Heaven's Bright Queen - Introduction by Monsignor Bernard O'Reilly, D.D.

There is a vision in the heart of each,
Of justice, mercy, wisdom, tenderness
To wrong and pain, and knowledge of their cure;
And these embodied in a woman's form
That best transmits them pure, as first received,
From God above to mankind below.
- Robert Browning

How often do we hear it said: We are living, indeed, in an extraordinary period! And the assertion is more than justified by facts that occur every day. Frightful as are the enormities of wickedness in these times, we witness, on the other hand, boundless good appearing everywhere, and in the most unexpected manner. The most remarkable feature of our age is, however, the visible intervention of the invisible world in the destinies of mankind. Supernatural Apparitions have been witnessed in quick succession accompanied with prophecies, and followed by a large number of miraculous cures. Vast countries are roused to the greatest degree of excitement by these phenomena; entire populations wend their way to the hallowed scenes of these Apparitions. Even in the remotest parts of the world a general interest is caused by the news of these occurrences. A lively controversy about their truth and importance is opened in the daily papers.

If the nature of these events is more closely examined, they develop themselves chiefly into revelations of Mary, the Mother of God. And it is this very feature of the Apparitions which, on the one hand, gains so rapidly the faith and interest of the Catholic populace and, on the other, awakens the fierce hatred and scoffing blasphemy of the infidel world. Mary's name! How full of consolation and joy for the faithful mind! But, again, what a stumbling-block to the erring and unbelievers!

The Catholic people seize joyfully upon the conviction that Our Blessed Lady has appeared, and hope for some new exhibition of her inexhaustible goodness. An experience of over nineteen hundred years teaches them that they are right in their expectations. Such revelations of the Mother of God are nothing new. Every generation has been more or less favored with them. And it is precisely this frequent intercourse of Mary with the Christian people that gives to the devotion to the Queen of Heaven that fervor and vivacity which is so great an obstacle to those outside the Church.

We are reminded again and again that the Mother of Our Lord is not only an historical personage, who dwelt on earth nineteen hundred years ago, but that the devotion offered to her, the fulness of virtue and grace admired in her, the glory and immense power of intercession ascribed to her, as well as the maternal solicitude with which she is said to relieve our misery, all this is not a mere invention of pious fancy, but a truth that has become in the course of time self-evident.

The influence and results of this pious veneration of Mary in the development of civilization is thus admirably depicted by a distingushed modern author, the late Brother Azarias:

"This love and veneration for Mary has been in itself an educator and civilizer of the human race. The Church instituted festival after festival in her honor; each feast-day commemorated some new-found prerogative, some more clearly-seen virtue; men thereupon became more penetrated with a sense of the holiness and power of Mary, and sought to imitate her virtues and live up to the ideal they had formed of her perfect character. In doing this they were suppressing within themselves the brutal elements in their nature inherited from their barbarian ancestors. Their manners became more refined, their ways more gentle, their lives more holy and useful before God and men. Gradually through this sweet influence did they rise in the scale of civilization. It has aided materially in refining man; it has raised up woman in his estimation, and filled him with profound respect for the womanly character and for womanly virtues; it has caused chastity and virginity to be held in reverence; it has enshrined in a veil of delicacy and tenderness the modesty and purity and honor of mother, wife, sister, and daughter; it has taught men the worth of the domestic virtues that grace the Christian home; it has inspired the sentiment of pure love, and made holy the affections of maiden hearts; it has created the chivalry that made men gentle, pure and brave; it has nerved strong men and delicate women to organize themselves into religious orders and lead lives of self-denial and self-sacrifice in the service of God, under the banner of Mary Immaculate, and to live and die hymning her praises and imitating her heroic virtues. All this it has done because of Mary's nearness to the Godhead."

