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Feast of the Queenship of Mary [For Families from Domestic Church.com]

Feast of the Queenship of Mary

by Catherine Fournier

The Coronation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Feast Day: August 22

Young Families

Mary was assumed into Heaven by Jesus and the angels. That means she was carried. Jesus ascended into Heaven, which is a different word, He went up to Heaven by His own power. Mary doesn't have that kind of power, so Jesus carried her.

After she was assumed into Heaven, Jesus took His Mother to a throne next to His own. Since he is King and Lord of all, then as His Mother, she was to become Queen. Jesus, God our Father and the Holy Spirit placed a beautiful crown of twelve stars on her head. All the angels and saints sang wonderful songs praising her as their Queen.

Mary bowed to the Most Holy trinity, and again sang her prayer of praise, the Magnificat.

"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.

He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the might from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever."

The Blessed Virgin Mary now shares in the glory of her resurrected Son, because she had a part in His work of saving souls. She was His Mother, she carried Him in her womb, gave Him birth, raised Him through childhood and into adulthood and stayed with Him when He was on the Cross. She is Queen to all of us.

She obtains all graces for us through her prayers. As our mother and as Jesus's Mother, she will always interceed for us to her Son, and lead us closer to Him. So we should pray to her in all our needs, and everyday.

Practiced Families

The coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven fulfilled more than her own prophecy that "all generations will call me blessed." As mother to Jesus, Our Savior and Redeemer, she crushed the power of sin, death and lies.

Her ancestor Judith's actions anticipated hers, so the words spoken to Judith were also a prophecy of what Mary would do; "Blessed are you, daughter, by the Most High God, above all women on earth; and blessed be the Lord God, the creator of heaven and earth, who guided your blow to the head of the chief of our enemies. Your deed of hope will never be forgotten by those who tell of the might of God. May God make this for your everlasting honour, rewarding you with blessings, because you risked your life when your people were being oppressed, and you averted disaster, walking uprightly before our God."

On another level, it prophecises yet another triumph of Mary's yet to come. At the end of the world, in the final battle, Mary, crowned with twelve stars, will crush the head of the serpeant beneath her feet. She will defeat the Enemy with humility, love and Truth, by the power of God, against which nothing can stand.

Experienced Families

Four years after he declared the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, Pope Pius Xii, in an encyclical letter Ad Caeli Reginam, decreed and instituted the feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary to be celebrated. He formalized the Church's tradition from the earliest centuries of Mary's Queenship in Heaven. This belief rested on both Holy Scripture and tradition.

How can this be? If Jesus is our Lord and King, then surely His mother is our Queen. Mary is Queen of all "since she brought forth a Son, Who at the very moment that He was conceived, was, by reason of the hypostatic union of the human nature with the Word, even as man, King and Lord of all things." In addition, "as Christ is our Lord and King by a special title because He redeemed us, so the Blessed Virgin is our Lady and Queen because of the unique way in which she has cooperated toward our redemption by giving of her own substance, by offering Him willingly for us, and by desiring, praying for, and bringing about our salvation in a singular manner."

By first carrying her to Heaven, then crowning her in the sight of all the angels and saints, God richly rewarded his most faithful of servants. Her own prophecy is fulfilled. "Truly All people shall call me blessed, for The Lord has done great things for me."

Prayer:

God, You have given us the Mother of Your Son to be our Mother and Queen. Through her intercession, grant that we may attain the glory destined for Your adopted sons in Your Heavenly kingdom. Amen.


7 posted on 08/22/2005 8:51:35 AM PDT by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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To: All
Mary's Queenship

Mary's Queenship

by Fr. William G. Most

The beginning of the concept that Mary is a Queen is found in the annunciation narrative. For the angel tells her that her Son will be King over the house of Jacob forever. So she, His Mother, would be a Queen.

