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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 2

What is Our Lady's Crown in Heaven?

What is Our Lady's Crown in Heaven?

Our Lady’s Coronation is a spiritual event of great importance to the ordinary Catholic believer, who is likely to meditate upon it frequently as the Fifth Glorious Mystery, though it does perhaps embody that aspect of Mariology which it is hardest for anyone outside the Visible Church to accept or even make sense of.

I would like to set down several ways in which the Coronation of Our Lady may commonly be regarded.

There is one kind of Catholic – I would call him a Mariolatrist – who seizes on this event with great private satisfaction. To him it is a Crowning not dissimilar to the ceremony and pomp that accompanies the inauguration of earthly monarchs. He sees in his mind’s eye the throne set up, and an immense golden crown with jewels set by Our Lord on Our Lady’s head – amethysts, topazes, rubies and emeralds – different from earthly jewels only in the fact that they are a thousand times brighter and will last for ever. page 552 The dazzled angels bow before her. The trumpets ring out and Our Lord personally proclaims that Our Lady is now Queen of Heaven. It is in some ways an attractive picture; but I think it is a mistaken one.

Our brother who is an innocent Mariolatrist has fallen into a trap that is also set for us in the book of the Revelations of Saint John. There, when the elders throw down their golden crowns before the throne of the Lamb, there is a figurative use of language which indicates a real act of sacrifice and adoration. In a similar way, I think that the Crowning of Our Lady may not have involved the use of any crown at all.

It means to me her entry into glory and some special seal set by God upon her, confirming her unique status in the spiritual hierarchy of earth and Heaven. True, we know that Our Lady entered Heaven bodily – but do they have need in Heaven of the trappings of earthly majesty? We are given these outward symbols because God knows well the limits of our human intellect and imagination.

A man who was a convinced anti-monarchist might feel, when he first came in contact with Catholic symbols of Kingship and Queenship that he was being asked to give assent to what he had previously rejected. But Our Lord is not the kind of King we will ever see on earth; or Our Lady the kind of Queen. The symbol of monarchy indicates perfect sanctity, absolute control, the right to rule and our duty to obey. It is also in a special sense an extension of paternal authority into Heaven and eternity. The title of Father and Elder Brother, applied to Our Lord, tells us more of His Nature than does the title of King; the title of Mother, applied to Our Lady, has a similar connotation. The anti-monarchist need not be afraid. He is not being asked to be an anonymous subject; he is being asked to accept adoption into a family where the Father is a King and the Mother is a Queen.

She was crowned Queen of Heaven – not, I think, in the manner of an earthly crowning – not only as our governor but also as our representative. Our Lady is herself the perfect type of the Church; and her Coronation is indissolubly linked to the reward of glory received by all members of the Church Triumphant.

When we meditate on the Coronation, we should find in that event an enormous encouragement towards hope and perseverance. The crown is her crown, earned by her participation in the Passion of Our Lord; but it is a crown which she is in a sense prepared to lend to us, her children, giving us her own strength, her own purity and her own profound peace of soul.

All of us who love Our Lady have felt at times that extraordinary melting away of spiritual and psychological difficulties at the moment when they seem truly insurmountable. Let us say that at such times our Mother has allowed us to touch the crown that Our Lord gave her; a crown of love taken from the furnace of the Godhead.

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