Mary - "Regina Angelorum"

I. MARY: QUEEN OF ANGELS AND MISTRESS OF DEVILS

"A woman clothed with the sun, the moon was under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars" (Rev 12:1). St. John recorded this vision for us in his Book of Revelation. And Psalm 45 says, "at your right hand stands the queen of gold in orphir." The Fathers of the Church tell us that this ‘woman’ clothed with the sun and that this ‘queen of gold’ is none other than Mary, the Mother of God, because she is now standing at the right hand of Christ her Son. And so because of this St. Louis de Montfort tells us that "everyday, from one end of the earth to the other, in the highest heaven and in the lowest abyss, all things preach, all things proclaim, the wondrous Virgin Mary. The nine choirs of angels, men and women of every age, rank and religion, both good and evil, even the very devils themselves are compelled by the force of truth, willingly or unwillingly, to call her blessed." And according to St. Bonaventure all the angels unceasingly call out to her and say, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Mary Virgin Mother of God.’ Besides this, he says, the angels greet Mary countless times every day by saying to her, ‘Hail Mary’, while prostrating themselves before her and begging her as a favor to honor them with one of her requests. And according to St. Augustine, St. Michael is the most eager of all the angels to honor Mary.

Mary, then, is the undisputed Queen of the Angels. Now "her queenship of the angels must not be taken as a term of honor only. For her royal office is a participation in that of Christ’s reign, and he has absolute power over all creation." In fact, she has been called ‘the general of the armies of God.’ For she is "terrible as an army set in battle array" (Cant 6:4) to her enemies and the devils. This phrase, taken from the Canticle of Canticles, has been traditionally applied to Mary because the angels of heaven act like military troops for her or as an honor guard. Mary, then, acts like a kind of commander for the angelic armies, for she has the authority to send out the angels to help us or to defend us from the attacks of the devil. She can send them out in groups as well as individually, sort of like an air force general would send out his planes in fighter squadrons or individually, depending on the situation and the force of the enemy attack.

Mary’s queenship of the angels, therefore, can be considered to be our "shield, our defense, our armor against the attacks of the devils" for she is our general, our commander, our fearless leader against the forces of evil. For her this means "active participation with her Son in the loosening and destruction of Satan’s evil empire."

St. Louis de Montfort explains the reason for this. He says that Mary has authority over the angels as a reward for her great humility on earth. And so because of this God gave "her the power and the mission of assigning to men the thrones made vacant by the fallen angels." God, therefore, as St. Louis goes on to explain, "made Mary queen of heaven and earth, the leader of his armies, the keeper of his treasury, the dispenser of his graces, the worker of his wonders, the destroyer of his enemies and the faithful associate in his great works and victories."

Now there are some beautiful prayers from the Eastern Liturgies that express Mary’s special position with regard to the angels. For example, a hymn for Morning Prayer in the Armenian Liturgy for the Feast of the Assumption reads: "O Mother of God, you are born aloft in the triumphal cars of the Cherubim, with Seraphim for your escort and the arrayed army of heaven’s hosts is prostrate before you." From the Ethiopian Missal comes: "O Mary, heart of the whole world, you are greater than the many eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim, and heaven and earth are utterly full of the glory of your holiness."

Now it must be stressed here that Mary is queen not only of the angels–but also of the devils too! And this is why she is known to be "terrible as an army set in battle array" for Mary knows how, as St. Alphonsus Liguori points out, "to array her power, her mercy and her prayers to help us to the disadvantage of the devil." St. Bridget tells us in her book of revelations that "God made Mary so powerful over the devils that not only can she instantly terrify them with a single glance, but also that the devils prefer to have their pains redoubled rather than to see themselves subject to her power." And St. Bonaventure makes this comparison: "Just as wax melts before the fire, so too do the devils melt" before the face of Mary.

Not surprisingly, then, the mere name of Mary has a special power over the devils. St. Bernard states that the devils not only fear her name, but they even tremble at just the sound of it. Blessed Allan de Roche adds that "just as all heaven rejoices when the ‘Hail Mary’ is said, so also do the devils tremble and take flight when it is said." For when the ‘Hail Mary’ is well said, that is, with attention, devotion and humility, as St. Louis de Montfort points out, "it crushes the devil like a hammer and is a joy to the angels." And this fact is confirmed by Mary herself in a revelation she made to St. Bridget, "in the same way as the devils flee from sinners who invoke my name, so too do also the good angels approach nearer to those persons who pronounce my name with reverence and devotion."

II. MARY: QUEEN OF THE ANGELS IN SACRED SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION

From the beginning to the end of her life Mary was guided and protected by angels. Tradition tells us that the angels used to bring her food at three o’clock in the afternoon when she was serving at the temple in Jerusalem as a young girl.

