A Feast of Light for Those Who Walk in Darkness
The Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
A case could be made for any of the roughly 60 centuries creatures endowed with a rational soul have inhabited this earth to have been the worst, the most horrific, and the most regrettable; but at least among those in recent memory, the 20thcentury seems to have no equal. There is no need to rattle off all the awful wars, revolutions, and genocides that made the 1900s such a dark hour in human history filled with sins that lie in our not-so-distant past. Mere mention of them is more than sufficient.
In thinking about the Church’s life, historical perspective, even of secular events, is important and essential. What the Church does, what the Church teaches, and how the Church prays does not exist within a vacuum, cut off from the world around it. On the contrary, “the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties” of any people, at any time “are the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.”1 It could be tempting to see this, our Cathedral’s patronal feast of the Queenship of Mary, as a bit of pious, sentimental window-dressing on the Church’s already elaborate devotion to the Mother of Christ; but such a reduction would not be true to history. It was, in fact, at the midpoint of the 20th century, humanity’s darkest hour, that Pope Pius XII instituted this feast to honor her title and role as the Queen of All Creation.
And he did not do so without reason. In the bull establishing this feast, issued as it happened on the day after this Cathedral’s groundbreaking, Pius XII wrote: “Following upon the frightful calamities which before Our eyes have reduced flourishing cities, towns, and villages to ruins, We see to Our sorrow that many great moral evils are being spread abroad in what may be described as a violent flood […] The threat of this fearful crisis fills Us with a great anguish, and so with confidence We have recourse to Mary Our Queen.”2
It was in the face of the abhorrent evils the human race had wrought that the Church proclaimed to the people who walked in darkness and dwelt in the land of gloom a brilliant and radiant light: the glory of woman, the sole immaculate daughter of a sinful race, crowned as Queen of heaven and earth and praised by angels and saints. The light that comes forth from the Queen-Mother is not her own; it is the light of her Son the King, “whose dominion is vast and forever peaceful.” By extolling her and calling us to observe this feast in her honor year-by-year, the Church proclaimed in 1954 that her Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, by judgement and justice will smash the yoke, the pole, and the rod of all those who drop bombs on innocent civilians, who put humans created in God’s image into gas chambers, who advance ethnic and religious hatred, who divide the human family on account of race, class, or nationality, and who in any way deprive any of the least of his own the justice and rights belonging to their dignity. Let us be clear: this feast is no sappy expression of feel-good piety. It is, to the contrary, a yearly plea, in Pius XII’s words, to the “powerful Queen of creation, whose radiant glance banishes storms and tempests and brings back cloudless skies.”3 It is a feast of light for all who walk in darkness.
The feast of Mary’s Queenship cannot be understood apart from its historical context; and neither can this great Cathedral which shares its title, for it came into the world at precisely the same moment, with precisely the same proclamation of unity and peace. Upon this hill, overlooking a City still segregated and undergoing structural change that would displace thousands of Black and African American residents, was built a Cathedral in a neighborhood once designed to forbid the residency of Blacks, Catholics, and Jews. This Cathedral’s newly hewn limestone walls glistening in the sun were meant to be a light in the midst of a land of gloom, hope for the people who walked in darkness.
And this house of God was built, more importantly, upon living stones. Within, it bears witness to the universal Kingship of Christ and Queenship of his Mother that extends to every human person, regardless of race, nationality, class, or creed. A stone carving at the South transept depicts the Jesuit Father Andrew White baptizing the chief of the Piscataway Indians in 1640. The Memorial Chapel includes a window of Antoine-Frédéric Ozanam, a layman who was an advocate for justice for the poor and working classes of France and founded the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, the patron of which has a prominent altar by the rear South door. In the windows of the Saint Joseph Chapel are found the tools of a typical workman and emblems of various Baltimore industries. All of this is not to suggest that the Church herself was not guilty to some degree of the same prejudices and discrimination that plagued the world around her; however, we can see today the kernel of faith that inspired and shaped the imagination of her architects that believed that Christ’s Lordship and Mary’s Queenship extend to all people, and that all are invited to share in heavenly glory.
To your backs at this moment stands Christ, in a commanding stone relief upon the Gallery wall. He stands crowned atop the world, with hands stretched forth in blessing, and angels ministering to him on all sides. His eyes look down and out into the church below, his sight passing through all the pages of salvation history recounted in the windows that line the length of the nave. These are pages of grace, testaments to the great things the Lord has done throughout human history from the creation of Adam and Eve onward; yet they are also pages of violence and strife, of wars and conflict, of sin and division, of all the evil of which humanity has proved itself capable. At the end of them all, beyond the Cross on which he would die for the salvation of the world he so loved to the end, his eyes meet his Mother’s, where in the Lady Chapel she is arrayed in gold and crowned as the fairest honor of our race, around whom angels also stand. Together, we as pilgrims in this church advance with confidence through the griefs and anxieties of this world, toward the heavenly realm where she, our Mother, sits at God’s righthand.
And as Christ looks across this Cathedral toward his Mother, his sight passes through each one of us, the living stones called to to be built into a spiritual house of God. The responsibility falls to us, in likeness to the Blessed Virgin Mary and with her help, to “announce the praises of him who called [us] out of darkness into his wonderful light”. Mary, Queen of Heaven and Earth, Mother of the Light of the World, pray for us, your children gathered in this Cathedral dedicated to your glorious honor, who now and always have recourse to you!
Homily preached August 27, 2023 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, on the transferred solemnity of its patronal feast.
Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, 1.
Pius XII, Ad Caeli Reginam, 3.
Ibid., 50.