The Fathers of the Church soon picked up these implications. A text probably coming from Origen (died c. 254: cf. Marian Studies 4, 1953, 87) gives her the title domina, the feminine form of Latin dominus, Lord. That same title also appears in many other early writers, e.g. , St. Ephrem, St. Jerome, St. Peter Chrysologus (cf. Marian Studies 4. 87-91). The word "Queen" appears abut the sixth century, and is common thereafter (Marian Studies, 4, 91-94).

The titles "king" and "queen" are often used loosely, for those beings that excel in some way. Thus we call the lion the king of beasts, the rose the queen of flowers. Surely Our Lady deserves the title richly for such reasons. But there is much more.

Some inadequate reasons have been suggested: She is the daughter of David. But not every child of a king becomes a king or queen. Others have pointed out that she was free from original sin. Then, since Adam and Eve had a dominion over all things (Genesis 1. 26) she should have similar dominion. But the problem is that the royalty of Adam and Eve was largely metaphorical.

The solidly theological reasons for her title of Queen are expressed splendidly by Pius XII, in his Radiomessage to Fatima, Bendito seja (AAS 38. 266): "He, the Son of God, reflects on His heavenly Mother the glory, the majesty and the dominion of His kingship, for, having been associated to the King of Martyrs in the unspeakable work of human Redemption as Mother and cooperator, she remains forever associated to Him, with a practically unlimited power, in the distribution of the graces which flow from the Redemption. Jesus is King throughout all eternity by nature and by right of conquest: through Him, with Him, and subordinate to Him, Mary is Queen by grace, by divine relationship, by right of conquest, and by singular choice [of the Father]. And her kingdom is as vast as that of her Son and God, since nothing is excluded from her dominion."

We notice that there are two titles for the kingship of Christ: divine nature, and "right of conquest", i.e., the Redemption. She is Queen "through Him, with Him, and subordinate to Him." The qualifications are obvious, and need no explanation. Her Queenship is basically a sharing in the royalty of her Son. We do not think of two powers, one infinite, the other finite. No, she and her Son are inseparable, and operate as a unit.

Of the four titles Pius XII gave for her Queenship, we notice that two are closely parallel to those of Jesus:

(1) He is king by nature, as God; she is Queen by "divine relationship" that is, by being the Mother of God. In fact her relation to her Son is greater than that of ordinary Mothers of Kings. For she is the Mother of Him who is King by very nature, from all eternity, and the relationship is exclusive, for He had no human father. Still further, the ordinary queen-mother gives birth to a child who later will become king. The son of Mary is, as we said, eternally king, by His very nature. (2) He is king by right of conquest. She too is Queen by right of conquest. We already saw that this title for Him means that He redeemed us from the captivity of satan. She shared in the struggle and victory. Since the Pope expressed her dependence on Him in a threefold way--something we would have known anyway--then it is clear that he did not have in mind any other restriction which he did not express. So, maintaining this subordination, "by right of conquest" means the same for her as it does for Him.

The other two titles: (3) She is Queen by grace. She is full of grace, the highest in the category of grace besides her Son. (4) She is Queen by singular choice of the Father. A mere human can become King or Queen by choice of the people. How much greater a title is the choice of the Father Himself!

Pius XII added that "nothing is excluded from her dominion." As Mediatrix of all graces, who shared in earning all graces, she is, as Benedict XV said, "Suppliant omnipotence": she, united with her Son, can obtain by her intercession anything that the all-powerful God can do by His own inherent power.

In the Old Testament, under some Davidic kings, the gebirah, the "Great Lady", usually the Mother of the King, held great power as advocate with the king. Cf. 1 Kings 2:20, where Solomon said to his Mother Bathsheba, seated on a throne at his right: "Make your request, Mother, for I will not refuse you." Here is a sort of type of Our Lady.


Excerpted and adapted from Theology 523: Our Lady in Doctrine and Devotion, by Father William G. Most.
Copyright (c) 1994 William G. Most

Electronic text (c) Copyright EWTN 1996. All rights reserved


9 posted on 08/22/2005 8:54:04 AM PDT by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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