Readings: Is 9:1-6; • Ps 112 • Lk 1:26-38
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Today’s feast, this Memorial of the
Queenship of Mary, is really fairly recent…at least in terms of the long life
of the Church. It was established by Pope Pius XII back in August of 1954, and
coincidentally my folks happened to be in Rome that very day.
I was just a lad of 10, but I remember
how excited my mom was when she told me all about it after they returned home. She
also said they should have taken me on their trip, and apologized for leaving
me and my brother behind. Uh-huh, right, Mom.
But in truth they parked us with
relatives, and I won the lottery because I got to stay with Uncle Billy and
Aunt Lilly, two former Vaudeville entertainers. Billy played the piano and
Lilly sang, and they were just about the coolest people I’d ever known. But I
digress…
Mom also gave me a miraculous medal
blessed by Pope Pius that day, a medal I still wear. And the
readings the Church gives us today are the perfect readings for Mary, the
Galilean teenaged girl who would become the Mother of God and the Queen of
Heaven and Earth.
We get a first
taste in the reading from Isaiah, when he reveals that God will “make
glorious…Galilee of the nations.” Really?
Who would ever think of backward, rural Galilee in those terms? Nobody but a
God who loves to surprise us by turning the less than ordinary to the
extraordinary, the spectacular. And what exactly will happen?
“For a child
has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of
Peace.”
Yes, this
messianic prophecy gives the Jews of Isaiah’s day a first taste of the Savior
who will set them free…set them free not from the slavery of Egyptians, or Assyrians,
or Babylonians, or Persians, or Greeks, or Romans… No, this Savior will free
them and all of humanity from the slavery of sin. He will open the very gates
of heaven for us all.
But how does will
this happen? How does the Savor come to us? Once again, God turns what the
world sees as the ordinary into the extraordinary, and Luke tells us the story.
It’s the story of
a young woman named Mary, a virgin in Nazareth, a small town in Galilee. And on
this remarkable day she is visited by one of God’s mighty messengers, the
Archangel Gabriel. Gabriel doesn’t waste words and he delivers his message to
Mary.
Fear not…God
is with you…has filled you with His grace…and you will bear a Son named Jesus,
the Son of the Most High, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever.
When young Mary
hears this, she responds, more than a bit perplexed: “I’m a virgin. How can I
bear a child?” A reasonable question, don’t you think? But Gabriel has an
answer:
”The Holy
Spirit will come upon you…and the child will be holy, the Son of God.”
And with that,
this “handmade of the Lord”, this servant, says “let it be done” and in an
instant she becomes the Mother of God.
It only took the
Church about 400 years to confirm this. Back in the year 431, at the Council of
Ephesus, the Church gave Mary the title “Theotokos” – the God Bearer,
the Mother of God. Of course, the faithful had long believed and expressed
this, but it still had to be affirmed at Ephesus since the Arians were going
around at the time saying stupid things.
And then, just a mere
15 centuries later, in 1954, Pope Pius XII, speaking for the Church declared
that Mary, the Mother of God, also deserved the title of Queen. This, too, was
nothing new, and most often, on these occasions, the Church simply expresses
what the Church already knows, what its people have long believed. After all,
they’d been singing Marian hymns for ages, indeed since the Middle Ages…”Hail
Holy Queen” and praying the fifth decade of the Glorius Mysteries.
Pope Pius actually
gave three reasons:
1.
Mary’s
close association with Jesus’ redemptive work;
2.
Her
preeminent perfection of holiness;
3.
Her
intercessory power on our behalf.
Good theological
reasons with which all of us would agree. But for me, and for so many others, she’s simply the only Queen we’ve ever known.
And, believe me,
she’s no “sit on the throne” and just look important kind of Queen. No, indeed,
she loves to get right into the midst of the lives of her subjects, doing
whatever is needed to help them out. For her, interceding is a full-time job.
And as I’m sure
her Son will verify, she’s pulled me out of a lot of very difficult situations.
And all I had to do was ask. Now that’s a Queen!
Mary, Queen of
Heaven and Earth, Mother of God…Pray for us. Intercede for us.
