QUEENSHIP OF MOTHER MARY

 

HOMILY FOR TUESDAY 22 AUGUST 2023 FEAST OF THE QUEENSHIP THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY 

ISAIAH 9:1-6; PSALM 113:1-8; LUKE 1:26-38

I pray for you: May the Virgin Mary, crowned Queen, intercede for us that we may imitate her in faithfully fulfilling the will of God on earth, to join her one day in the heavenly Jerusalem. AMEN

Dear children of God, according to Saint Pope John Paul II, in every situation of our life, let us invoke her with trust: Queen of all saints, pray for us!

Let us as, children of the Church, above all, renew our devotion to the One whom Jesus Christ gave to us as Mother and Queen. Let us entrust to her intercession the daily prayer for peace, especially in places where the senseless logic of violence is most brutal, aggressive and fiece; so that all people may be convinced that in this world, we must help one another, as brothers and sisters, to build the civilization of love. Maria, Regina pacis, ora pro nobis!

Today, August 22, we celebrate the Memorial of the Queenship of Mary, honoring the queenship of Mama Maria over heaven and earth. In most cases, Mama Maria is portrayed as Queen of the Universe, Queen of Missions, Queen of Ireland, Queen of All Hearts, Queen of Peace, and more throughout our sacred art and architecture.

Why do We Honor Mary as Queen? The Memorial of the Queenship of Mary was first instituted in 1954 by Pope Pius XII. According to Catholic tradition, as Christ is king of the world and saves the people from their sins, Mama Maria is queen over the earth because of her role in the story of divine redemption, serving as mother to the Savior. Pope Benedict XVI described this relationship, saying: The small and simple young girl of Nazareth became Queen of the world! This is one of the marvels that reveal the Heart of God. Of course, the queenship of Mary is totally relative to the kingship of Christ. He is the Lord; whom after the humiliation of death on the Cross, the Father exalted him above any other creature in Heaven and on earth and under the earth (cf. Phil 2:9-11). Through a design of grace, the Immaculate Mother, Mama Maria was fully associated with the mystery of the Son: in his Incarnation; in his earthly life, at first hidden at Nazareth and then manifested in the messianic ministry; in his Passion and death; and finally, in the glory of his Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven.

Now, how does Mama Maria Serves as Queen? Just as Christ our king came and offered himself as a servant, Mama Maria also offered herself as a servant to God, obedient to his will. As Pope Benedict XVI once noted: Mary is Queen in her service to God for humanity, she is a Queen of love who lives the gift of herself to God so as to enter into the plan of the salvation of man. She answered the Angel: Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord (cf. Luke 1:38) and in the Magnificat she sings: God has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden (cf. Luke 1:48). She helps us. She is Queen precisely by loving us, by helping us in our every need; she is our sister, a humble handmaid. 

In some chapel, which are dedicated to the Coronation of Mama Maria, Jesus Christ is depicted as the King of Kings, honoring his mother Mama Maria by seating her on a throne next to him and giving her a heavenly crown. Encircling her head are the twelve stars which symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel. Beneath the depiction of mama Maria and Jesus Christ is the Old Testament parallel to the Coronation of Mama Maria: Bathsheba receiving honor from her son, King Solomon, as he seats her next to him on his throne (1 King 2:19). The two panels are joined by the text from Revelation: On her head is a crown of twelve stars (Revelation 12:1).

Pope Pius XII established this feast in 1954. But the queenship of Blessed Virgin Mary has roots in the Scriptures. At the Annunciation, Gabriel announced that the son of Mama Maria would receive the throne of David and rule forever. At the Visitation, Elizabeth calls Mama Maria mother of my Lord. As in all the mysteries of the life of Mama Maria, she is closely associated with Jesus Christ: Her queenship is a share in the kingship of Jesus Christ. We can also recall that, in the Old Testament, the mother of the king has great influence in the court of the king.

This feast is a logical follow-up to the Assumption, and is now celebrated on the octave day of the feast of Assumption. In his 1954 encyclical, “To the Queen of Heaven”, Pope Pius XII points out that Mama Maria deserves the title because she is Mother of God; and she is closely associated as the New Eve with the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, because of her preeminent perfection, and because of her intercessory power.

As Saint Paul suggests in Romans 8:2830, God has predestined human beings from all eternity to share the image of his Son. All the more is Mama Maria predestined to be the mother of Jesus Christ. As Jesus Christ is to be king of all creation, Mama Maria, in dependence on Jesus Christ, is to be queen.

Thus, just as Jesus Christ exercised his kingship on earth by serving his Father and his fellow human beings, so did Mama Maria exercise her queenship. As the glorified Jesus Christ remains with us as our king till the end of time (Matthew 28:20), so does Mama Maria, who was assumed into heaven and crowned Queen of heaven and earth.

In the Old Testament Judaism, the queen mother was given the title Great Lady, and we can see her importance in a number of passages from the Old Testament. For example, when the books of First and Second Kings introduce a new king in the Kingdom of Judah, they almost always mention the name of the mother of the king alongside her royal son. The queen mother also is portrayed as a preeminent member of the royal court, wearing a crown on her head (cf. Jeremiah 13:18) and heading the list of palace officials in the kingdom (2 Kings 24:12-15). Furthermore, the queen mother had a real share in the reign of her son, helping in his mission to shepherd the people (cf. Jeremiah 13:18-20) and serving as a trusted counselor (Proverbs 31). But most of all, the queen mother served as an advocate for the people, hearing their petitions and presenting them to the king.