Nor are these and kindred facts proclaimed and proven by Catholic writers only; many of the most illustrious writers and historians outside of the Church, willingly admit and eloquently describe the debt of modern civilization, the spiritualizing influence and elevating tendency of the devotion to Our Blessed Lady, as a type for all pure womanhood, and the patron of all those who aspire to and practice Christian virtue. Even in a secular sense wholly apart from spiritual perfection, this influence has been recognized as one of the greatest factors in the refining of and elevating of humanity, and the consequent progress of our race and the advance of civilization. Even those who reject Catholic truth, and deny the prerogatives of the Church are themselves the unconscious beneficiaries of the influence of Mary, exercised on the Christian world during the last twenty centuries. The late Mr. Lecky, one of the ablest and most erudite of modern historians, thus portrays this historic truth:

"The world is governed by its ideals, and seldom or never has there been one which has exercised more profound and, on the whole, a more salutary influence than the mediaeval conception of the Blessed Virgin. For the first time woman was elevated to her rightful position, and the sanctity of weakness was recognized as well as the sanctity of sorrow. No longer the slave or the toy of man, no longer associated only with ideas of degradation and of sensuality, woman rose in the person of the Virgin Mother into a new sphere, and became the object of a reverential homage, of which antiquity had no conception.

"The moral charm and beauty of female excellence was, for the first time, felt. A new type of character was called into being, a new kind of admiration was fostered. Into a harsh and ignorant and benighted age this ideal type infused a conception of gentleness and of purity unknown to the proudest generations of the past. In the pages of living tenderness which many a monkish writer has left in honor of his celestial patron; in the millions who, in many lands and in many ages, have sought, with no barren desire, to mould their characters into her image; in those holy maidens who, for the love of Mary, have separated themselves from all the glories and pleasures of the world, to seek in fasting and vigils and humble charity, to render themselves worthy of her benediction; in the new sense of honor; in the chivalrous respect; in the softening of manners; in the refinement of taste displayed in all the walks of society in these and in many other ways we detect its influence. All that was best in Europe clustered around it, and it is the origin of many of the purest elements of our civilization."

The beneficent influence of the veneration of the blessed Virgin in contributing to holiness and purity in the home and family life, elicited the following noble and just tribute from the pen of the most penetrating and esthetic minds of our time, the late John Ruskin:

"Of the sentiments which in all ages have distinguished the gentleman from the churl, the first is that of reverence for womanhood, which even through all the cruelties of the Middle Ages developed itself with increasing power until the thirteenth century, and became consummated in the imagination of the Madonna, which ruled over all the highest arts and purest thoughts of that age. To the common non-Catholic mmd the dignities ascribed to the Madonna have always been a violent offense; they are one of the parts of the Catholic faith which are open to reasonable dispute, and least comprehensive by the average realistic and materialistic temper of the Reformation. But, after the most careful examination, neither as adversary or friend, of the influence of Catholicity for good and evil, I am persuaded that the worship of the Madonna has been one of the noblest and most vital graces, and has never been otherwise than productive of true holiness of life and purity of character.

"There has probably not been an innocent cottage home throughout the length and breadth of Europe during the whole period of vital Christianity in which the imagined presence of the Madonna has not given sanctity to the humblest duties, and comfort to the sorest trials, of the lives of women; and every brightest and loftiest achievement of the arts and strength of manhood has been the fulfilment of the prophecy of the Israelite maiden: 'He that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is His Name.'"

Mary's name became a prayer upon the lips of every Irishman, and so it has remained to the present day. The domestic salutation even embraced the name of Mary. To this day, when giving utterance to their thoughts through the medium of the Irish language, they greet each other with those sweet words, "God and Mary be with you!" And the reply contains it as well, "God and Mary and Patrick be with you!"

The Poles called Mary the Great Queen, while Spain invokes her as the Immaculate Mother. England was styled by our forefathers Mary's Dowry, and France, Mary's Kingdom. Belgium placed the dear Images of Our Lady at the corners of all the streets in her towns, and Portugal made a decree ordering men to fast on Saturdays in her honor. In Hungary, as in Germany, great honors were decreed to Mary, while Italy may truly call itself the Blessed Mary's land, so full is it of churches and chapels dedicated to her. And in the United States there are over a thousand churches in honor of their glorious Patroness.

- Monsignor Bernard O'Reilly, D.D.,
- Dr. Lit. Laval,
- Prothonotary Apostolic.
- Mount Saint Vincent, June 20, 1903

- text taken from Heaven's Bright Queen, by William James Walsh