Today is August 22, Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
We read at today’s Mass, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment” (Mt 22:37-38).
This commandment can feel overwhelming. To love God with all our heart, soul and mind without reserve seems impossible. But one person has lived it perfectly: the Blessed Virgin Mary. She did so not by her own strength, but by the abundant grace of God. From the first moment of her life to her final breath, she loved him with the fullness of her being.
Today, on the feast of her Queenship, we celebrate that she continues this perfect love in heaven. Crowned by her Son, she reigns not as a distant monarch but as a mother, close to her children. A Dominican friar once wrote, “Mary’s great task as queen is to win hearts for God, to guide her people for whose freedom she bore with Jesus the redemptive passion to its general welfare — the happiness of heaven.”
Rejoicing in the Lord’s love
Her queenship is active. She leads us toward the Kingdom, intercedes for our needs and models the eternal joy that awaits us. If the Assumption was the pledge of where we will go, the Queenship shows us what we will do there: celebrate and rejoice in the Lord’s love forever.
Today, let us imitate Mary’s wholehearted devotion. And let us pray especially for those who follow her example most closely — women called to cloistered religious life, who dedicate themselves entirely to loving God. In a special way, remember a woman entering a Norbertine monastery today, and all nuns whose hidden lives are radiant with love for Christ.
Let us pray,
O God, who made the Mother of your Son to be our Mother and our Queen, graciously grant that, sustained by her intercession, we may attain in the heavenly Kingdom the glory promised to your children. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
