The Dominion of the King and Queen

Since veneration of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart honors Our Lord’s Sacred Heart, it is probably no coincidence when at Fatima the Virgin Mary first chose to reveal Her Immaculate Heart, cruelly pierced by a circle of thorns, during the second apparition in the month of June, the month of the Sacred Heart. With this singular symbolic imagery, the Queen’s Immaculate Heart identified with that of Her Son, Savior, and King. Pope Pius XII expressed the depths of these mysteries of the King and Queen in the following way: “Jesus is King of the Eternal Ages by nature and by right of conquest; through Him, with Him, and subordinate to Him, Mary is Queen by grace, by divine relationship, by right of conquest and by singular election. And her kingdom is as vast as that of her Son and God, since nothing is excluded from her dominion.” [1]

Jesus, King of the Eternal Ages
“We lisp like children when we speak of things divine,”[2] especially when we speak of the very nature of God. Still, because our faith teaches that Divine Revelation is a world of mystery but not of contradiction, we believe all that God has revealed to us, including the truths about Himself.[3]

Jesus is King of the Eternal Ages because in His Divine Nature, He is God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Alpha and Omega. In the Old Testament, the mystery of the Blessed Trinity was not formally revealed but only foreshadowed, in accordance with what St. Bonaventure called “the general law of preparation.” This law refers to the way God provided Divine Revelation to make ready the human race for His “undoing of the awful consequences of Original Sin, taken in conjunction with man’s response to God’s overtures.”[4] This “law of preparation” applies to all the truths of Faith, including the Revelation of the Holy Trinity as well as the Lord’s plan of Redemption.

The first implicit hint of the Old Testament’s “law of preparation” for the revelation of the Triune God appeared in the history of creation when the Lord said, “Let us make man to our image and likeness.” [5] St. Augustine noted similar utterances from God about His plurality: “Behold, Adam is become as one of us,”[6] and “Let us go down, and there confound their tongue.” [7] The triple Sanctus of Isaias, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of Hosts,” and the triple blessing recorded in Numbers,[8] are also opaque heralds of the sublime mystery of the Holy Trinity, but there are many others.

The law of preparation is also heard in paradise lost, with the Lord’s veiled promise of “the woman…and her seed.” [9] In His curse upon the serpent, the Lord God uttered the first prophecy, recorded in Genesis 3:15 and known as the proto-evangelium (the first good news): “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.”[10]

Although our first parents could not know that four thousand years would pass before the fulfillment of the Lord’s words, much less understand their full meaning, this first prophecy foretold the Virgin Mary (“the woman”) and Jesus Christ (“her seed”). In the proto-evangelium, God bound together Mother and Son, the Mediatrix and the Redeemer of the human race.

Christ is King by Nature as God and Man
Before His Passion, Jesus made clear His Divine Nature when He said, “Before Abraham was made, I am.”[11] In the Holy Trinity, He is “the Word,” the Eternally Begotten, consubstantial with the Father. St. John the beloved Evangelist phrased this mystery very simply: “In the beginning, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”[12]

“It has long been a common custom to give to Christ the metaphorical title of ‘King,’ because of the high degree of perfection by which He excels all creatures,”[13] explained Pope Pius XII, affirming what the Church has always taught: “Christ - our Teacher, our Priest and Redeemer - is our King by reason of His eternal Divinity, but he is also King as man.”[14]

When Christ chose to assume a human nature, the Word Incarnate received from the Godhead the royal dignity as the rightful attribute of His humanity.[15]

As the Church also teaches in Quas Primas (Pope Pius XI's Encyclical on the Kingship of Christ), Christ is King by right of nature as Man because He gave His Life to offer us Redemption. Accordingly, He has the right to rule in the hearts and the wills of men because He has purchased us “with a great price.” [16] It is "by His grace and inspiration He so subjects our free will as to incite us to the most noble endeavors." [17]

