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MARY, QUEEN OF THE APOSTLES
This is Mary's time

This is the time of the Regina Apostolorum.
There are many good things at this point in history, but there are also many bad things. Error is increasing; atheism has become official in entire nations; the stable bases of moral law are undermined; prayer is undervalued even by good people.
Pius XII said that we need to shore up the world's foundations. But in difficult times it is Mary who intervenes.
This is Mary's time; Mary invoked as Regina Apostolorum.
The word apostle, applied to the Twelve, means one who is sent, as a witness of Jesus, to take away sin, to make children of God; it is to dedicate oneself to this goal with all one's strength for the whole of one's life.
Mary was created for the apostolate to give Jesus Christ to the world: He who is the Way, the Truth and the Life; He who is Teacher, Priest,

and Victim, God! qui totum nos habere voluit per Mariam.¹
Jesus is the Apostle: Habemus pontificem et apostolum nostrum Jesum Christum² (Saint Paul).
Mary is the Apostle with Christ, in dependence on Christ, sharing in the apostolate with Christ.

The first of the devotions

Mary, Queen of the Apostles. This is the Church's first devotion.
Jesus wanted it: John, behold your Mother. In other words, John is to love, aid, and provide for her. Thus John accepit eam in sua.³ John represented the other Apostles. They venerated Mary as the Mother of Jesus, as their Mother; they learned from her example how to live the Gospel; they prayed with her when Jesus was no longer present with them: cum Maria, says the Sacred Text [Acts 1:14].
And Mary did help them; she consoled them in their difficulties; she revealed episodes of the private life of Jesus: the annunciation, the visitation to Elizabeth, the birth, the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, the flight into Egypt, the finding of Jesus in the Temple. Then the Evangelists wrote them down.
This is the time of the Regina Apostolorum. Today there is a multiplicity of apostolates; and we have the consoling reawakening of the apostolate of the laity.
Moreover, Mary has of late given

us an example of apostolate: how to combat Satan, how to establish the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
Let us recall:
- the apparition of Mary to Saint Catherine Labouré and the Miraculous Medal;
- the apparition of Mary to two children at La Salette;
- the apparition of Mary, the Immaculate Virgin, to Saint Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes;
- the apparition of Mary at Fatima.
In all these apparitions, declared to be authentic, Mary always asks for prayer. Prayer to vanquish sin and to follow her divine Son. These were the aims of the Redemption; the application of the Redemption has these same aims.
Mary is Coredemptrix. As she cooperated in the Redemption so she cooperates in its application.
Mary has an apostolic mission for all ages.

Let us form apostles with Mary as their guide

I see as helpful to repeat here what I wrote in December 1950, inviting everyone to consider our special devotion to Mary.
Note: this is the time of Mary, Queen of the Apostles.
And so:
Let us form Apostles! Let us give them Mary, Queen of the Apostles, as their support, comfort and guide. Let us reflect on humanity. Take an atlas of the world and color in the places that are Catholic, non-Catholic, Muslim, pagan, Buddhist, and so on. Then, among the Catholic

areas, where Christianity reigns in the family, in the school, in the nation's laws, in social relations, and so on, and those places where the baptized live an almost pagan life. A desolating spectacle! Only one fifth of the world's two billion two hundred million human beings enjoy all the benefits of the Catholic Church, which means all the benefits of the Redemption. There has to be a kind of pact: all the faithful for all the non-faithful; all the fervent for all the indifferent; all the Catholics for all the non-Catholics; all the apostolates for all the necessities.
But the redemption came through Mary, and this is the road marked out by God. We must follow it as did God. He willed and wills to give us everything through Mary. We cannot therefore act differently from what he has established
Of Mary, Saint Jerome says: No one was ever saved except through you, O Mother of God. No one receives the gift of God except through you, Mary, full of grace.

Why Mary is Queen

Mary is invoked as Queen of the Apostles and of every apostolate for four reasons:
1. Mary has accomplished and accomplishes everything that all the apostles accomplish together.
Every apostolate is a radiating Jesus Christ; it is to give something, if we can use the expression, of Jesus Christ. For example, doctrine with the apostolate of preaching, grace with the apostolate of the sacraments, formation,