The Archangel Gabriel announced to her that she had been chosen to be the Mother of God. St. Peter Chrysologus points out here that just as Christ was consoled in the desert and the garden by an angel, so too Mary was strengthened and encouraged by an angel at the Annunciation. For St. Gabriel said to her: "Be not afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God" (Lk 1:30). And then after Mary had conceived, another angel appeared to her husband St. Joseph in a dream to tell him about this wondrous event (cf. Mt 1:20-21). Now the angel who appeared to St. Joseph is not named, but he may also have been St. Gabriel, as St. Bernard thought possible. Finally at the actual birth of Christ, an angel appears to the shepherds to tell them about it and then they see a vision of the rejoicing angels (cf. Lk 2:8-15).

But the most dramatic display of Mary’s relationship with the angels occurred at her Assumption into heaven. St. Alphonsus Liguori notes here that after Christ had completed his work of Redemption the angels ardently desired to see him and his mother. And so they constantly begged Christ, using the words of Psalm 131:8, "arise Lord into your resting place, you and the ark that you have sanctified."

Now when Christ was at last pleased to satisfy the desire of the angels, he spared no effort in making Mary’s entrance into heaven as glorious as possible. For if King David brought the ark of the Old Covenant into the city of Jerusalem with great solemnity and rejoicing (cf. 2 Kgs 6:15), with how much more glory would Christ have wanted to bring his mother, the Ark of the New Covenant, into the heavenly Jerusalem. And if the prophet Elijah was carried to heaven in a fiery chariot which, according to the Fathers of the Church, was none other than a group of angel’s, how much more would Christ have wanted to bring his mother to heaven with a whole army of angels? And so for these reasons it is believed that all of the angels in heaven, the whole heavenly court, came down to earth in order to escort the Mother of God to her new home. St. Peter Damian tells us, therefore, that we will find the Assumption more glorious than the Ascension because when Mary was assumed she was met and accompanied, not only by Christ himself, but also by all the angels and saints.

We can believe, therefore, that when Mary arrived in heaven all the angels would have begun to bless her and praise her using the words that the Jews used to honor the prophetess Judith: "You are the glory of Jerusalem, you are the joy of Israel, you are the honor of our people" (Jud 15:10).

And we can also believe that Mary would have increased the joy of the angels. St. Bernardine of Siena points out that just as the earth and the other planets receive an increase in light and warmth from the rays of the sun, so too, in a similar way, do the angels receive an increase in light and joy from beholding the radiance of Mary, since the Assumption was the beginning "in the never-ending day of eternity," as Pope Pius XII explains in an address on the Queenship of Mary, "when the glorious Virgin Mary entered triumphantly into heaven and was elevated above the choirs of angels to the throne of the Most Holy Trinity." And then Christ "placed a triple crown of glory on her head, presented her to the heavenly court, seated her at his right hand and pronounced her Queen of the Universe."

Now this raises an important question: how can a mere human being, even one as perfect as Mary, be placed above the angels and made their queen - since they have a higher nature than she does? Again Pope Pius XII provides us with a helpful explanation. "All paradise," he says, "recognized that Mary was worthy of receiving honor, and glory, and queenship because she is full of grace" - and also because she is "holier, and more beautiful than the greatest saints and angels, individually and taken together." Pope Pius IX in his encyclical letter on the Immaculate Conception adds here another interesting insight on this issue. He states, "God placed Mary far above all the angels and saints and so filled her with every heavenly grace from his own divine treasury so that her innocence and holiness exceeded every creature but God himself." And so because Mary was the first born daughter of the Father, the perfect Mother of the Word, and the Beloved Spouse of the Holy Spirit, she became, in effect, a close relative of the Blessed Trinity when she was crowned Queen of the Universe by her Son.

But the primary reason Mary is Queen of the Angels is because she is the Mother of the Son of God. And Jesus Christ, as Pope Pius XII goes on to explain, "after asserting that all power was given to him in heaven and on earth, gave his mother a share in his glory, his majesty, his kingship because she was associated with him as mother and minister in his work of redemption." Consequently, "Mary is likewise associated with Christ forever with infinite power."

In other words, because Christ is "by nature and by right the King of the Universe… Mary is through him, with him, and in him, queen by grace, by divine association, by conquest and by singular election." And so because of this her kingdom is not only "as vast as her Son’s, since nothing of his kingdom is excluded from hers," but also "the Church salutes her as sovereign and as Queen of the Angels and Queen of the Universe and encourages us to invoke her day and night with the words of the Salve Regina: ‘Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, hail our life, our sweetness and our hope.’"