“He is the King of hearts, too, by reason of His ‘charity with surpasseth all knowledge.’ (Eph. 3:19)…But if we ponder this matter more deeply, we cannot but see that the title and power of King belongs to Christ as Man in the strict and proper sense, too. For it is only as Man that he may be said to have received from the Father ‘power, and glory, and a kingdom’ (Dan. 7:14), since the Word of God [Jesus]…has all things in common with Him, and therefore has necessarily supreme and absolute dominion over all things created.”[18]

Christ is King also by right of conquest: “But he is King of men by a special title, for we are His subjects by right of conquest. Under the domination of Satan, reduced to the servitude of sin from that fatal moment in which Adam sinned, involving us all in his ruin, we have been freed by Christ from captivity, and we are now justly subject to his salutary rule.”[19]

“The Son of God, Who made us, was made one of us: and He rules us as Our King, because He is our Creator, Who made us,” said St. Augustine. “As King, He fought for us, as Priest He offered Himself for us…In Him, let us rejoice.”[20]

Christ’s Kingdom, As it Should be on Earth
The Kingship of Christ is, above all, spiritual in character and, as Pope Leo XIII declared, it is exercised “by truth, by justice and, above all, charity.” [21] Jesus said His kingdom is “not of this world” but it is both spiritual and temporal. On earth, His Kingdom is the Catholic Church, the One Supernatural, Supra-national Society. The Lord’s Kingdom reigns within each of the Church’s members who live in (or return to) the state of sanctifying grace: “For lo, the kingdom of God is within you.”[22]

Christ’s Temporal Kingship is also intended to be shared by the rulers of natural governments, because God “wants order in the works of His hands. So the world is meant to mirror forth, however imperfectly, the unity of the Mystical Body in heaven, for the social life [of Heaven] of which we are meant to prepare here on earth,” as explained Fr. Fahey. “Accordingly, the history of the world…turns around the social acceptance and rejection of the Kingship of Christ, and thus the attitude of States to the one supernatural society and to the Indirect Power of the Catholic Church is the keystone of the arch of the world’s social order.” [23]

“We lost supernatural life by original sin and we need Divine Grace that we may live an ordered life,” as Fr. Fahey reminds us, “yet this society proclaims that one can be a good man and true while utterly indifferent to the source of grace, Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Divinity.”[24]

In giving our complete fidelity to Christ, we cooperate with His work because “… it is for Jesus Christ as King, in virtue of the work of Redemption which He must accomplish, to conquer His Kingdom and defend His faithful subjects against the enemies who strive to overthrow His reign here below.”[25] Christ’s authority in the temporal order “is not here a question of commanding and legislating in view of conducting human society to its common good in the natural order, which belongs to the civil power, but of opposing everything that could hinder the progress of the supernatural life and the social order consonant with it, and of obtaining from the rulers in the civil order the cooperation necessary therefore. This power forms part of the attributes of the Spiritual Kingship, for it is at its service and is, so to say, its instrument.”[26]

His Spiritual Kingship is also “militant and the struggle against moral evil must go on as long as men remain here below exposed to suffering and death, to corruption and sin. Only in eternity shall the triumph be complete, by the victory of the good and the defeat of the wicked…; [but] we must keep in mind the twofold aspect of Christ’s Headship: the negative aspect of His combat against sin and His warring down of evil, which belongs to His Kingship, and the positive one of uniting souls to God, which is the function of His Priesthood.”[27]

Upon Christ, therefore, Who is Mediator, Prophet, Priest, Savior and King, all things converge. All creatures are subject to Him, and He offers His Sacred Humanity and Divinity as King and Priest to the Father. “All things are put upon Him,” says St. Paul, “…and when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then the Son also Himself shall be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.”[28]

Why Mary is Queen
Our Lord also gave to the Church and each individual soul His Mother, the Queen of Heaven and the Help of Christians. As Pope Pius XII stated, “Mary is Queen by grace, by divine relationship, by right of conquest and by singular election. And her kingdom is as vast as that of her Son and God, since nothing is excluded from her dominion.”

