Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
Our Holy Father, St. Francis, according to his early biographers,
St. Thomas of Solano and St. Bonaventure,
had a great love for the Blessed Mother.
Thomas of Solano says that words could not describe the praises
that he bestowed upon her.
And when he began his religious life,
he was inspired to begin it in a little chapel
on the Umbrian plain below Assisi called Our Lady of the Angels,
sometimes popularly referred to as the Portiuncle, the little portion.
It was a tiny little chapel, belonged to the Benedictines in the area,
and it was fun.
Falling down, when our Lord spoke to St. Francis from the crucifix
and said, rebuild my church for, as you can see, it is being destroyed,
St. Francis was in a falling down church, San Damiano,
and so he got to work and he rebuilt it.
Because God had not yet enlightened him as to the deeper meaning of the words,
rebuild my church, St. Francis found the next church nearby.
That was St. Francis.
St. Francis was falling down, and he rebuilt that one.
And then he remembered this little church on the plain,
and because he still hadn't been enlightened any further as to what he was to do,
he went down there and he rebuilt St. Mary of the Angels.
And he fell in love with the place, we're told, by his early biographers,
because this little church was more dear to the Blessed Mother
than any other church in the world.
And it was a little church, and it was a little church,
and it was often visited by angels.
And so after he had rebuilt St. Mary of the Angels, he stayed there.
And it was there, in this little church belonging to our Blessed Mother,
that St. Francis was inspired to found his order.
And it was at that time, also, that he came to appreciate and understand
the deeper meaning of the words of Jesus from the cross,
Francis, rebuild my church for, as you can see, it is being destroyed,
He realized that God was calling him to rebuild the church
through the establishment of the order,
and by the evangelical way of life that he was called to profess.
We're told that he was inspired to found this gospel way of life
after the example of our Blessed Lady,
who had conceived the word of life in her womb.
And so it was there at the Portiunca that he began to live a very rigorous life of poverty,
and he began to live a very rigorous life of poverty,
and he began to live a very rigorous life of poverty,
and he began to live a very rigorous life of generosity and obedience.
And while St. Francis had this radical ideal of poverty,
to the point, for example, that later on in life,
one time he was away, when he came back,
someone had built a house near the Portiunca,
and the people in the area were referring to it as the friar's house,
because the friars were using it.
St. Francis proceeded to get up on the roof
and start tearing the roof down,
and start tearing the roof tiles off of the building,
because he didn't want the friars to have a house.
And he demanded that the friars get up on the roof
and tear it down with him.
Eventually the townspeople from Assisi came
and told St. Francis that it wasn't really the friars' house,
it was their house.
They built it, it belonged to them,
but they allowed the friars to use it.
So St. Francis got down off the building at that point
and let it be.
But he had this very radical
and radical
and vigorous ideal of poverty,
and yet he told the friars,
he said to them,
if they kick you out the front door,
come back in the side door
and never leave this place.
Don't ever leave this place, no matter what.
And that was sort of strange,
because he had kicked them out of houses before
when people started referring to them as the friars' house,
and he didn't really want them to have any stable place.
And yet the Porta Juncla somehow was different.
And it was really because of our Blessed Mother.
It was because of his veneration for her,
his love for her,
and his understanding that the order belonged to her.
That's why Pope Pius X granted the Franciscan order this feast day,
Our Lady Queen of the Seraphic Order,
because it's so vitally important in this modern age
that we have to have a place for ourselves.
And that's why we have to have a place for ourselves.
And that's why we have to have a place for ourselves.
And that's why we have to have a place for ourselves.
As we know from Pius X himself,
who wrote encyclicals on the Blessed Mother
and the things that happened during his pontificate,
the messages of Our Lady of Fatima
and the founding of the MI by St. Maximilian Kolbe
and other things, the modern Marian movement and apparitions,
all point to the fact that the world in which we're living today
needs Our Lady's queenship,
needs a mother and a queen
to guard, protect, and protect us.
needs a mother and a queen to guard, protect, and protect us.
And this is really the answer to the whole modern problem.
And it is the modern gift, you might say,
of the Franciscan order to the world.
And even among those who appreciate and understand
the Blessed Mother to some extent,
it's Our Lady's queenship which so often comes under attack, I've found.
And people have a tendency, even if they believe in the doctrines,
concerning the Blessed Mother,
to dumb her down
and to make her as much like us
as they could possibly imagine.
And that's why, for example,
a few years ago when they made and released
the Nativity Story movie around Christmastime,
it presented Our Lady in this very human and fallen sense.
People are going to say,
oh, you don't want Our Lady to be human.
No.
Not at all.
Our Lady was human.
But as Mark Miravalli says,
she was more unlike us than like us
because she was immaculate.
And the Divine Maternity touched her in nature,
not just in grace.
And she is an ideal and a living ideal.
And Our Mother, she is the masterpiece of God.
And she deserves to be honored as God's masterpiece.
And yes, we should kneel down before her and pray to her.
And acknowledge her for who she is
and what God has done for her.
We should humble ourselves before her
because she is our Queen.
And while we do identify with her earthly life
as we do today,
as we can reflect upon the Gospel
and her response to God at the Annunciation,
we do also recognize that her response to God
was so far above ours
and so much more than we could have imagined.
She is so perfect
that she deserves to sit at the right hand
of her Son in Heaven as Queen.
And God has entrusted to her
the treasuries of her grace,
as St. Maximilian says,
to distribute to whomever she wants,
whenever she wants,
and however she wants.
That is not some kind of extracurricular idea
that some extremists
or saints or teachers within the Church
have sort of added on to the Sacred Scripture.
This is what the Church has always believed.
And if we don't have the humility,
like St. Francis did,
to bow before our Queen
and honor her in this fashion,
we will never solve the problems
that we confront in the world today.
At Fatima, Our Lady came and said
that God wishes to establish in the world
devotion to my Immaculate Heart.
And the attitude of those children at Fatima
was the same attitude of St. Francis.
And it is the attitude
that all of us need to have today.
Because if we don't have it,
and we don't find it soon,
we face some very dire
and unfortunate consequences.
That was another reason Our Lady came at Fatima
to warn us and to promise us peace
if we would follow her,
but to help us be aware
that there would be consequences
if we did not.
St. Francis' way is the way of humility.
It's the way of honor.
And it should be our way as well,
as today we honor Our Lady in her queenship,
her queenship of angels and men,
and in a particular way,
of the Franciscan Order.
Our Lady of Fatima
God bless you.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Thanks for watching!