Our Lady Of Charity Or Queen Of Charity
Country :
Year :
The title, Mary Queen of Charity is not contained in the Litany of Loreto, but it might well be incorporated therein. For outside of Our Lord Himself, no one in all history has demonstrated such sublime love for God and for us as did Our Blessed Lady; and Love is Charity.
Mary’s first and most perfect act of love was the Annunciation. “Behold the Handmaid of the Lord.” Once she was sure of the Divine Will, Mary was ready to carry out that will at once and forever: when the Nativity placed the Savior into her maternal arms; when she grew up to know and more deeply appreciate who her Son was and why He had been sent; when she understood more clearly with each day, that it would mean in sorrow and suffering, to be the Mother of the Redeemer; when she held the form of her Divine Son once more in her arms – never once did she fail to act and live and breathe that first complete surrender: “Behold the Handmaid of the Lord”.
From the very beginning Mary could have refused to cooperate with Divine Grace; she could have rebelled against the Will of God. But she joyously embraced the glorious opportunity to become the Mother of Divinity Incarnate and the Co-redemptrix of the human race. She shared in our salvation; she brought to us our Redeemer. What greater CHARITY could any creature, any human being, any angel, perform for us than this?
If the Litany does not call her Queen of Charity, it implies the right to such a title in many of its phrases: “Mother of Good Counsel”, “Mother of our Savior”, “Virgin most Powerful”, “Cause of our Joy”, “Gate of Heaven”, “Health of the Sick”, “Refuge of Sinners”, “Help of Christians”, “Queen of Peace” – what are all these but supplications to Our Lady under various forms and aspects of her abounding love of God and of us?
Our Lady’s Charity did not end with her career upon earth; throughout the centuries she has been the dispenser of heavenly graces and the source of material favors. Her shrines dot the globe; pilgrimages to which millions have travelled in supplication to the Queen of Charity: Loreto, Einsiedein, Guadalupe, Lourdes, Czestochowa!
One of the most beloved themes of art throughout the centuries has been the Mother and her Child – a tender, universal symbol of charity. No charity can be greater than that noble and selfless love with which the human Mother nourishes and protects her Child; and when the Child is not merely Man, but the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the charity symbolized rises to the gate of heaven and is the theme of Angels’ melodies. Mary is the most generous Virgin; she gave Christ to the world, and to man on earth, she gives the Kingdom of Heaven.