• Our Lady is Queen by grace because, through the foreseen merits of Her Son and Savior, She was preserved from Original Sin from the first moment of Her existence. She is the Immaculate Conception, Who never committed the slightest actual sin. Our Lady was not only conceived in sanctifying grace, but that grace grew abundantly as Her life progressed; it is for this reason that the angel Gabriel saluted Her, “Hail, full of grace.”

• She is Queen by divine relationship because God chose Her to be His Mother, the cause of salvation. The central and primary truth of Christianity is the fact that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”[29] That God would become Man was the great secret, “hidden from ages and generations,”[30] until it was manifested at Bethlehem when the Christ Child was found “with Mary his Mother.”[31]

Our Lady’s relationship to each Person of the Holy Trinity explains Her divine relationship. She is the first adoptive daughter of God the Father, Who created Her highest in grace because She was chosen to be the Virgin Mother of God the Son. She is the Virgin Bride of God the Holy Ghost, Who “infused into her soul the gifts of grace merited by the Son [Rom. 5:5] and miraculously brought about the conception of the Divine Word in Her womb.”[32]

• She is Queen by right of conquest and by singular election because Our Lady, the New Eve, gave free consent to Her office in the mystery of the Incarnation and in the work of Redemption. The Genesis 3:15 prophecy of “the woman…and her seed” commenced with the Virgin’s Fiat, “Be it done to me according to Thy Word.”

Of the natural and supernatural unity between the Savior and His Mother, Pope Benedict XV wrote, “To such extent did Mary suffer, and almost die with her suffering and dying Son; to such extent did she surrender her maternal rights over her Son for man’s salvation, and immolated Him – insofar as She could – in order to appease the justice of God, that we may rightly say She redeemed the human race together with Christ.” [33]

Pope Pius XI stated, “From the nature of His work, the Redeemer ought to have associated His Mother with His work. For this reason, We invoke her under the title of Co-Redemptrix. She gave us the Savior, She accompanied Him in the work of Redemption as far as the Cross itself, sharing with Him the sorrows of the agony and of the death in which Jesus consummated the Redemption of mankind.” [34]

For all these reasons and more, Our Lady’s Kingdom is as vast at that of Her Son’s. “She shares in His kingdom,” says St. Albert the Great, “because she shared in His suffering for the human race.”

Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. echoes the same truth: “Mary was associated with Christ’s victory over Satan, sin and death by her union with Him in His humiliations and sufferings. She is, therefore, really associated with Him in His Kingship.” [35]

Pope Pius XII declared: “It is certain that only Jesus Christ God and Man is King, but Mary as Mother of King and associated to Him in work of divine redemption participates in His royal dignity.”[36]

The Immaculate Heart, Pattern of the Sacred Heart
It is in Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart that Divine Love “gathers all the perfections of His divinity…and brings them together in the heart of the august Queen of all angels. It is fitting that, having chosen Mary to be His Mother and having become Her Son, Our Lord should establish such a perfect resemblance between Mother and Son.”[37]

As St. John Eudes taught, “In His infinite goodness, He also gave Her to us to be our Queen, our Mother and our sure Refuge in all our needs. He therefore wishes us to honor Her at He honors her and to love Her as He loves her.” [38]

Finally, there is another sublime consideration of Our Lady’s Queenship: It was from the Immaculate Heart that the Sacred Heart drew its own Likeness. As St. John Eudes stated, “His divine love most perfectly draws its own image in His Mother’s amiable heart.”[39] What a beautiful truth upon which to contemplate – that Christ traced His very Heart after the Mother He created.

