Our Lady the Queen (2026)

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here. That you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins. And grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My immaculate mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Pius XII instituted this feast day in 1954 in response to the unanimous traditional belief in the Mother of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords as Queen. She’s our mother in the order of grace. All grace has come to us through her intercession. Her coronation as Queen of all creation is intimately connected to her Assumption into Heaven. We contemplate this wonderful scene in the fifth glorious mystery of the Rosary. The Mother of Christ is glorified as Queen of the Universe.

She who called herself the handmaid of the Lord at the Annunciation remained faithful to what this name expresses throughout her earthly life. In this she confirmed that she was a true disciple of Christ, who strongly emphasized that his mission was one of service. “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). In this way Our Lady became the first of those who, serving Christ also in others with humility and patience, lead their brothers and sisters to that King to serve whom is to reign. She fully achieves that state of royal freedom proper to Christ’s disciples, we’re told in Lumen Gentium.

John Paul II says to serve Christ is to reign with him. Her glory in serving is completely compatible with her royal exaltation. Taken up into Heaven, she does not cease her service for the sake of our salvation. The dogma of the Assumption, which was celebrated last week, leads in a natural way to the feast that we celebrate today, the Queenship of Mary. Our Lady departed for Heaven to be crowned by the Blessed Trinity as Queen of all creation. Lumen Gentium of the Second Vatican Council says the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all guilt of original sin, on the completion of her earthly sojourn, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen of the Universe, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of Hosts and the conqueror of sin and death.

This truth, said Pius XII, has been affirmed since antiquity by the piety of the faithful and taught by the magisterium of the Church. Saint Ephrem says, let Heaven hold me in its embrace, for I am more honored than Heaven, since Heaven was only your throne, not your mother. Of course, how much more worthy of honor and veneration than his throne is the Mother of the King.

It has been popular to bestow Queenship on Mary through the custom of canonically crowning her images with the express approval of the popes. Since the first centuries, Christian art has represented Our Lady as Queen and Empress, surrounded by angels and seated on a royal throne, with all the accoutrements of such majesty. Sometimes she’s shown being crowned by her Son. The faithful have long had recourse to her as Queen, through popular prayers like the Salve Regina or the Ave Regina Caelorum and the Regina Caeli. Frequently we’ve sought her protection, reminding her of this beautiful royal title. We’ve pondered it in the fifth glorious mystery of the Rosary.

It is fitting that today in our prayer and throughout these hours, we do so in a special way. In the Song of Songs, it says, “You are all fair and without blemish” (Song 4:7). “You are a garden enclosed, my sister, my bride, an enclosed garden, a sealed fountain” (Song 4:12). Veni, coronaberis, come, you shall be crowned. Saint Josemaría adds, if you and I had been able, we too would have made her Queen and Lady of all creation. “A great sign appeared in Heaven: a woman with a crown of twelve stars upon her head, adorned with the sun, and the moon at her feet” (Rev. 12:1). Mary, conceived without stain, has made up for the fall of Eve. She has crushed the head of hell’s serpent with her immaculate heel.

Daughter of God the Father, Mother of God the Son, Spouse of God the Holy Spirit. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit crown her as the rightful Empress of the Universe. The angels pay homage to her as her subjects, and the patriarchs, and the prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, and confessors, and virgins, and all the saints, and sinners, and you and I.

We read in the Gospel of today’s Mass, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:31–33).

The sovereign royalty of Our Lady is intimately connected with that of Jesus. Jesus Christ is King, since total, proper, and absolute power belong to him, as much in the natural order as in the supernatural. The royalty of Mary is entire as well, and stems from her soul. The terms Queen and Lady with reference to Our Lady are not metaphors. By means of them we designate a true preeminence and an authentic dignity and power in Heaven and on Earth. As Mother of the King, Mary is truly and properly Queen. She’s the apex of creation, and effectively the first entirely human person of the Universe.

Pius XII said Almighty God placed her far above all the angels and all the saints, and so filled her with every heavenly grace, taken from his own divine treasury, that she was always free from all stain of sin, all beautiful and perfect, possessing such a fullness of innocence and holiness to be found nowhere outside of God, which no one but God can comprehend. Mary’s entitlements to Queenship are her union with Christ as his mother, just as the angel Gabriel had announced, and her association with the redemptive work of her Son in the world. By the first title, Mary is Queen Mother of a King who is God, and thus she possesses a completely singular preeminence.