Just as Christ, then, because he redeemed us is by a special title our King and our Lord, so too is Mary our Queen and Mother because of the unique way she cooperated in our redemption. For she not only provided the flesh for the Incarnation of Christ but she also willingly offered him on Calvary. It is certain, therefore, as St. Germanus puts it, that "Mary’s honor and dignity surpasses all creation - with the angels taking second place in excellence." And as St. John Damascene says, "Immeasurable is the difference between the servants of God, (that is, the angels) and the Mother of God."

For all these reasons, then, we can say, as Pope Pius XII states in his Queenship encyclical, that Mary has been raised by Christ to "a height of splendor unequalled in all creation." And so because of this "Mary’s Queenship of the angels, must not be taken as a term of honor only. For her royal office is a participation in that of Christ and he has absolute universal dominion over creation. Theologians, of course, have not yet explained all the ways of Our Lady’s joint rule with Christ the King. But it is clear, nevertheless, that her royalty is a principle of action and that the effects of this action reach out to the ends of the visible and invisible universe. She rules the good angels and controls the bad." "For Christ has made her," stresses St. Louis de Montfort, "not only the queen of heaven and earth, but also the leader of the angelic armies."

III. MARY AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF GRACE

How do the angels help Mary distribute grace? For every grace granted to us, as St. Bernardine of Siena states, has three degrees of order. "For by God the Father it is communicated to Christ, from Christ it passes to the Virgin Mary, and from Mary it descends to us."

However, as St. Maximillian Kolbe stresses, "from the moment of Mary’s immaculate entry into human existence, she was in profound union with the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit." In fact, her union with the Third Person of the Trinity was so intimate that she became, in effect, the "Incarnation of the Holy Spirit." That is to say she became the instrument used by the Holy Sprit to distribute all the graces destined by God the Father for all mankind.

St. Louis de Montfort, in an illuminating passage explains how the Holy Spirit uses Mary to distribute his graces. "To Mary his faithful spouse, God the Holy Spirit communicated his unspeakable gifts: and he has chosen her to be the dispenser of all he possesses, in such a way that she distributes to whom she wills, as much as she wills, as she wills and when she wills, all his gifts and graces. The Holy Spirit gives no heavenly gift to men which he does not have pass through her virginal hands. Such has been the will of God, who has willed that we should have everything through Mary."

Yet St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross state that all graces, especially the graces of contemplative prayer come to us from the angels. There is no conflict of interest here, although it may appear so at first glance. For Mary simply uses the angels to execute her will. They are her instruments and messengers, and they faithfully carry out her instructions by delivering grace to those she chooses and in the amount she chooses.

Mary has been called the mediator with the Mediator. Christ is the Mediator between us and God the Father, and Mary is the mediator between Christ and us. Now we can take this scheme one step further and say that our guardian angel acts, or can act if we ask him, like a mediator for us with Mary, the Mediatrix of all Graces.

IV. CONCLUSION

Let us conclude our meditation on Mary’s queenship of the angels with the prayer, written by Pope Pius XII on the occasion of his official proclamation of the Feast of Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth. For it admirably sums up the sentiments we should have towards the "Regina Angelorum," the Queen of the Angels.

In the heights of heaven you exercise your primacy over the choirs of angels who acclaim you as their Sovereign, and over the legions of saints who delight in beholding your dazzling beauty. So, too, reign over the entire human race, above all by opening the path of faith to those who do not yet know your Divine Son. Reign over the Church, which acknowledges and extols your gentle dominion and has recourse to you as a safe refuge amid the calamities of our day. Reign especially over that part of the Church which is persecuted and oppressed: give it strength to bear adversity, constancy never to yield under unjust compulsion, light to avoid falling into the snares of the enemy, firmness to resist overt attack, and at every moment unwavering faithfulness to your kingdom.

Reign over our minds, that they may seek only what is true; over our wills, that they may follow solely what is good; over our hearts, that they may love nothing but what you yourself love.

Reign over individuals and over families, as well as over societies and nations: over the assemblies of the powerful, the counsels of the wise, as over the simple aspirations of the humble.

Reign in the streets and in the squares, in the cities and the villages, in the valleys and in the mountains, in the air, on land and on the sea; and hear the pious prayers of all those who recognize that yours is a reign of mercy, in which every petition is heard, every sorrow comforted, every misfortune relieved, every infirmity healed, and in which, at a gesture form your gentle hands from death itself there arises smiling life.

Obtain for us that all who now in every corner of the world acclaim and hail you Queen and Lady may one day in heaven enjoy the fullness of your kingdom in the vision of your Divine Son, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen.