My dear parishioners,
Peace! On the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, 7 October, 2019, Pope Francis established the feast of Our Lady of Loreto, to be observed each year on the 10th of December. At the same time Pope Francis proclaimed a Lauretan Jubilee Holy Year to run from 8 December, 2019 through 10 December, 2020. There are fifty-one invocations in the Litany of Loreto. The following is a reflection on the forty-seventh invocation: Queen of All Saints, pray for us.
There are thirteen various forms of Our Lady’s Queenship considered in the Litany of Loreto. Here we consider specifically what it means to say that Saint Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mother of God is the “Queen of All Saints.” Who are all the Saints? Sacred Scripture uses three terms which all translate to “saints” (Hebrew qadhoshand chacidh and the Greek hagioi). The saints are those whose goodness or righteousness mirrors that of God and they belong to God. Sometimes the saints are called “God’s chosen ones”, “elect”. “holy people”, “godly men and women” (cf. Matthew 24:22; 24:31; 27:52).
To know all the Saints helps us to know Our Lady, who in turn helps us to know the Lord all the more. The Belgian Jesuit Jean Bolland (+1665) published the first five volumes of the Acta Sanctorum (Lives of the Saints). There is an old four volume set of books entitled Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1926/1956), with concise editions published subsequently (1985/1991). These are complementary to the official Roman Martyrology (1916/2004). John Paul II’s Book of Saints (2007) includes more than five hundred pages of references to all the saints and blessed canonized and beatified by the saintly pontiff. The fifth chapter of the Constitution of the Church, Lumen Gentium (39-42) addresses “The Universal Call to Holiness in the Church.” All the Saints, of whom Our Lady is Queen, have answered the call to holiness. This echoes Romans 1:7 where we are all “called to be saints.” While certain saints have specific days assigned on the calendar, All Saints are celebrated on 1 November each year as a Holy Day of Obligation. This one feast honors those Saints we know, who have been canonized, and those we don’t know but God does know, who have not been canonized. Our Lady is Queen of all these servants and subjects of Her Son. The Council Fathers at Vatican II (1962-1965) taught that “all the faithful of Christ are invited to strive for the holiness and perfection of their own proper state” (LG, 42). That Saint Mary is Queen of All Saints may be understood in light of the Apostle’s Creed which professes belief in “the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints.” Hagiography is the “science of the saints.” The Saints are the friends of God and citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom. To be friends with the Saints and to know them is to grow in friendship with the Lord and their Holy Queen.
Father John Arthur Orr