Homily, Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Mass of Opening of the Academic Year at St. Patrick’s Seminary
And Consecration of the Seminary to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
August 22, 2025
Introduction
The feast day we celebrate today, the Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is one that is relatively new in the liturgical cycle of the Church’s life, at least insofar as Church time goes. It was Pope Pius XII who instituted this feast day at the end of the Marian Year of 1954 with his Encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam.
Our Lady, Queen
He gives there the reason motivating this decision:
And now, that We may bring the Year of Mary to a happy and beneficial conclusion, and in response to petitions which have come to Us from all over the world, We have decided to institute the liturgical feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen. This will afford a climax, as it were, to the manifold demonstrations of Our devotion to Mary, which the Christian people have supported with such enthusiasm. [ACR, 5]
However, while the liturgical feast day is new, Christian belief in this title being bestowed upon our Lady is of ancient origin. Pope Pius goes to great lengths in his Encyclical to point out the sources of this belief and its consistent observance throughout the history of the Church: Scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, theologians and Popes, liturgical texts of both East and West, and the depiction of this mystery in Christian art. He then goes on to explain the rationale for this title of our Lady: “But the Blessed Virgin Mary should be called Queen, not only because of her Divine Motherhood, but also because God has willed her to have an exceptional role in the work of our eternal salvation” (ACR, 35), and, “Now, in the accomplishing of this work of redemption, the Blessed Virgin Mary was most closely associated with Christ; and so it is fitting to sing in the sacred liturgy: ‘Near the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ there stood, sorrowful, the Blessed Mary, Queen of Heaven and Queen of the World’” (ACR, 36) – citing the Tract for the Mass of Our Lady of Sorrows in the Roman Missal of his time.
If we look closely at our feast day today, we will see how it underscores Mary’s intimate union with her Son all throughout his life in this world. Recall the first reading from the prophet Isaiah: “The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.” Does this not transport you to Christmas time? That is the time of the year we hear this reading proclaimed, specifically at Midnight Mass. So we see here in this liturgical celebration of the Queenship of Our Lady Mary’s presence in the key moments of the earthly life of her Son: she was the instrumental cause of the Incarnation; and then, as Pius XII notes, she was most closely associated with her Son in his Passion and death; and finally, the celebration of her Queenship points to her glorification, her sharing in the resurrected glory of her Son.
The Church even commemorates liturgically Mary’s perfect union with her Son all throughout, in all that he did for us. The Annunciation and the Immaculate Conception are both Solemnities in the Church’s calendar, the moment they were conceived in this world. In addition to Christmas and its octave, the Church celebrates the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and, in something similar to an octave, on the eighth day, that is, September 15th, the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, marking our Lady’s spiritual martyrdom with her Son on Good Friday. And then, of course, Easter with its octave, the Ascension, and the Solemnity of Christ the King all celebrate our Lord’s glorification, as the Solemnity of the Assumption and this Memorial of the Queenship of Mary on the eighth day signal her union with her Son in his resurrected glory.
Spiritual Sense
Read with the literal sense of Scripture, that passage from the Prophet Isaiah is about God destroying the instruments of Assyrian oppression and sending His people a king to free them. The great light that they see is the light that is the joy of God’s salvation. We know, though, from the spiritual sense of Scripture that the real oppression is that of sin: our bad habits, additions, attitudes, all that drives us to turn in on ourselves and away from God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, is, of course, the true King who smashes the instruments of the true oppression: the salvation he is sent to bring us is eternal. Yes, there is certainly much oppression in the world today, as there was at the time of Pope Pius XII. Which is why he consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942, in the midst of the Second World War, and which is also why he called for a renewal of that consecration at the end of his Encyclical Letter establishing this feast day:
We likewise ordain that on the same day [as the feast day of the Queenship of Mary that year] the consecration of the human race to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary be renewed, cherishing the hope that through such consecration a new era may begin, joyous in Christian peace and in the triumph of religion…. All, according to their state, should strive to bring alive the wondrous virtues of our heavenly Queen and most loving Mother through constant effort of mind and manner. [ACR, 48 and 49]
Which brings us to today: it will be my honor after our Eucharistic procession following Mass to consecrate the Seminary to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in response to the request of your rector, Fr. Doherty. In a sense, this, too, will be a renewal of a consecration since I already consecrated the entire Archdiocese to the Immaculate Heart of Mary eight years ago, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the apparitions at Fatima, which was also in response to a request from faithful throughout the Archdiocese. It will be a renewal, and also more than a renewal: it will be a personal appropriation of this consecration in the institutional life of the Seminary and, please God, in the life of each individual who makes up this community. But for this to happen, we have to follow that call of Pope Pius XII to bring that alive personally with the life of virtue.
I ask you in particular to be attentive to the call I gave to all of the faithful on that day eight years ago to live the consecration by doing what our Lady always asks us to do when she appears on this earth: prayer, penance, and adoration of her Son in the Blessed Sacrament. And she was very clear at Fatima about the two-fold purpose of this request: to save souls from hell, and to establish peace in the world. The stakes could not be higher: world peace and eternal salvation! This consecration must not be reduced to a pleasing ceremony, and simply remain a pleasant memory. No, it must make a difference for both the temporal and spiritual orders, for world peace and for eternal salvation.
Living the Consecration
First of all, prayer: our Lady has asked us specifically to pray the rosary daily. We know from our own repeated experience as the Church over centuries, including more recently, that the rosary has the power even to change the course of history, to avert war and disaster and bring about peace and concord. But for it to have its effect, it must be accompanied by penance, and in particular, fasting.
All Fridays throughout the year are still days of fasting (with the mitigated exception of Fridays in the seasons of Christmas and Easter), and I urge you to take this seriously, even beyond the simple abstaining from eating meat. Fasting means abstaining from eating! We should feel the hunger in our body, which will move us to a deeper hunger for God’s mercy, truth and justice. And it also helps to sensitize us to the plight of those who go without: after all, even when we feel that hunger in our body, we know where our next meal will be coming from; there are many people, even families, who do not, because they do not freely choose to abstain from eating. It is also commendable to choose other days throughout the year to observe this penitential discipline, especially days that precede a great feast in the Church, as is also an ancient practice. And, of course, we all need frequent recourse to the sacrament of Penance.
Finally, adoration: all of our devotion, just as all of our penitential practices, must lead to the adoration of God. The adoration our Lady asks of us is meant to purify us of our inclinations to worship the false gods of contemporary society, and to give ourselves over to single-hearted worship of the one, true God. I know many of you already make a daily Holy Hour, and I know some of you even go beyond that. I cannot tell you how much hope this gives me. The priest, more than anyone, must be intimately connected with the Eucharist, for this is the very reason of our being. Please make this, or continue to make it, a top priority in your lives.
Conclusion
We urgently need to avail ourselves of these spiritual weapons, for the forces of darkness are far greater in the world today than even at the time of the Fatima apparitions or of Pope Pius XII. And let us take heart in the promise Our Lady made to us at Fatima. Yes, she not only made requests of us but also a promise to us, which came precisely after the three children had their famous vision of hell: “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” May our act of consecration today lead us more deeply into her Heart and the Heart of her Son, so that the triumph of her Heart will be ours as well. May God grant us this grace. Amen.
