Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
May our Lord Jesus give you his peace.
A great day of rejoicing today as we celebrate Our Lady,
crowned as Queen of the Universe in Heaven,
a feast introduced in 1954 by Pope Pius XII.
And upon the announcement of that,
publishing a document and encyclical letter called Ad Regina Celi,
in which he establishes or reconfirms the basis of Our Lady's queenship.
And he divides up the document in different sections.
Of course, he will cover Sacred Scripture, the Fathers of the Church,
look at magisterial documents prior to this one,
the Sacred Liturgy he draws from,
looking at how that testifies to Our Lady's queenship,
but even Sacred Art he'll draw from,
mentioning that from the time, as far as we can tell,
from the Council of Ephesus, 431,
that Our Lady portrayed as Queen, and rightly so.
And the basis for this, of course, is found in Sacred Scripture,
principally what we just read, Luke chapter 1,
the Annunciation, verses 32 to 33.
And with those verses, we hear, of course, the Archangel Gabriel,
who we can say, along with St. John Damascene,
is really the first one heralding the royal dignity of the Blessed Virgin,
insofar as her son will reign over the house of Jacob forever.
He will be given the throne of his father, David, verses 32-33.
And it's an important link to make,
because just as Jacob was given the throne of his father, David,
just as Jacob was given the throne of his father, David,
just as Jacob was given the throne of his father, David,
Jesus is king by nature, with the hypostatic union,
having created all things.
But also, the second principle is because,
not only by natural right is Jesus king,
this is a principle that if we understand Our Lady's queenship,
we must also understand Our Lady's kingship,
just as, this is an author, Father Schmidt, Capuchin,
just as we, in order to understand Our Lady's co-redemptrix,
we have to have a good grasp on what Our Lord did for us in the redemption,
and so, too, in this mystery of faith as well.
And so, with this, Jesus is king not only by nature,
having created all, being Lord of all,
but also by acquired right.
And a very beautiful thing to meditate upon
is how he lowered himself to acquire this kingship.
And it gets at the mystery of the interior life
that we're called to more and more usher into our soul,
that in losing all things,
through poverty and even the will,
the great good of self-determination,
there's a reigning there to serve Christ,
it's to reign.
And we really have to keep that goal in mind
in order, at times, to strengthen us.
Just like Our Lady, who is queen
because she's the mother of God,
by grace,
also by acquired right, by the merits,
by standing at the foot of the cross.
And the document's very, very key
in more and more looking at Our Lady,
as co-redemptrix.
And we'll take a look at some of those passages
in the document as well.
Pope Benedict XIV said this,
talking about Our Lady in Sacred Scripture,
we go into the Old Testament,
following the document,
there was a flurry of studies about Our Lady
and queens in the Sacred Scriptures.
And consequently, they looked at the Old Testament.
But this is Pope Benedict XIV,
and it's no surprise,
but just the different types in the Old Testament,
especially, we should emphasize,
Queen Esther.
And he wrote,
For this is the most beautiful Esther,
talking about Mother Mary,
when the supreme king of kings so loved,
whom the supreme king of kings so loved,
that for the salvation of his people,
he seems to have given her not merely half his kingdom.
This is something, a recurrent theme in Scripture,
that, you know, what do you want?
I'll give you up to half of my kingdom.
And he's saying here,
given not merely half his kingdom,
but in some manner to have communicated to her
his whole rule and power.
And typologically, you can find that going on
in the book of Esther.
And it's not just for nothing, of course,
that we see these things in Sacred Scripture,
but they're fulfilled,
just as things are fulfilled, summed up in Christ,
so too with his associate in the work of redemption.
The theme of Queen Mother,
very, very important in Sacred Scripture as well.
And it's very important for the king,
because oftentimes in the Old Testament,
a king had many wives.
Polygamy was practiced.
He only had one wife,
and consequently the authority of the kingdom
went to not his wives,
nor to a single wife,
but to his mother.
And that also is fulfilled in, of course,
the Blessed Virgin Mary,
where we see in Sacred Scripture,
it's oftentimes the mother,
for example, different deportations of Israel
through the Assyrians,
Babylonia.
Oftentimes the Queen Mother is mentioned.
The king, the Queen Mother,
the servants, this, that, and the other.
But right in line,
the Queen Mother is occupying a very, very special place
in terms of what the enemy's worried about
in getting rid of the rain.
Okay, so in Sacred Scripture, we see it for sure.
The document also cites Luke 143,
which is the mother of my Lord,
the words of St. Elizabeth,
and that word Lord having a royal significance.
According to the files of the church,
several are mentioned in the document,
and St. Ephraim especially,
kind of,
puts these words on our queen.
Let heaven sustain me in its embrace
because I'm honored above it.
For heaven was not thy mother,
but thou has made it thy throne.
How much more honorable and venerable
than the throne of a king is her mother.
And very, very early on in the life of the church,
we're seeing the different spiritual authors,
the fathers of the church,
pointing out this great mystery.
So as I said before,
the two foundations for,
the queenship, theologically,
are one, her divine maternity,
again, by grace,
but also her co-redemption.
And that, although the document
does not use the word co-redemption,
that's what it's describing very much so.
And here's some thoughts regarding that,
passage 36.
Now, in the accomplishing of this work of redemption,
the Blessed Virgin Mary
was most closely associated with Christ.
And so it is fitting to sing in the sacred liturgy,
near the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
there stood sorrowful,
the Blessed Mary,
Queen of Heaven and Queen of the World.