Since Jesus is King of All Hearts, it follows that Mary is Queen of All Hearts because They are united in all things. And since the Kingdom of Jesus Christ belongs to Our Lady, it is the one and only Immaculate Heart who still says to us today, “Whatsoever He shall tell you, do ye.”[40]

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Marianna Bartold, founder of Keeping It Catholic (http://www.keepingitcatholic.org/), is the author of "The Age of Mary" Catholic, Internet-Based Study Guides, and "The Return of the King" (The Lord of the Rings) Catholic Study Guide. She is also the author of the Keeping It Catholic Home Education Guide books (Volumes I and II, available from The Neumann Press and other Catholic booksellers), the original homeschool editor of Sursum Corda Magazine, and the founding publisher of The Catholic Family's Magnificat! Magazine.

The article above, "The Dominion of the King and Queen," was published in the June 2009 issue of Catholic Family News. All Rights Reserved Worldwide by the author.
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Notes
[1] Pope Pius XII, Radio Message to Fatima, May 13, 1946, Bendito seia, AAS 38.266. [Emphasis added]
[2] Canon George D. Smith, D.D., Ph.D., The Teaching of the Catholic Church: A Summary of Catholic Doctrine, Vol. 1. [New York: The MacMillan Company, 1959]: p. 41.
[3] Charles George Herbermann, The Catholic Encyclopedia, an International Work of Reference [Universal Knowledge Foundation, 1913. Original from the New York Public Library, digitized August 15, 2006]: p. 219. [http://books.google.com/ books?id=FmgQAAAAIAAJ]
[4] Rev. Denis Fahey, C.S. SP., B.A., D. PH., D.D., The Kingship of Christ: According to the Principles of St. Thomas Aquinas [Palmdale, CA: Christian Book Club of America, 1990 republication. First published in 1931]: p. 33.
[5] Gen 1:26 [Emphasis added]
[6] Gen. 3: 22 [Emphasis added]
[7] Gen. 11:7 [Emphasis added]
[8] Num. 7: 24-26
[9] Gen. 3:15
[10] Ibid.
[11] Jn. 8:58 [Emphasis added]
[12] Jn. 1:1
[13] Pius XI, Quas Primas (On the Feast of Christ the King, December 11, 1925): para. 7.
[14] Canon George D. Smith, op. cit., p. 63 [emphasis added]
[15] Ibid. [Emphasis added]
[16] Pius XI, Ibid.
[17] Loc cit.
[18] Loc cit. [Emphasis in the original]
[19] Canon George D. Smith, op. cit., p. 64.
[20] St. Augustine’s Commentary on Ps. CXLIX.
[21] Pope Leo XII, Annum Sacrum, cited by Canon George D. Smith in The Teaching of the Catholic Church: A Summary of Catholic Doctrine, Vol. 1 [New York: The MacMillan Company, 1959]: p. 64.
[22] Lk. 17:21
[23] Rev. Denis Fahey, op cit., pp. 34-35.
[24] Ibid., p. 88.
[25] Ibid., p. 22.
[26] Ibid., p. 25.
[27] Ibid., p. 23.
[28] 1 Cor 15: 28
[29] Jn 1:14
[30] Matt. 2: 11
[31] Lk 2:16
[32] Father Paul A Duffner, O.P., “The Queenship of Mary,” The Rosary Light & Life, Vol. 45, No. 4, July-Aug. 1992 [http://www.pacifier.com/rosary-center.org/ll45n4.htm]
[33] Apostolic Letter “Inter Sodalicia,” cited by Father Paul A. Duffner in “The Queenship of Mary”
[34] Pope Pius XI, Allocution to Pilgrims from Vicenza assembled in Rome for the Jubilee of the Redemption, Nov. 30, 1933.
[35] Ibid.
[36] “The Queenship of Mary,” TIME Magazine, November 8, 1954 [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,857668,00.html]
[37] St. John Eudes, The Admirable Heart of Mary [Buffalo, NY: Immaculate Heart Publications, under license from Loreto Publications, Fitzwilliam, NH]: p. 107
[38] Ibid., p. 106
[39] Ibid., p. 3
[40] Jn. 2:5