On the Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
A reflection in her honor.
I grew up loving Our Lady. She was Queen of my heart. A decisive moment almost destroyed this devotion, however, when at a sleepover, a relative—planting seeds of havoc—asked me underhandedly, “Did you know that Catholics worship Mary?” It was a foul question whose implications I could not yet quite grasp at the tender age of 8. In hindsight, the deceitful query was reminiscent of the tempter’s attack toward the woman in the Garden; “Did God really say, …?” (Gen. 3:1).
For fear I was offending her Son, I slowly inched away from my pious practices; slowly stopped praying the litanies to the Blessed Mother that I had learned. I never stopped loving Her… but only from a distance, in case I was truly offending her Son. A victory for the enemy. Looking back, had I been completely nestled under her mantle especially during my teen years in high school, a common stage of rebellion, I believe I could have been spared and protected from sinful and damaging thought patterns and habits.
But She is Queen of Heaven and Earth for a reason, and she was not going to lose her charge. A happenstance (or was it?) awakened my spiritual stupor, when by chance I came across a Catholic radio station in my college dorm room. They were playing the Rosary. Familial sentiments welled up inside of me and I realized how much I had missed my Mother, and also that she was calling me back to herself. A long-awaited reunion. I had been struggling with myself and spiritually thirsty. In need of Jesus, but didn’t know how to come close. I also perceived a calling in my heart that I didn’t know how to discern. So, God sent Her, my Mother, so I would know how to love her Son exclusively.
I thank God for Our Lady, without whose protection over me I would not have been able to answer the call to consecrated life.
I pray that all children might be led to Her so that they might be protected from the wiles of the enemy, and above all, so that they might be affixed to her Divine Son more assuredly.
Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth, my Mother, protect and pray for us.
Amen.
.jpeg)
