The glorious title of Queen

That august prerogative of Our Lady is presented to us in greater depth by the holy Founder of the Redemptorists, as he begins his beautiful and pious comments on the prayer of the ‘Hail Queen’:

“The Blessed Virgin having been raised to the dignity of Mother of God, with just reason the Holy Church honors her, and desires of all that they honor her with the glorious title of Queen. If the Son is King, says the Pseudo-Athanasius, the Mother must rightly be considered and called Queen. From the moment Mary accepted to be Mother of the Eternal Word, says St. Bernardine of Siena, she deserved to become Queen of the world and of all creatures. If Mary’s flesh, concludes Arnold Abbot, was not different from that of Jesus, how, then, can the Mother be separated from the monarchy of the Son?”

Therefore it must be judged that the glory of the kingdom is not only common between the Mother and the Son, but also that it is the same for both.

“If Jesus is King of the universe, of the universe Mary is also Queen,” writes Robert Abbot. So, in the phrase of St. Bernardine of Siena, as many creatures serve God, so many must also serve Mary. Therefore, the Angels, men and all things of Heaven and Earth are subject to Mary’s dominion, because everything is also subject to God’s rule. That is why Guerrico Abad addresses these words to her: “Continue, then, to dominate with all confidence; dispose yourselves of the goods of your Son; for, being Mother, and Wife of the King of kings, the kingdom and dominion over all creatures belongs to you as Queen”.

Mary Queen: prime work of God’s mercy

In the light of the preceding teachings, let us hear Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira weaving some comments on the royalty of the Blessed Virgin:

Our Lady Queen is a title that expresses the following fact. Since she is the Mother of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity and the Spouse of the Third Person, God, to honor her, gave her the empire over the universe: all the Angels, all the Saints, all living men, all the souls in Purgatory, all the reprobate in Hell and all the demons obey the Blessed Virgin. Thus there is a mediation of power, and not merely of grace, by which God executes all his works and accomplishes all his wills through the intermediary of his Mother.

Mary is not only the channel through which the empire of God passes, but she is also the Queen who decides by a will of her own, consonant with the designs of the King. Our Lady is a prime-work of what we could call God’s ability to have mercy in relation to men….

Queen of hearts

Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira continues: St. Louis Grignion de Montfort makes reference to that beautiful invocation which is Our Lady Queen of Hearts. In the language of the Sacred Scriptures, the heart is understood as the mentality of man, especially his will and his designs.

Our Lady is Queen of hearts as having power over the mind and will of men. Mary exercises this empire, not by tyrannical imposition, but by the action of grace, by virtue of which she can free men from their defects and attract them, with sovereign pleasure and particular sweetness, to the good that she desires for them.

This power of Our Lady over souls reveals to us how admirable is her supplicant omnipotence, which obtains everything from divine mercy. So august is this dominion over all hearts, that it represents incomparably more than being Sovereign of all the seas, of all the earthly ways, of all the stars of heaven, such is the value of a soul, even that of the last of men!

It is worth noting, however, that the will (that is, the heart) of modern man, with praiseworthy exceptions, is dominated by revolution. Those, therefore, who wish to escape from this yoke, must unite themselves to the counter-revolutionary Heart par excellence, to the Heart of a mere creature in which, below the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Counter-Revolution resides; to the Sacred and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Let us make, then, this request to Our Lady: “My Mother, you are Queen of all souls, even of the most hardened and hardened who want to open themselves to you. I beseech you, then: be Sovereign of my soul; break the interior rocks of my spirit and the abject resistances in the depths of my heart. Dissolve, by an act of your empire, my disordered passions, my lousy volitions, and the residue of my past sins that may have remained in me. Cleanse me, O my Mother, so that I may be entirely yours”.

Queen placed for the salvation of the world

Still on the title of Our Lady Queen, no less eloquent are these words of Pope Pius XII: The kingship of Mary is an ultraterrestrial reality (of another world), which at the same time, in the meantime, penetrates to the very depths of our hearts, and which, at the same time, penetrates to the very depths of our souls.

The origin of Mary’s glories, the solemn moment that illumines her whole person and mission, is the one in which, full of grace, she addressed to the Archangel Gabriel the Fiat, expressing her assent to the divine disposition. She thus became the Mother of God and Queen, and received the royal office of watching over the unity and peace of the human race. Through her we have the firm hope that humanity will gradually take the path of salvation.

What can Christians do in the present hour, when the unity and peace of the world, and even the very sources of life, are in danger, if they do not turn their gaze to the One who appears to them clothed in royal power? Just as she has already wrapped in her mantle the Divine Child, the firstborn of all creatures and of all creation (Col. I, 15), may She now deign to envelop all men and all peoples with Her watchful tenderness; may She deign, as Seat of Wisdom, to make shine forth the truth of the inspired words, which the Church applies to Her: “Through Me kings reign, and magistrates administer justice; through Me princes command, and sovereigns rule righteously.” (Prov. VIII, 15-16)

If the world today fights without truce to conquer its unity and to ensure peace, the invocation of Mary’s kingdom is, beyond all earthly means and all human designs always defective in any way, the cry of faith and of Christian hope, firm and strong in the divine promises and in the inexhaustible aids, which this empire of Mary spread for the salvation of humanity.

Queen who will conquer the Revolution

Another thought of Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira comes to mind, particularly opportune in this current historical phase, convulsed by chaos in almost all human activities:

The kingship of Our Lady, an incontestable fact in all epochs of the Church, came to be made more and more explicit beginning with St. Louis Grignion de Montfort, until that July 13, 1917, when Mary announced in Fatima: “At last, my Immaculate Heart will triumph!” It is a victory conquered by the Virgin, it is her heel that will once again crush the head of the serpent, will break the dominion of the devil and She, as triumphant, will implant her Kingdom.

Therefore, we must trust that Mary has already determined to heed the pleas of her counter-revolutionary children, and that She, Sovereign of the universe, can make the Counter-Revolution conquer, in a flash, countless numbers of souls. Our Lady Queen will be able to expel from this Earth impenitent revolutionaries, who do not want to heed Her appeal, so that one day She can say: at last – according to the promise of Fatima – My Immaculate Heart triumphed!

Translated without revision from the Author:
(Pequeño Ofício de la Inmaculada Concepción Comentado; Monseñor João Clá Dias, EP; Artpress – São Paulo, 1997)