Queen Mother

 

QUEEN MOTHER

Mario D’Couto

            You may sometimes hear non-Catholics and Protestants objecting to the title ‘Mediatrix’ applied to Our Lady by citing the words of St. Paul, who wrote that Christ is the One Mediator between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5) and so this begs the question as to how can these two claims where Christ as the One Mediator and Our Lady as the Mediatrix be reconciled? 

    

Well, to begin with, St. Paul, touched upon this mystery where he wrote, “We are God’s co-workers” (1 Corinthians 3:9). Yet if Christ is the One Mediator, why would He have co-workers? Can’t God get the job done by Himself? Of course He can. But since He is a Father, His job is raising up mature sons and daughters and the way to do that is by making us co-workers.



        We are children of God and this is not a metaphor or just a pious phrase but it is a reality. When we received the sacrament of Baptism, we were bound by the covenant of Christ’s blood into the family of God. Through the sacrament of Baptism, we are raised to share in the eternal life of the Trinity and so through Baptism, we have become “sons in the Son”. The ancient Christians dared to call this action our divinization as St. Athanasius once wrote, “The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men might become sons of God!” This, therefore, is to say that we are not merely forgiven but rather we are adopted by God as sons and daughters. There’s a world of difference between the two views of redemption and justification. For instance, you can forgive your auto mechanic if he overcharges you but it is unlikely that, upon forgiving him, you’ll adopt him into your family. Yet that is precisely what God has done. He has forgiven us our sins so that we might find our lasting home in the family we call the Trinity.


        Salvation then is not only from sin but for sonship, divine sonship in Christ. We are not merely forgiven by God’s grace; we are adopted and divinized, as we find written in 2 Peter 1:4, “we become partakers of the divine nature.” From the beginning, this was the life for which God created man. The sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, was not that they desired divine life but that they desired to be divinized without God. Yet, God’s will would eventually be accomplished.



        Hence, given that God’s work is our redemption, He shared this task in an unparalleled way with Our Lady where He entrusted such tasks as feeding His Son with Her own milk, singing to Him while He slept and accompanying Him all the way to the Cross, where She gave Her sorrowful yes to His self – offering. In other words, the Father willed that His Son’s entire existence as a Man would hinge, so to speak, upon the ongoing consent of Our Lady. Can there be a more intimate co-worker than this?

        As the firstborn Son in God’s family, Our Blessed Lord mediates as the High Priest between the Father and His children while Our Lady mediates as Queen Mother and Advocate (1 Kings 2:19). To understand this more clearly, we must keep in mind that in the ancient Near – East, most nations were monarchies ruled by a king and in addition to that, they practiced polygamy. Hence it was not uncommon for a king to have many wives. However, this posed two kinds of problems: first, if a king had so many wives, who should the people honour as queen and second, whose son should receive the right of succession to the throne?

        This twin problem in the ancient near eastern culture was resolved by a single custom where the woman ordinarily honoured as queen was not the wife of the king but the mother of the king. There was an element of justice to this practice since it was often the persuasive (or seductive) power of the mother that won the throne for her son. This custom also served as a stabilizing factor in national cultures since as wife of the former king and mother to the present king, the queen mother, embodied the continuity of dynastic succession.

        It has been observed that the office of the queen mother was well established among the gentiles by the time the people of Israel began to clamour for a monarchy and that is because Israel had not always been a kingdom. In God’s plan, God was to be their king (1 Samuel 8:7). But the people begged the prophet Samuel to give them a king: “We will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:19-20). God then allowed the people to have their way. But for His glory, Israel’s monarchy would providentially foreshadow the kingship of God’s own Son. Israel’s Kingdom would be a type of the Kingdom of God.


        Given that they wanted a king in order to be ‘like all the other nations’, they looked around for models of governance and so following the models of the neighbouring lands, they established a dynasty, a legal system, a royal court, a queen mother. We find this in Israel at the beginning of the Davidic dynasty. King David’s first successor, Solomon, reigned with his queen mother, Bathsheba, at his right hand. Israel’s queen mother or Gebirah (which means ‘great lady’) appears then throughout the history of monarchy, to the very end. When Jerusalem falls to Babylon, we find the invaders taking away the king, Jehoiachin and also his mother, Nehushta, who is given precedence, in the account, over the King’s wives (2 Kings 24:15; Jeremiah 13:18).