The Old Testament woman who illustrates the royal prerogatives of the queen mother most clearly is Bathsheba. Consider what happens when she transitions from her role as the wife of king David to her role as queen mother after her son Solomon assumes the throne. While her husband, David, still reigns as king, Bathsheba enters the royal chamber, and she approaches him like most subjects in the kingdom would: She bows with her face to the ground, pays him homage and says, May the lord, King David, live forever! (1 Kings 1:31).

However, after David dies and her son Solomon becomes king, she is treated very differently, for now, she is queen mother. Immediately, a man from the kingdom recognizes the role of Queen Bathsheba as advocate and asks her to take a petition to the king. Expressing great confidence in her powerful intercession, he says: Ask King Solomon, who will not refuse you (1 Kings 2:17). Bathsheba agrees to go to the king. But this time, when she enters the royal chamber, she finds herself receiving royal treatment. The king stands up to greet her and bows before her. He then orders a throne to be brought in for her, and she is seated at his right hand, the position of authority (cf. 1 Kings 2:19-20; Psalm 110:1). Nowhere else in Scriptures does the king honor someone to the degree that Solomon honors the queen mother in this scene.

Even more remarkable is how King Solomon affirms his commitment to the intercessory role of queen mother in the kingdom. After Bathsheba mentions she has a request to present, Solomon responds, Ask it, my mother, for I will not refuse you (1 Kings 2:19-20).

I want to state it clearly that the Early Church Fathers used what is referred to as typology to clearly establish the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. For example, though King Solomon sinned, he is also a prefigurement, or type of Christ Jesus because he was a peacemaker, filled with wisdom, and built the Temple. Saint Augustine, in his commentary on Psalm 127, states that our Lord is the true Solomon and that Solomon was the figure of this Peacemaker. The true Peacemaker is Christ Jesus, and just as Solomon built the Temple, so our Lord built the true Temple of His Body, the Church.

If King Solomon, an Old Testament type of Christ Jesus, honored the request of his Queen Mother and sat her on a throne next to his, then so much more does our Lord Jesus Christ, the true King of Kings, do so with His mother, Mama Maria 

Therefore, the memorial of today celebrates the fact that, in Heaven, the mother of Jesus Christ is seated on a throne next to His, and like Solomon, Jesus says with certainty to her, Ask it, my mother, for I will not refuse you.

As Queen, Mama Mary not only intercedes on our behalf, she also acts as the mediator of her Son. From her heavenly throne, the Queen Mother of Heaven and Earth is entrusted with the grace of God. She is not the source, but she is privileged to be the instrument of distribution. As a loving mother, nothing pleases her more than to lavish every good thing upon her children on earth. She longs to gather all of her children together in Heaven, with and in her divine Son.

Though the liturgical and theological evolution of the memorial of today might seem complex, the heart of it is simple. We not only have a mother in Heaven, we also have a Queen Mother. As Mama Maris is the Queen Mother of God, we must turn to her with childlike faith and simplicity. As a young child runs to a loving mother in time of need, never questioning her love, protection, and care, so we must run to her. She is our protectress, our refuge, our hope, and our sweet delight. Her affection is perfect and her motherly love unmatched.

In the Annunciation story in the Gospel according to Luke, the angel Gabriel tells Mama Maria that she will become the mother of a royal Son who will fulfill Old Testament hopes about the everlasting kingdom of Messiah (cf. 2 Samuel 7; Psalm 2, 72, 89). The angel says: Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end (Luke 1:31-33).

If ancient Jews heard of a woman giving birth to a new Davidic king, they would easily conclude she was a queen mother. And that is exactly the vocation Mama Maria receives at the Annunciation. She is the royal mother of the king who will sit on the throne of David his father and of whose kingdom there will be no end.

More so, the royal office is made even more explicit in the Visitation of Mama Maria to the house of Elizabeth. Here, Elizabeth greets Mary, saying, And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? (Luke 1:43). This title, mother of my Lord, is packed with great queenly significance. In the royal court language of the ancient Near East, the title my Lord was used to address the king (cf. 2 Sm 24:21). Therefore, mother of my lord would mean mother of my king, or, in other words, queen mother. In using this particular title to address Mama Maria, Elizabeth recognizes the great dignity of the royal office of Mama Maria.

Another passage that sheds light on the Queenship of Mary is in Revelation 12: A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child (Revelation 12:1-2).

The question is: who is this mysterious woman of the Apocalypse? While some interpreters suggest the woman symbolizes Israel or the Church, she also can easily be seen as Mama Maria, the mother of Jesus Christ. Indeed, Revelation portrays this woman as the mother of the Messiah. In Revelation 12:5, the son of the woman is attacked by the devil, taken up to heaven, seated on a throne and destined to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, alluding to a prophecy about the Messiah-King (cf. Psalm 2:9). If the child is Christ, the Messiah, then who is this mother of Christ? Clearly, the woman would be Mama Maria.

Thus, Mama Maria appears in Revelation 12 with royal splendor, reigning in heaven as the mother of the King. Like the queen mothers of old, she wears a crown on her head, reflecting her royal office. The 12 stars on her crown symbolize her reign in the Church, which was born from the 12 tribes of Israel and is founded on the 12 apostles. She is clothed with the sun, radiating the glory of God, and even the placement of the moon under her feet points to her royal authority; since under the feet imagery symbolized royal power and one defeating his or enemies (cf. Psalm 8:6; 110:1).

Let us continue to fly to the patronage of Mama Maria.

O DIVINE WORD WHO TOOK FLESH FOR HUMAN SAKE, REDEEM US IN OUR SITUATION

© Rev Fr Utazi Prince Marie Benignus Zereuwa