Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!
The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth
to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph of the house of David.
And so, St. Luke gives us the basis for the mystery we celebrate today
for we know that this virgin and St. Joseph were of the house of David
and so they were of royal lineage.
And we often do not reflect upon the mysteries of our faith
in the light of the historical reality in which they occurred.
At the time the angel Gabriel had appeared to the virgin Mary,
the house of David had fallen into disuse, we might say,
for they had resettled into Nazareth and they took up the trades of farming,
the carpentry that St. Joseph exercised,
and all the humble trades that would be worked by man.
But the Romans were always guarding the power that they had over the world
and so they were ruthless in crushing any rebellion
and so they too were well aware of the rumors that were rampant about in Israel at the time
that the expected Messiah was about to come
and so they went to Nazareth and interrogated each and every member of the house of David
and they found in these people nothing to fear.
They found help.
They found humble men and women working in the ordinary way of mankind.
They saw nothing to fear, most particularly,
they saw nothing to fear in the virgin Mary and St. Joseph
for they were indeed good citizens of the Roman Empire,
giving unto Caesar, as our Lord would say,
what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's.
And so the Romans departed from Nazareth and left them alone.
And so because they did not have a supernatural understanding,
the Holy Family was protected and safeguarded by divine providence
for they did not understand as the chosen people, for the most part,
did not understand the supernatural reality of the queenship of Mary and the kingship of Christ,
that reality that is based in the hypostatic union,
for Christ is constituted king by his very nature
and so the Mother of God, who is of the order of the hypostatic union,
also by her nature is constituted queen.
This is very easy for everyone to understand.
This is very easy for everyone to understand.
This is very easy for anyone to understand,
even if they do not accept the teaching of Holy Mother Church.
For if the Church teaches what it teaches on the queenship and kingship of Christ,
then anyone can recognize in the intellectual order
how true it must be that they are king and queen.
But it is not of this order that ultimately would win the hearts of mankind,
would win the hearts of mankind by our Lord in his most holy mother.
It would be in the order of conquest, that is,
the order of love, in which the Virgin Mary truly merits her queenship
because she unites her suffering to the suffering and sacrifice of her Son,
and so with the Son cooperates in the redemption of mankind.
And it is this that will win the hearts of men and women until the end of time,
that Christ the King did not come to laud it over us like the kings of this world.
For many kings have been constituted by lineage to be true kings of their nature,
but all of them have not been benevolent kings.
But all of them have not been benevolent kings.
Indeed, for the most part of the chosen people, with very few exceptions,
most of the kings reigned as tyrants.
And so the Romans, thinking that the King of Israel, the Messiah, to be expected,
would have a tyrannical reign and ultimately seek to overthrow Caesar,
sought to find in the successors of David's lineage this type of mentality.
When they did not find it, they would depart and leave the holy family to itself.
And that family would live a holy life, a simple life,
so simple that it seemed unextraordinary to the lot of men.
And indeed we see at the end of the joyful mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary
how our Lord himself even reminds his mother that Joseph is not his true father,
that indeed he is a father even in a greater sense than is often understood in the foster fatherhood,
but our Lord has a divine father, and so he came to do the mission of his father.
And so our Lord would remind Our Lady at the founding,
when they find him in the temple, that she also is included in that order.
So she is constituted queen, and from henceforth she must prepare for her role,
that public role, as queen of heaven and earth.
And so they would depart from the temple, and Our Lady would ponder these mysteries in her heart,
always pointing and looking forward to that time when her son would offer himself
in a sacrificial offering love for all mankind.
And indeed, most kings inherit their subjects, but Our Lord, as it were, had to win subjects by conquest.
Save for His Most Holy Mother, every human being who has ever been created came under the law of original sin.
And so, at one time, we're not subject to Almighty God.
That subjection would be won for us by an act of most profound love,
an act of love never heard of or never seen in the history of mankind.
For most kings will give up their life to defend themselves.
But Our Lord needed to give up His life in order to establish His realm.
And so, that is the mystery of the mercy of God,
and that is the mystery that we are called to enter into,
the mystery of the reign of Christ the King and Our Lady the Queen.
Presently, Our Lady sits as a mediatrix.
She mediates between us and God.
She is the bridge between heavenly bliss and the misery of this worldly existence.
And so,
she is constantly interceding as our Queen and Mother
for all the graces necessary for us to cooperate with the will of her Son, the King.
And so, she is a most benevolent Queen because it is entrusted to her the entire order of mercy.
And so, she seeks each and every moment of our life to establish us in conversion
and to strengthen us so that we may persevere in conversion.
She seeks at every moment to draw all souls into the kingdom of her Son
so that,
after this life, after this Veil of Tears,
we may all be united with our King and Queen,
giving them the praise and honor and glory that is theirs by the very nature of who they are.
And so, let us always be thankful to Almighty God for not abandoning humanity,
and always let us recognize that He did not abandon humanity precisely because
He saw the faithfulness of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
precisely because she and she alone would reign,
as a true Queen and she has true power and she has true authority as Queen.
And so, let us always turn to her in our trials and our tribulations.
Let us always turn to her when the Church is assailed.
Let us always turn to her each and every moment of our lives
in order to gain from her all the graces necessary to accomplish the mission of her Son in our lives.
She has ordained us to serve her in this life and so, after a life of serving her,
we may come to know truly,
those words penned by Herman the Cripple when he wrote the Salve Reginae,
Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.
And if we stay close to her, we have nothing to fear in this life.
And if we stay close to her, we will join her in the life to come,
praising the good God from whom all good things come,
the Queenship of the Mother of God, and every good blessing that has been bestowed upon man.
And so, let us thank our Lord, and let us pray.
Lord, for the wonderful way that he has established the mystery of redemption,
by establishing himself as King, by right of conquest, that is by love,
and allowing the Blessed Virgin Mary to cooperate.
And so, she too, truly merits her Queenship.
And so, they both reign with true authority and with true power.
But that authority and that power is always exercised under the dispensation of mercy.
And so, they seek never to crush the human spirit,
or the human soul, but they seek always to reconcile the human soul to Almighty God,
so that all humans, all persons, may find in the Church the safe haven in this life,
outside of which there truly is no salvation,
because outside of Holy Mother Church, the Kingdom of God does truly not exist.
And so, it is the Mother of God who constantly seeks to go outside,
using the members of the mystical body,
in order to draw all Kings,
all souls into the Kingdom of Christ.
The Romans were right when they judged, they had nothing to fear,
for Allah did not come to crush them,
He came to sanctify them.
And so, He will continue to sanctify souls until the end of the world.
And no Kingdom truly has anything to fear for Him,
but no Kingdom, no matter how hard they try,
will ever assail Him,
for His Kingdom is unassailable,
His Kingdom cannot be conquered.
No matter how much the world tries,
and the world is in an earnest effort now,
to crush the Kingdom of Christ,
it too will rise again,
more glorious than it has been in the past.
And so, let us by beseeching our Queen,
look forward to that day,
when the Kingship of Christ and the Queenship of Mary,
will again be established over all society,
so that truly a society of charity may reign,
truly we may know the dominion of peace,
spoken to us in the first reading,
because Christ reigns in the hearts of all men, women and children,
and so a culture of life, a culture of charity,
is truly established in this world,
that is only a brief reflection of the charity
that will reign in the world to come,
into which we are all called to enter.