    
        Between Bathsheba and Nehushta, there were many queen mothers. Some worked for good while some didn’t, but none of them were a mere figurehead. Gebirah was more than a title; it was an office with real authority. Consider the following scene from early in King Solomon’s reign, “So Bathsheba went to King Solomon, to speak to him on behalf of Adonijah. And the king rose to meet her and bowed to her; then he sat on his throne and had a seat brought for the King’s mother; and she sat on his right” (1 Kings 2:19). This short passage packs implicit volumes about Israel’s court and protocol and power structure. First, we see that the queen mother was approaching her son in order to speak on behalf of another person. This confirms what we know about queen mothers in Near Eastern cultures. For example, in the epic of Gilgamesh, we see that the queen mother in Mesopotamia was considered an intercessor or advocate for the people.

 

        Next, we notice that King Solomon rose from his throne when his mother entered the room. This makes the queen mother unique among the royal subjects. Anyone else would, following protocol, rise in Solomon’s presence; even the King’s wives were required to bow before him (1 Kings 1:16). Yet King Solomon rose to honour Bathsheba. Moreover, he showed further respect by bowing before her and by seating her in the place of greatest honour, at his right hand. Undoubtedly, this describes a court ritual of Solomon’s time; but all ritual expresses real relationships. What do King Solomon’s actions tell us about his status in relation to his mother?

        First, his power and authority are in no way threatened by her. He bows to her but he remains the monarch. She sits at his right hand, not vice versa. Yet, he will honour her requests, not out of any legally binding obligation of obedience but rather out of filial love. By the time of this particular scene, King Solomon clearly had a track record of granting his mother’s wishes. When Adonijah first approaches Bathsheba to beg her intercession, he says, “Pray ask King Solomon – he will not refuse you” (1 Kings 2:17) Though technically Solomon was Bathsheba’s superior, in the orders of both nature and protocol, he remained her son.

                 He relied on her, too, to be his chief counsellor, who would advise and instruct him in a way, perhaps, that few subjects would have the courage to follow. Chapter 31 of the book of Proverbs provides a striking illustration of how seriously a king took the queen mother’s counsel. This is not about folk wisdom. As a political advisor and even strategist, as an advocate for the people and as a subject who could be counted on her frankness, the queen mother was unique in her relationship to the king. Doesn’t all this strike a bell in drawing a similarity in the way our Blessed Lord worked in collaboration with His holy Mother who is our Mother too? Just as David’s first successor reigned beside his queen mother, so would David’s final and everlasting successor. The Davidic monarchy finds its perfect fulfilment in the reign of Jesus Christ and there was never a Davidic king without a Davidic queen, who is the king’s own mother, the queen mother. Only with this Davidic key can we unlock the mysteries, for example, of the Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2:1-11). Mary approaches Her Son to intercede for the people just as we see Bathsheba speaking to her son, King Solomon, on behalf of Adonijah (1 Kings 2:13 – 20). Mary counsels others to obey Him and not Her (John 2:5). Jesus then speaks to His Mother as superior; yet He defers to Her suggestion (John 2:4-11), just as one might expect a Davidic king to grant the wish of his queen mother. Pope St. John Paul II called this Her ‘maternal mediation’. For the Father, Mary mothers the Son. For us sinners, She mothers our Saviour and for Her Son, She mothers His siblings – that is us, through the spiritual adoption into God’s Family (something which we have already touched upon at the beginning of this blogpost/reflection). Thus when it comes to Mary’s role in God’s saving plan, the word ‘mother’ is not only a noun but a verb and hence an office.

            This is not to say that our Lady is the central figure of salvation; Jesus is! But our understanding of our Lady reveals everything about how we understand Jesus and His saving work. We live our sonship best by listening to our Lady and loving as She loves. Listening means responding when She says, “Do whatever He tells you” (John 2:5). Loving means standing by Christ, even to the cross. Loving means choosing Him, in every instance, over sin.

    

Divine Motherhood is the place where God wants Christians to meet Christ, their Brother. For Mary to have given us Her Son is remarkable. But for Jesus to have given His Mother to us, the very people who crucified Him and sinned against His Father, that’s something great beyond imagining! After giving us His Mother, we can be sure that there’s nothing He would withhold.



            Thus while our Lady is not God, She is the Mother of God and while She is only a creature, She is God’s greatest creation. She is not the King but She is His chosen queen mother. Just as artists long to paint one masterpiece among their many works, so did our Blessed Lord make His Mother to be His greatest masterpiece. To affirm the truth about Mary does not detract us from Jesus but refusing to affirm it does detract from Him. However for this to possible, our Lady had to be immaculately conceived and that is why the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the feast that we celebrate today fits in well with our Lady who is truly our Queen Mother. If you would like to delve further into the understanding of the Immaculate Conception of Lady, you can check my other blogposts/reflections,

Until then wishing you a happy feast of the Immaculate Conception. God love you. Stay blessed.

  

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