Our Queen Mother

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Advent, we have switched from our focus on John the Baptist to focus on the royalty of Jesus and Mary. The first instance veneration paid to Mary is found in today’s Gospel.

In our first reading we hear from the Prophet Micah who exercised his ministry about 700 years before the birth of Christ at about the same time as the prophet Isaiah. The town Bethlehem is mentioned in the reading because it is the birthplace of King David, a few miles away from Jerusalem. Micah prophesies that from this town a new ruler of Israel is to be born, who is born of the linage of King David. A prophecy that is fulfilled in the birth place of Jesus and his being the legal son of St. Joseph, who belongs to line of King David. The reading says that “whose origin is from of old, from ancient days”. The Hebrew word מִקֶּ֖דֶם “minq-qe-dem” means both from the east and from ancient times. Being from the east represents the abode of God while being from ancient times is a divine attribute as else where in Scripture we read the Lord described as the Ancient of Days” (). The last verse I quoted” from ancient days” in the Hebrew means from eternity. These clearly point to Jesus Christ, whom in is Divine nature is eternal.

The rest of the passage speaks about the New Exodus, which I mentioned two weeks earlier, as well as other Davidic images.

In the Gospel passage, the encounter between Elizabeth and Mary reveals her royality. Had Mary just been an ordinary pregnant girl, she would have paid homage to Elizabeth who is both her elder and the wife of a high ranking priest, Zachariah. Elizabeth defies social conventions and pays Mary homage. When Elizabeth says “Blessed are you among women” it is a Hebrew idiom which means that Mary is the most blessed among all women. When Elizabeth says, “blessed is the fruit of your womb” it is another idiom which means “that fruit of Mary’s womb is the most blessed of all children”. When Elizabeth says “that the mother of my Lord comes to me”, she is declaring not only that Jesus is the Lord but also that Mary is the Queen Mother. In the court of King David and King Solomon, it was no the first wife of the King that was Queen, or second in honour, but it was the mother of the King. The Queen Mother was second in honour in the Kingdom, this is attested in the prophet Jeremiah. King Solomon gave his Queen Mother a “blank cheque” that he would grant her whatever she requested. Hence, why Christians pray to Mary and ask for her intercessions to Christ the King.

The greatest quality we notice about Mary in all the infancy narratives, especially at the Annunciation, is the great faith of Mary.

“Mary believed God, and so Jesus Christ took flesh within her. At this Mass, Jesus Christ is going to take flesh once more in the Blessed Sacrament, and enter each one of us, as he entered the body of his Blessed Mother. Let’s ask for the faith truly to believe that this is so—that through this Eucharist, Christ’s body is united to ours. And then let’s make an act of total abandonment, discarding any ulterior motives in our life (for comfort, pleasure, power, wealth, fame, etc), that in the coming days our only waking desire would be to say to the Lord, “Behold, I come to do your will.”