with the apostolate of youth, and so on. Mary gave us the whole Christ, Way, Truth and Life. She is the apostle empowered by God; obviously with and through Christ the Apostle; just as she is Coredemptrix with Christ the Redeemer. And this for everyone: in the Mass the Victim comes to us from Mary, in Communion we receive the son of Mary, in the tabernacle dwells the son of Mary, in the priesthood is the living Christ, son of Mary, the Church is the mystical body of Christ, son of Mary. Every good that constitutes, or flows from, the Redemption came to us from Mary: without the Word nothing in the plan of creation; without Mary nothing in the plan of Redemption. We can add: nothing in the plan of sanctification! which is the communication of the grace of the Holy Spirit to each and every person. As Mary carried Jesus in her womb from the moment of the angel's words, so she bore the Church in her heart from the moment she heard her Son's words: Woman, behold your son. She carried the child Jesus in her arms; she carried the new-born Church in her arms.
Thus Jesus Christ began his apostolate in the wake of the miracle of Cana, which resulted from Mary's intervention; likewise the Church began its apostolate after the descent of the Holy Spirit, invoked for ten days by the Apostles with Mary.
Mary is the apostle: we share in the apostolate of Mary and of Jesus Christ a quo accepimus gratiam et apostolatum.⁴
2. Mary has the role of training Apostles in every age, giving them support and crowning them with success.

Mary plays a role in every good vocation. She chooses the best flowers in the Church's garden and brings them to Jesus. When our novitiates, studies and formation are all placed under the daily protection of Mary they will give better results. Our apostolates, in their wide-ranging variety, receive light, strength, integrity and surety if everything is consecrated to Mary. Take John the Evangelist: Jesus entrusted him explicitly to Mary; the youthful, loving, virginal John was in great need of a Mother. And the results? He was the Apostle who lived the longest; he was a martyr and yet died a natural death; he was an apostle and evangelist; he was the virgin and prophet of the Church who left us the Apocalypse and contemplated the great Woman: Signum magnum apparuit in coelo: Mulier amicta sole…⁵ This is the Assumption, Mary's crowning privilege and a consoling grace for us; Mary, universal mediatrix of grace. Let us take Mary to ourselves: Accepit eam in sua.⁶ Let us do as did Saint John.
3. Mary is Queen of the Apostles: because it is through her that we must work for the christianization of the world.
In his first encyclical Saint Pius X set out his program: Instaurare omnia in Christo,⁷ that is, the christianization of the world. He followed this up with another encyclical in which he indicated the way to attain this christianization. It was devotion to Mary, a sure way. He wrote: Who can fail to see that there is no surer and quicker road than Mary to unite everything in Christ and to bring about through him the perfect adoption of his

sons, so that we are all holy and immaculate in God's presence? He gives the following reasons:
a) Mary had faith and through this faith everything that was foretold was accomplished. Thus she became a sharer and guardian, as it were, of God's mysteries: on her, after Christ, rests the edifice of faith of all ages.
b) The Pope says: Since it pleased Divine Providence that we should have the Man-God through Mary, who bore him in her womb, no other way remains open to receive him than from the hands of Mary. This was how the Shepherds and the Magi found him.
c) Mary was the only one to have such a close-knit life and knowledge of Jesus. Therefore, given this knowledge, no one will be more influential than her to unite people to Jesus Christ. This is eternal life: to know God and his incarnate Son.
d) Mary is our spiritual Mother in a true, real and active sense. Jesus Christ, become man, is also our Saviour: Ipse enim salvum faciet populum a peccatis.⁸ Christ had a physical body and a mystical body, that is, the society of those redeemed by him. Mary became mother of both the head and of the members: Mother of the Church. And she provides for the Church and its members in conformity with her Heart, modelled on the merciful Heart of Jesus.
e) Mary not only gave a body to Jesus. Her role was to nourish, guard and present Jesus the Victim to the Father. The Pope concludes from this that she is coredemptrix,

mediatrix, conciliator, and minister in the distribution of grace; she is indeed the aqueduct of grace.
f) Saint Pius X concludes: From the home of Nazareth to Calvary Mary was the inseparable companion of Jesus; more than anyone else she knew the secrets of his Heart; and she administers with a mother's right, as it were, the treasures of his merits [Enc. Ad diem illum].
4. Queen of the Apostles because, apart from her general apostolates, she carried out particular apostolates and continues to do so.
In her earthly life she carried out the apostolate of the interior life, of prayer, of example, and of suffering.

The six apostolates carried out by Mary

The first apostolate is a well-practised interior life. The person who sanctifies himself is contributing to the whole Church, the mystical Body. For his part the holy person transfuses this body's circulation with a pure and immaculate blood. Because Mary is the holiest of creatures she contributed more than any other - apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins - to edify and make the Church beautiful and dynamic. The interior life is the soul of every apostolate.
Second apostolate: prayer. Saint James says: Pray for one another that you may be saved: since assiduous prayer has great power before God [Jas 5:16].
And Saint Paul: First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men… [since] this is good and acceptable in the sight of God… who desires all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth [1 Tim 2:1.3-4]. And Mary prayed more than all, better than all, for the needs of all.

