A SERMON FOR THE SUNDAY IN THE OCTAVE OF ASCENSION
In this season of Ascensiontide, when we celebrate the return of our blessed Lord to his Father in heaven, we acknowledge at the same time the kingship of Christ over the Church, our world, our nation, our family and our own hearts. From his heavenly throne he rules over his creation, not with a rod of iron, but with the gentle benevolence that he granted to us with the use of our free will. He asks for our loyalty, but does not enforce it. We are free to be loyal to him and to receive his graces, and ultimately his heavenly reward. We are equally free, in a certain sense, to refuse to be loyal, to disobey his commandments whenever we feel like it, and to choose loyalty to ourselves rather than our king.
This freedom, while it is real enough, has the power to delude us. It is a mirage, placing before us the imagined notion that happiness is to be found in sources other than the source of all goodness, God himself. If we choose to misuse our free will, then our future is, alas, certain, and inevitable. Christ is King, and we are his servants. It is our duty to obey, even though we might have the impression he is turning a blind eye to our failures in that regard. After all, when we sin, there is no thunderbolt, no sudden death or misery to befall us, that would give us warning that God is enforcing his laws. Our warning is clear enough, nevertheless, and is found in God’s holy Word. That alone should be sufficient. Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. It is clear we shall die, we know that we shall be judged. We fear hell. But what about heaven? Do we want heaven? Really want it? Are we afraid of losing it? Or do we simply presume that we’re good people and will go there no matter what? If so, we’re in for a big surprise!
This year, Mothers’ Day falls on this Sunday within the Octave of the Ascension. As we crown our blessed Lord as King, it is fitting then, that we should at the same time crown his Mother as Queen. And why? Because the mother of a king is always a queen. She who gives birth to the king holds a very special place in the homage of a nation. Some of you will remember the reverence with which the Queen Mother was held in England. And yet, there is a difference between a dowager Queen who is the mother of the king, and a Sovereign Queen, such as we have in England today, who is the head of state and rules over the nation. This is where our blessed Lady differs from these earthly queens. She is at the same time both the mother of the King, and yet at the same time she is the Queen who rules over us all.
Look at her litany, and you’ll see invocation after invocation to her as Queen. Queen of Angels, Queen of Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, Virgins, Queen of All Saints. Over all the angels and saints, she is the one who occupies the highest place. The good angels who did not rebel submit to her rule and are happy to do so. The bad angels who did rebel, did so because they could not abide the thought of a mortal woman being given greater homage than they demanded for themselves. And so now, this same mortal woman stands above them, “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet”, as St. John tells us in his prophecy of the Apocalypse. And she is crowned. “Crowned with a crown of twelve stars.” And she crushes the head of the rebellious angel with her heel.
She who was prophesied in the first book of the Bible after the fall of man, is prophesied in the last book of the Bible after the restoration of man to his heavenly destiny. She occupies a place in the story of our Redemption that stretches from the first Joyful Mystery of the Rosary to the last Glorious Mystery, and for this reason we hail her as Queen of the Most Holy Rosary. We hail our Lady as did St. Gabriel at the Annunciation, as “full of grace”. We hail her as did her cousin Elizabeth with the words “Blessed art thou among women.” We voice our assent to her own words that “all generations shall call me blessed,” because she is indeed blessed. Blessed to be the Mother of Christ, blessed to be the Mother of a King. Blessed to be assumed into heaven, there to be crowned as Queen of Heaven and Earth.
Any denial of her royal prerogatives is to blaspheme Christ himself, for how could a king be born of a commoner? Queens are chosen from royalty, and royal marriages were always arranged between the crowned heads of the European nations in order to preserve the royal bloodline of those families. Christ chose our blessed Lady from the royal house of David. She gave birth to him in David’s royal city, Bethlehem. And if that were not enough, she had been granted the unique privilege of being conceived without the stain of original sin. When she died, her body was assumed into heaven along with her immortal soul, there to be crowned and to reign over all the angels and saints, and over us all.
When Christ, in his final moments on the Cross, gave her to St. John to be his Mother and ours, he gave us the great privilege of having a Queen for our Mother. We were to be permitted a share in the royalty of Christ. We are all the Children of Mary. Today, one of us is given yet another honor of being chosen to crown our Blessed Lady as our Queen. We are all children of Mary, but it is surely it is our actual children who are the most like her in innocence, purity and goodness. This is why it is the tradition that a young girl should crown our Lady, and what an amazing honor it is to be chosen. I know a lady who wanted to crown our Lady when she was a little girl. She prayed very, very hard that she would be chosen, so hard in fact that when the day came, God guided the nuns to pick her for the honor. She told me that this was the happiest day of her life, and one that has stayed in her memory to give her courage and comfort through all the hardships that she later endured.
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