That's from the extraordinary form of the Mass,
the tract,
and it's from the Feast of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows,
and invoking Our Lady's Queen.
She's standing there as Queen.
The liturgy is a point that we take
from the truths of our faith.
As we pray, we believe.
Also, we have the disciple of St. Anselm,
Eadmor,
who wrote in the Middle Ages,
just as God, by making all through his power,
is Father and Lord of all,
so the Blessed Mary,
by repairing,
all through her merits,
is Mother and Queen of all.
For God is the Lord of all things,
because by his command,
he establishes each of them in its own nature.
Again, this level of how Christ is King.
And Mary is the Queen of all things,
because she restores each to its original dignity
through the grace which she merited.
It's an important thing to understand
and more and more to reflect upon
with Marian consecration,
the Marian vow.
We're talking about merits here
and how we divest ourselves
of merits,
is very, very important
to how we live in this world
and how we really glorify Jesus as King
and Our Lady as Queen.
Pope Pius XII goes on to make a theological argument,
basically from the theology of the New Eve
and what he just laid out
in terms of this recapitulation
of all things in Christ and Mary,
according to the thought of St. Irenaeus,
the new Adam,
the new Eve.
Then he concludes that just,
as we've been saying all along,
as Christ, the new Adam is called the King
because he's Son of God, by nature,
but also because he's our Redeemer,
what he acquired by his merits, by right.
So analogously, analogously,
the document will point out
that this is a participation in the kingship,
the absolute kingship of Christ.
Analogously, the most blessed virgin is Queen,
not only because she's Mother of God,
again, by grace,
but also because of the New Eve,
she was associated with the new Adam.
And how was she associated?
In the redemption.
And there's, again,
the underlying current of co-redemptrix there.
So the nature of Our Lady's queenship
is certainly one of mercy.
St. Maximilian Kolbe will talk about
how her queenship is one of all gentleness.
And in the thoughts of, for example,
St. Bonaventure and other of the Middle Ages,
again, with that kingdom being divested half,
it seems a very common, common thought
that, as you know,
as God, of course,
embraces not only mercy,
but also justice.
And Mother Mary,
there seems to be nothing but mercy.
And, of course,
the two fuse in God,
but there's nothing to fear with Our Lady.
And consequently,
the logic, the divine wisdom
of giving us a mediator
with the one mediator, Jesus Christ.
The queenship is an interior reign of Jesus.
And Jesus reigns in our minds
and in our wills
and in our hearts.
And he does so as,
if you could say in philosophical language,
as final cause.
The devil tried to interpose himself
as final cause
and very successfully continues to do so
by reigning through death.
And this kind of quasi-absolute fear
of reigning in men's hearts,
of trying to seize at the lesser good now
because of fear of this impending evil
in the future.
And he does that.
Of course, Jesus,
and he, in the book of Revelation,
the devil stands on the shore of the sea
almost as if awaiting the soul
at the end of this life,
this pilgrimage,
this journey through life
on the waters of life.
Jesus, of course,
also stands on the shore of the sea,
but as a resurrection.
He is the resurrection and the life,
dispelling.
But this is the faith.
This is the faith that is a saving faith.
And if not,
souls do plummet into hell
because of despair.
And so the interior reign of Christ,
which we have been given,
St. Francis,
says because of the poverty
that we've taken up,
we will be kings
in the kingdom of heaven.
And that gets at the,
with the Marian vow,
we have an absolute poverty.
And the extension of that kingdom
is a very important thing
to really get under our belt
and to practice, practice, practice
until it becomes,
in the biblical sense,
perfect.
In other words, fully mature.
That we can understand the dynamic
just as at the foot of the cross,
Mother Mary seized on,
locked on,
grasped fully the significance
of the Archangel Gabriel's words,
nothing will be impossible with God
and the promise to her
that he will sit on the throne
of David his father
and reign the house of Jacob forever
in the face of this apparent disaster
of the cross.
That mystery is meant to play out
in you and me.
And insofar as it does,
we bear fruit
and our father in heaven is glorified
and our mother in heaven is glorified
in other words,
children for the kingdom of God.
The first reading kind of spells this out
with the different titles
of the Christ.
A child is born to us.
How?
Through Mary.
So just as Christ reigns
through this final causality,
in other words,
this kind of at the end of all things,
Mother Mary reigns
with this, again,
in philosophical language,
this efficient causality
by her, through her,
we attain to this kingdom.
A child is born,
born for us,
through Mary.
A son is given to us,
through Mary.
She gave up her maternal rights
for the cross,
giving the Christ to us.
Consequently,
the fruitfulness of that,
woman,
behold your son,
son,
or behold your mother.
And that mystery
meant to play out in us as well.
So when hope is tested,
when hope is stretched to the max,
when there doesn't seem to be
any natural props
on the level of reason,
why?
We should,
continue to hope,
then,
making that,
that nothing is impossible with God,
fruitfulness,
and the kingdom of Christ,
and the blessed Virgin Mary,
his lowly handmaid is extended.
On this feast day,
we can't find words enough
to express joy.
We can only hope that our hearts
are open enough
to participate in some,
we can say small,
but we want maximal way
in the joy that's meant for us.
It's meant for us this day.
Our lady is queen.
We proclaim her as such,
not being ashamed of any of these teachings
of this holy mother church,
and hoping that that Christ of,
that kingdom of Christ
will be extended fully
through our minds, hearts, and wills.
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