Blessed Feast of the Queenship of Mary
Laura DeMaria
Today is the feast of the Queenship of Mary. A few resources:
One, EWTN has a whole page, here, answering why we celebrate this feast. There, you will learn that the feast day happens eight days after the Assumption (that’s an octave). Pope Pius XII, who established the feast, wrote that:
We are instituting a feast so that all may recognize more clearly and venerate more devoutly the merciful and maternal sway of the Mother of God. We are convinced that this feast will help to preserve, strengthen and prolong that peace among nations which daily is almost destroyed by recurring crises. Is she not a rainbow in the clouds reaching towards God, the pledge of a covenant of peace?
Peace among nations. Think we could use any of that?
Secondly, an article I wrote at a few years ago called Why Mary’s Queenship Matters.
Today I am thinking about how so many of our Catholic beliefs are odd, or hard to believe. The Assumption, for example, states that Mary’s body went to Heaven, not just her soul. I read somewhere recently that when a woman gets pregnant, some DNA or biological remnant of the child remains a part of her, for the rest of her life. So, it makes sense that the “vessel” by which Christ entered the world could not disintegrate and rot like a normal human body. And that could be one “scientific” reason this dogma makes sense.
The bottom line is, some things just have to be…believed. I suppose that is backwards from our hyper proof-hungry world, but there you have it. Some things are just mystical, and that’s that. And, it makes life more beautiful.
More importantly, rather than focus on the physics of a miracle, I find it far more interesting to meditate on the devotion itself. “Is she not a rainbow in the clouds reaching towards God, the pledge of a covenant of peace?” Have you ever heard more beautiful words to describe a holy woman? Do you not find it reassuring? For all the disintegration and rot here on earth, it is a reminder of the eternal things: heaven, and God’s love, and his promise to be with people for all time, until the end of the age.