Third apostolate: good example. Ut videant opera vestra et glorificent Patrem vestrum qui in coelis est.⁹ Someone wrote: A person who is holy, perfect and virtuous does far greater good to souls than many other people who, though educated and active, have less spirit. Example is silent preaching which starts from life and goes on reforming life.
If words simply come out of your mouth they will only resound in a person's ears. Mary is our example in theologal, cardinal and religious virtues.
Fourth apostolate: suffering. Jesus Christ redeemed the world especially through his passion and death: Quia per sanctam crucem et mortem tuam redemisti mundum.¹⁰ But there were two altars on Calvary: the cross of Jesus and the Heart of Mary. A spear pierced the Heart of Jesus; a sword pierced the soul of Mary. Fr Faber uses this expression: Suffering is the greatest sacrament. In truth it is that which gives value to the other sacraments. And all of us have so many sufferings to offer to the Lord in a spirit of apostolate.
Fifth apostolate: the word. Mary did not preach: but she certainly spoke with great charity and prudence at home and outside of it. Of her we have seven words that are true apostolate: the Magnificat being a special example. The Fathers tell us that it was Mary who revealed to Saint Luke the Gospel's infancy narratives. Even today every word of hers is light for contemplative souls.
Sixth apostolate: action. Mary's life before the Incarnation and during the thirty-three years passed with Jesus is an ongoing series of acts and deeds aimed at accomplishing her mission,

her great apostolate. In the days following Jesus's Ascension, in the Cenacle, and during the period of early opposition and uncertainty when the Church was taking its first steps, it was Mary who consoled, comforted and encouraged the Apostles. No Catholic woman will accomplish among women such activity, zeal and instruction as did Mary among the women and young pious disciples of her Divine Son - right up to the end of her earthly mission.

Mary's apostolate in heaven

Assumed body and soul into heaven, Mary became the universal Mediatrix of grace.
She defended the Church from every error, as one day she had saved the child Jesus from the snares of Herod. In the age of the great heresies, in times when error spread in more subtle ways, in the 16th century and on up to Modernism, the Church says of her: Cunctas haereses interemisti in universo mundo.¹¹
She defended the Church from external enemies, as during the period of the great persecutions; the invasions of the barbarians, the spread of Islam, and the snares of Napoleon… and with certain faith we hold that she will defend the universal Church in this important time. She is Our Lady of Victories.
In those periods in history when there was a reawakening of devotion to Mary, humanity immediately followed this up with a more decisive orientation towards Jesus Christ.

Mary is the refuge of sinners, consoler of the afflicted, and hope of the dying.
Mary is the defender of the innocent, the mother of good vocations, the guardian of the people and of the Roman Pontificate.
Following Mary's example and grace women, weak beings, have become virgins, martyrs, apostles, and heroines of charity.

You who work…

You who work with such zeal in the various apostolates, choose Mary as your guide, light and comfort. Do not deprive yourselves of such great help to combat alone enemies who are ever more daring and cunning. Place your complete trust in Mary. Do not go into battle without the arms of the Rosary. Your zeal will become ever more supernatural, prudent, triumphant.
You who desire to bring everyone to the Lord and to eternal salvation, instil true devotion to Mary in every person, family, and region, in the Church and in the world. The outcome on every occasion will be just as it was for the first people who went in search of Jesus: the shepherds and the Magi found the Child in Mary's arms.

Correct idea of the apostle

An Apostle is one who bears God within and radiates him everywhere.
An Apostle is a holy person who stores up treasures; and bestows the surplus on others.

The Apostle has a loved-filled heart for God and for his fellow humans; he cannot restrain and hold back what he feels and thinks.
The Apostle is a vessel of election which overflows, and people rush to slake their thirst.
The Apostle is a temple of the Holy Trinity which is working in him at full power. In the words of one writer, he is a person who sweats God from his pores with his words, his works, his prayers, his gestures, his attitude; in public and in private; from the whole of his being.
Inhale God! Exhale God!

Praise to Mary Queen of the Apostles

Let us make our own the praise that Saint Cyril of Alexandria gives to Mary: Because of you the Trinity is glorified; the precious cross is adored and exalted throughout the world; heaven exults, angels and archangels rejoice; devils are cast out and man himself is raised up to heaven; because of you all those entwined in the error of idolatry came to knowledge of the truth; people were led to Baptism and the Church spread throughout the world. With your help nations turned to penitence; because of you the only begotten Son of God, true light, enlightened those who were in darkness and the shadow of death. Because of you the prophets announced salvation and the Apostles proclaimed it to all.

Conclusion: Let us form Apostles and let us give them Mary as their guide.