Raised above all human creatures, Mary is Queen as dispenser of the treasures and goods of the Kingdom of God through her co-redemption. When he instituted this feast day, Pius XII invited all Christians to draw near to the throne of grace and mercy of our Queen and Mother, to ask her help in adversity, light in obscurity, and relief in suffering. He encouraged everyone to ask grace from the Holy Spirit, to make an effort to hate sin, to be free of its slavery, so as to be able to render the Queen, who is so great a mother, constant obedience, fragrant with filial devotion.

In the Letter to the Hebrews, Saint Paul says, “Let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace in time of need” (Heb. 4:16). Our Lady’s royal throne is a symbol of the authority of Christ. In a Preface of Our Lady, we’re told he wanted his mother to be the throne of grace, where we could easily encounter compassion, since he gave her to us as our advocate of grace and the Queen of all creation. Today we contemplate the great celebration in Heaven as the Blessed Trinity greets Our Lady to take her to Heaven for all eternity. It is indeed just that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit should crown the Blessed Virgin as Queen and Mistress of all creation.

Way back in the 1980s, there was a famous wedding that took place in London between Princess Diana and Prince Charles. The princess rode through the streets of London in a golden carriage, many people were lining the streets, it was a fairytale wedding ceremony. She pulls up outside Saint Paul’s Cathedral, she steps out, a big long veil going back a mile or so, little children carrying the veil. She is escorted into the church, where all the royalty of the world are present. Up in the parapets, high up, there are some trumpeters, and at the end of the red carpet, her Prince Charming is waiting for her. If weddings on this earth can be full of so much pomp and ceremony, with the whole world looking in and transmitted by television to all places, we could imagine what the arrival of Our Lady in Heaven must have been like.

A golden carriage, a red carpet, instead of all the royalty of the world, you have all the blessed in Heaven, and up in the parapets, maybe are angels with their trumpets. It must have been an amazing sight. Saint Josemaría in The Forge says, you have to make use of her power, with the daring of a child joining this celebration in Heaven. For myself, since I have no precious stones or virtues to offer, I crown the Mother of God and my Mother with my failings, once they have been purified. She expects something from you too. Our Lady is waiting and wants us to be united to the joy of the angels and the saints. We have a right to participate in such a big celebration, because she’s our mother.

We’re told in the Book of Revelation, “A great sign appeared in Heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 12:1). Besides representing the Church, this woman symbolizes Mary, the Mother of Jesus, said Saint Pius X. On Calvary, he entrusted her to John, who took care of her with so much refinement, contemplated her so often, and later in his old age, wrote of these visions when Mary was already exercising her sovereignty from Heaven. One writer says the three features from the Apocalypse used to describe Mary are a symbol of her dignity. Clothed with the sun means shining with grace as the Mother of God. The moon at her feet indicates her power over all created things. The crown of twelve stars is the expression of her queenly dignity, and of her rule over all the angels and saints.

In the Litany of Loreto, following the Rosary, we call to mind each day that she is Queen of the Angels, of Patriarchs, of Prophets, of Apostles, of Martyrs, of Virgins, of the Family, and all Saints. She’s also our Queen and Lady. The rule of Our Lady is a maternal power that she exercises daily all over the earth, as she generously distributes the grace and mercy of Our Lord. Every day we can seek her patronage and her protection. On Saturdays, many Christians visit one of her numerous shrines. They piously sing or pray the ancient prayer, Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy. Hail our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

Her rule extends, as one writer says, in Heaven, over all the angels and the blessed, to increase their accidental glory through the light she communicates to them, the joy they have in her presence, and in the realization of all she does for the salvation of souls. She conveys the will of Christ to the angels and the saints for the sake of the spread of the Kingdom. The reign of Mary affects Purgatory too. Dante declares, Hail Holy Queen, singing on and on, closed hid till then beneath the valley’s lea, on flowers and grass I there saw spirits thrown. Our mother constantly leads us to pray and offer things for those who are still being purified, waiting to enter Heaven.

She presents our prayers before God, and thereby increases their value, and in the name of her Son, she applies his merits and her own to these souls. Our mother is an ally of ours in helping the souls in Purgatory. We’re told in Saint Luke, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). From the very outset, the account of the Incarnation gives credit to the first reference to Mary as the Throne of Wisdom. God himself, infinite wisdom, deigned in the Incarnation to dwell in her, and to be intimately associated with her.

