My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
Today we stand at a holy intersection in the Church’s calendar. On the traditional Roman calendar, this day, August 22nd, is the Feast of The Immaculate Heart of Mary, set near the glory of the Assumption so that the Heart that loved God most on earth is honored in heaven. On the modern Roman calendar, this same day is the Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary. These mysteries converge into one radiant truth: she was assumed body and soul into heaven and crowned by her Son as Queen of heaven and earth, and her Immaculate Heart reigns in perfect union with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Yet always, Christ is the center: Mary is Queen because He is King; she is exalted because He is Lord. All her titles depend upon her being the Mother of the Son of God made Man for our salvation.
The saints remind us, though: Mary’s glory is not cold royalty, but burning love. St. Therese of Lisieux said: “She is more Mother than Queen.” This is the paradox of her crown. A queen can seem distant; a mother is near. A queen commands; a mother consoles. Mary is both, but always in such a way that her queenship magnifies her motherhood.
When you are in need, she is not far off. When you do not know how to pray, she intercedes. She is Queen, but she bends to listen. She is crowned, but she stoops to comfort.
And this is what our age needs to remember: For Mary does not diminish womanhood – she magnifies it. In her, motherhood is revealed not as something lesser, but as something exalted and sacred. The world shouts today about equality, demanding that women claim roles that God has not given, even daring to argue that women should be ordained to the priesthood. But Mary shows us the falsehood of such claims. She was not priest – but she is Queen of heaven and earth, Mother of God, and the most exalted of all creatures. Her crown reveals that motherhood itself is honored by God, lifted above all worldly titles. It is not power that makes Mary great, but her humble fiat, her maternity. In her, the Church sees the highest dignity of woman: to receive, to nurture, to intercede, to love. This is not oppression – it is exaltation. And in our apostolates, in our families, and in our Church, we must proclaim again that the vocation of woman is not to be diminished by comparison to men, but to be celebrated in its own God-given glory, radiant in Mary, the Mother and Queen.
In his 1954 encyclical on Mary’s Queenship, Ad Caeli Reginam, Pope Pius XII wrote: “From the earliest ages of the Catholic church a Christian people, whether in time of triumph or more especially in time of crisis, has addressed prayers of petition and hymns of praise and veneration to the Queen of Heaven. And never has that hope wavered when they placed it in the Mother of the Divine King, Jesus Christ, nor has that faith ever failed by which we are taught that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, reigns with a mother’s solicitude over the entire world, just as she is crowned in heavenly blessedness with the glory of a Queen.”
In the Canticle of Canticles, we read: “One is my dove, my perfect one is but one, she is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her. The daughters saw her, and declared her most blessed: the queens and concubines, and they praised her” (Canticle of Canticles 6:8-9).
And in the Psalms: “… The queen stood on thy right hand, in gilded clothing; surrounded with variety” (Psalm 44:10).
The queen at the right hand of the King is not an earthly consort, but the Virgin Mother. She is the chosen one, praised among queens, arrayed in glory because her Son has placed her there.
St. Louis de Montfort declared: “Mary is … the living mold of God. In her alone the God-man was formed in his human nature …”
De Montfort teaches that Mary’s queenship is not about ruling, but about forming us in Christ. As Christ Himself was formed in her, so too we are formed in Him when we entrust ourselves to her maternal care.
And here we must make the Eucharistic connection. The One who crowned His Mother is the One who comes to us in the Blessed Sacrament. Mary, crowned in heaven, leads us to the Eucharist on earth. She is Mother of the Eucharist because she gave flesh and blood to the Word made flesh. The Body we adore in the tabernacle is the Body she first held in her arms.
Pope Pius X said plainly: “For can anyone fail to see that there is no surer or more direct road than by Mary for uniting all mankind in Christ and obtaining through Him the perfect adoption of sons, that we may be holy and immaculate in the sight of God? … it surely follows that His Mother most holy should be recognized as participating in the divine mysteries and as being in a manner the guardian of them, and that upon her as upon a foundation, the noblest after Christ, rises the edifice of the faith of all centuries.”
What does this mean for us? It means that we never face the battles of life alone. A mother does not wait until her child cries; she anticipates, she provides, she protects.
In our spiritual battles, in our Eucharistic worship, Mary is with us. She is “more Mother than Queen,” but her Queenship makes her intercession powerful. She is clothed with the sun, crowned with twelve stars, and yet she is the woman who still says, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.”
My dear brothers and sisters, let us entrust our lives, our families, our apostolates, to this Mother and Queen. Let us take up the Rosary. Let us go to the Eucharist. Let us stand with Mary at the foot of the Cross and at the throne of her Son.
St. Teresa of Calcutta, known to the world as Mother Teresa, gave us this prayer:
“Mary, Mother of Jesus, give me your Heart, so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate, so full of love and humility, that I may be able to receive Jesus in the Bread of Life, love Him as you love Him, and serve Him as you serve Him, in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor. Amen.”
And so, as we contemplate Mary crowned as Queen, we must not forget that it is first her Heart that is honored today. The Immaculate Heart of Mary is not a symbol of sentimentality, but of burning charity, pierced with sorrow, yet aflame with love for God and for us. Her Heart magnifies motherhood, showing the world that the highest dignity of woman is not in wielding earthly power, but in loving as she loves – with a love that bears, that intercedes, that suffers, and that exhorts.
In an age that mocks motherhood, the Immaculate Heart of Mary shines forth as heaven’s reply: that the woman who embraces her God-given role in humility, purity, and love manifests Mary’s heart. Mary’s Heart proves that motherhood is the greatest crown, for it is her Heart that formed Christ within her and offered Him to the world.
And let us never forget: the crown she wears is not for her alone, but for the children she loves. For as we read in 2 Timothy 2:12: ”If we suffer, we shall also reign with him …”
Mary has gone before us. She is assumed, she is crowned, she is our Mother. And she will lead us to Christ the King, present now in the Holy Eucharist, reigning forever in glory.
May the Queen of Heaven, who is our tender Mother, intercede for us. May Christ the Eucharistic King bless us. And may we live every day under her mantle, until we join her in that heavenly kingdom where she reigns beside her Son forever.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Bishop Joseph E. Strickland
Bishop Emeritus
