Our Queen and our Mother

Evan Naess can proudly proclaim, “My mother is Diana Ross. She is the Queen of Motown”. Charles can say, “My mother is Elizabeth, she is Queen of England”. We, on the other hand, can say, “Our Mother is Mary, Queen of heaven and earth”.  I ponder on what it means to be the son of a woman whose Queenship is so vast and wide. i ponder on the Royal Family I am part of by my Baptism into Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God; the King of kings and Lord of lords.  It must have been wonderful for Lady Diana Spencer to became Princess of Wales and ‘Queen of hearts’, but our royalty -while not rivalling that of the English Crown- surpasses it, because our land of hope and glory is not on this earth but in heaven –and though we have not yet arrived at my royal inheritance, we hope to do so (and hopefully Diana Ross, Queen Elizabeth and Diana Princess of Wales will be part of the one great throng of saints praising God with all the baptised).

If the Queenship of Our Lady encourages me to recognise my dignity as a member of the Body of Christ, the Motherhood of Our Lady heartens me when I am in difficulty or when I sin. Do you remember as a child of doing things you ought not have been doing (perhaps not!) or in a sad situation? Our mother would call us into the house to hold us when we were sad or advise and warn us of danger when we were being naughty. At no time would she expel us from the family or the home. I am sure this is how Our Lady treats us, her disobedient, wandering children. I’m sure that when she sees us in any kind of trouble she calls us into the house to hold us, and that when she sees us sin she call us into the house to have us leave sin behind. To my mind, she is constantly calling us back home; calling us back to her Divine Son, and not as simply as our Queen (to whom we owe honour and obedience) but as our Mother (to whom we owe loving obedience). Our response to her call is surely simple: “I am all thine, my Queen and my Mother, and all that I have is thine”.