Our Lady, Salus populi Romani and Queen of Heaven
There has been much in the media recently about the principal image of Our Lady in Rome, Our Lady Salus populi Romani, whose history of veneration by the popes goes back to St Gregory the Great, who brought the image into Rome. But this is only one of the titles given to the image of Our Lady, and for much of its history, it has been known as the image of Our Lady, Regina caeli, the Queen of Heaven, the title by which we invoke the Mother of God so often during the Easter season.
This season is marked by this Marian antiphon in a way that the other seasons are not, because it even replaces the Angelus three times a day. So it seems worth taking a look at the text of it. It is shorter and simpler than the others. We don’t have the poetry of the Salve regina, where Eve’s exiled children mourn and weep in a vale of tears. We don’t have the clever Hebrew-Latin pun of the Alma redemptoris mater (Alma is both Latin for “kind” and Hebrew for “virgin”). In fact, the text is extremely straightforward:
O Queen of heaven rejoice! alleluia:
For he whom thou didst merit to bear, alleluia,
Hath arisen as he said, alleluia.
Pray for us to God, alleluia.
It seems we spend three quarters of this antiphon telling the Mother of God things she already knows. But we do that in all these antiphons, and not for her benefit. When we say, “Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy; hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope!”, we are reminding ourselves that Mary is merciful, and a consolation to us in this life. When we call her “clement, loving and sweet”, it’s not an empty compliment, but another reminder for us. In the same way, as we speak to Mary so many times a day throughout Eastertide, we are reminded that her Son is risen from the dead, as he foretold, and that we are joyful about it.
The last line is different. “Pray for us to God.” It’s not about Easter. We’re not telling her something that she already knows. We’re asking her to do something. Or…is it really that different? If we treat it in the same way as the first three lines, maybe we are telling the Queen of heaven to do something that she not only already knows but is already doing. This antiphon that we say and sing so many times throughout the season of Easter, then, is a joyful reminder of the Resurrection, and a joyful reminder that we have an advocate in heaven, looking out for us and pleading our cause, even as we go about our day and are busy with much more earthly things. Our Lady, Queen of heaven, pray for us.