The Lay Dominicans of the Queen of the Holy Rosary Chapter will be posting meditations for the fifteen Tuesdays leading up to the feast of our Father Dominic on August 8th.   See here for more information on the 15 Tuesdays devotion.

It has been a long-standing tradition since the early Church that the Virgin Mary was Crowned Queen of Heaven.  As Christ is the King, so Mary is the Queen Mother. The Blessed Virgin has been pictured wearing a crown for centuries.  A painting following the victory at the Battle of Lepanto shows Mary with a resplendent Crown and a sword leading the victorious Holy League against the Ottoman Turks in 1571.  Before the battle, Pope Pius V had ordered that all the Churches of Rome be opened and that all of Rome recite the Rosary continuously. The battle was won and the Turkish ambition temporarily thwarted.  Pope Pius V instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victory which is known today, Our Lady of the Rosary. Mary was described as a Queen by Pope Sixtus IV, Benedict XIV and St. Alphonsus Liguori stated that since she was the mother of the King of Kings, Mary had the right to be honored with the title of Queen.

As Queen, Mary taught our Father Dominic the Rosary as a weapon against evil and heresy.   In depictions of that event, St. Dominic is always kneeling as he receives the Rosary, honoring her, as a Queen and teacher.  We too receive the blessings from our Blessed Mother when we pray the Rosary which we have learned from our Father Dominic. It  is a gift we can all add to our daily prayer life and as we meditate on the Mysteries we are able to relive the life, sacrifice and triumph of Jesus.  The Crowning of Mary is not the end of the story of Jesus. Rather it is the culmination of Redemption, where creation is not only restored to the glory it possessed before the fall but raised to new heights.