We see Our Lady depicted in her statue, Seat of Wisdom, where Jesus, the Wisdom of God, reigned from the throne of his mother’s arms. In Saint Luke we’re told, “He will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:33). The term Seat of Wisdom refers to her as the dispenser of wisdom, the teacher of wisdom. As exhibited in the Old Testament, the mother is the natural dispenser of teachings to her child. The Book of Proverbs says, “Observe, my son, your father’s bidding, and reject not your mother’s teaching” (Prov. 6:20). Mary as the Teacher of Wisdom exercised that office first of all in regard to Jesus.

We’re told that “He advanced in wisdom and age and grace before God and men” (Luke 2:52). This advancement of Our Lord in knowledge reflects the experimental knowledge that he acquired according to his human nature from his mother, Seat of Wisdom, notwithstanding the great input of Joseph in Our Lord’s life. Other qualities of wisdom, such as good counsel and prudence, are very much manifest in Our Lady’s life as recounted by the Evangelists.

When the wine gave out at the wedding feast of Cana, after what amounted to some kind of check, Our Lady told the servants to do whatever Our Lord would tell them to do. Her far-sightedness rescued the situation. Our Lady, as Virgin Most Prudent, did not jump to conclusions, but rather treasured words and events that she could not immediately fathom, and pondered them in her heart. In the Book of Isaiah we’re told, “The Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the woman is with child and shall bear a son, and you shall call him Emmanuel” (Isa. 7:14). “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts long ago,” says the Book of Proverbs (Prov. 8:22). “With you is wisdom. She knows your work, and was present when you made the world” (Wis. 9:9).

“Wisdom will not enter a deceitful soul, or dwell in a body enslaved to sin” (Wis. 1:4). In the Book of Proverbs it says, “She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her” (Prov. 3:18). In the New Testament, Our Lady offers us the fruit of her womb, Jesus Christ, the Wisdom of God, who tells us that those who eat his flesh and drink his blood will live forever. The Book of Wisdom says she is the bearer of divine wisdom, which does not inhabit in the body under debt of sin. The very words which the scriptures speak of uncreated wisdom, and set forth its eternal origin, the Church both in her ecclesiastical offices and in her liturgy has been wont to apply likewise to the origin of Our Lady.

Inasmuch as God, by one and the same decree, had established the origin of Mary and the Incarnation of Divine Wisdom. From eternity, Our Lady was destined to be the Mother of the Emmanuel, and in the mystery of Christ, she’s present even before the creation of the world, as the one whom the Father has chosen as mother of his Son in the Incarnation. The biblical tradition where wisdom does not inhabit a body corrupted by sin helped in propagating the untarnished personal holiness of Our Lady, which was later to be defined as the Immaculate Conception. In Genesis we read, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel” (Gen. 3:15).

The seed of the woman that Our Lady holds is Jesus. The woman is Mary, and the seed of Satan is sin. If there’s a complete enmity between Christ and sin, there must also be a complete enmity between Mary and Satan. If Our Lady was to sin, which is not the case, then she would be cooperating to some degree with Satan, and there would be no complete enmity between the woman and the serpent. Following the biblical teaching that Jesus was the Son of God, Mary’s title as Bearer of Wisdom Incarnate was later cemented in 431 AD by the declaration and teachings of the Council of Ephesus, which, as championed by Saint Cyril of Alexandria, declared Our Lady to be the Mother of God. Mary is enshrined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, where we’re told she is acclaimed and represented in the liturgy as the Seat of Wisdom, because in her, God found a dwelling place to live among us. In her, the wonders of God that the Spirit was to fulfill in Christ and the Church began to be manifested.

If we have recourse to Our Lady often as the Queen, she’ll move us to purify ourselves of our sins and of our faults in this life. She’ll grant us the grace of contemplating her immediately after death, without having to pass through that place of waiting and purification, since we will have already cleansed our soul of its errors and weaknesses here on Earth. We can pray with the opening prayer of today’s Mass, Father, you have given us the Mother of your Son to be our Queen and Mother. With the support of her prayers, may we come to share in the glory of your children in the kingdom of Heaven.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My immaculate mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW