Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
“Whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” This closing line of today’s Gospel reading is fitting for today’s memorial, even though it is not a reading assigned specifically for the feast day. But so it is in our faith: ultimately, everything is connected.
Mary is the humble “handmaid of the Lord” who receives the angel’s word and conceives in her virginal womb. In her own words, she is the “lowly servant” upon whom the Lord has looked with favor, the one for whom “the Almighty has done great things.” In worldly terms, she is a nobody from the backwater town of Nazareth; according to the angel’s greeting, she is “full of grace.”
The scribes and the Pharisees in today’s Gospel, unfortunately, struggle to embrace such humility. They and others like them look for praise and honor among men, rather than seeking the praise and honor of God. This self-seeking is the cause of their downfall; it is the self-exaltation for which they are humbled, much as the Lord humbled the haughty Jerusalem of old through its destruction by the Babylonians.
Unlike the self-exalted ones, Mary follows (and in a certain sense anticipates) the example of her Son. Jesus, as Paul tells us, is the one who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave”—that is, a human form—and “humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” And yet, “because of this, God greatly exalted him” and raised him from the dead, so that he is now seated at Father’s right hand in glory.
Let us meditate on these examples today: the example of those who exalt themselves, and the example of Mary, the Queen of Heaven, who humbles herself like her divine Son and so is exalted in glory. Whom do we want to follow?