands out. We haven't received our crowns yet, because that's conditioned upon our perseverance and that's still being tested. But the Queen Mother has already entered into heaven, body and soul united. The Resurrection of the Dead has already taken place for her: she lives with her Son in the escathon, the End Times. Therefore, she wears her crown already and that's also why that, even now, she exercises her queenship; and that's what we celebrate today. May the intercession of the holy Mother of God, our Theotokos and Queen, help us to persevere until the end and receive from the King our own imperishable crowns.
Amen.
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