Saint Augustine - 28 August

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430)

As Dominicans we mention three saints in our formula of profession, Mary, Dominic and Augustine. Of course if the provincial of the day or the Master of the Order turns out to be a saint then we mention one or two more, but we are unlikely to be around to see them raised to the glories of the altar.

We make profession according to the rule of Blessed Augustine. It is the first part of the contract we make with each other in the Order, to live together according to this rule, one of the shortest of the monastic rules and the one chosen by St Dominic for his new community of brothers. Just as Augustine, as someone has put it, ‘exceeds all other theologians in the consistency and clarity with which he makes caritas, love, the focal point of the Christian life, so too the whole of life in the religious community that lives by his rule is to be a living expression of Christian love’.

Love which remains forever is to prevail in everything, the Rule says in its fifth chapter. The opening statement of the Rule – at least in the Latin edition of our Constitutions: in the recent English translation this first sentence has disappeared – is that before all else we are to love God and then our neighbour, for these are the chief commandments given to us. So the first thing our rule asks of us is nothing more, and nothing less, than observance of the great commandment in which Jesus summarised the whole of the law.

Augustine’s moral theology is centred on charity, love. His understanding of the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude is that they are different expressions of love. In different situations and circumstances what is asked of love is that it be just or temperate, prudent or courageous, but it is all basically love. It is as if he sides with Socrates in agreeing that there is one fundamental virtue to which all others can be reduced, wisdom for Socrates now baptised to become caritas or love for St Augustine.

In his commentary on the first letter of John, Augustine at one point says ‘love and do what you will’. Sometimes people assume that he must have said ‘love God and do what you will’ but he actually says ‘love and do what you will’. Of course he meant that one who loves truly must end up loving God and neighbour. ‘Let love’s root be within you’ is how he concludes this section of his homily (In I John VII.8), ‘and from that root nothing but good can spring’. Because St John says in that first letter that God is love, Augustine concluded that love is the surest guide and the most reliable criterion for us in seeking to follow Christ. He was convinced that love in the true sense is from God and leads to God.

It was their life of love together that impressed Augustine when he visited Christian religious communities soon after his conversion. He writes of them that: 

Love before all else is practised there. It is the norm for food and speech, dress and one’s entire behaviour. All are united in a single love, all breathe a single love. An offence against love is regarded as an offence against God; anything that is opposed to love is rejected and cast out; if anything offends against love, it is not allowed to remain for even a day. For they know that love is so emphasised by Christ and the apostles that if it is lacking, everything else is in vain, and if it is present everything else is made perfect (The Catholic Way of Life, 33.7). 

The Rule by which we live is very practical too in matters of food and clothing, work and companionship, and all at the service of love. For Augustine love is the rule of faith both in matters of doctrine and in matters of practice. Echoing 1 Corinthians 13 he says: 

All may sign themselves with the sign of Christ, all may answer Amen, all may sing Alleluia, all may receive baptism and enter the church … the difference between the children of God and the children of Satan is love alone. Those who possess love are born of God. Those who do not possess it are not born of God … Without it everything else is useless, no matter what you have; it suffices by itself, even if you have nothing else (On I John 5.7). 

This brings home to us even more sharply what Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 13: I may sign myself with the sign of the cross, I may answer Amen and sing Alleluia, I may receive baptism and enter the church, I may even take vows of religion and promise to live according to the rule of Blessed Augustine and the institutes of the Friars Preachers – but if I am without love then I gain nothing and I am nothing.

As regards doctrine Augustine is equally clear and consistent in referring to the great commandment as the rule of our faith. In his work On Christian Doctrine Augustine has this to say: 

If it seems to anyone that he has understood the divine scriptures, or any part of them, in such a way that by that understanding he does not build up that double love of God and of neighbour, he has not yet understood them (De Doctrina Christiana I, XXXVI, 40). 

Here is a first principle of biblical interpretation. Even the letter of the gospel kills, Augustine says elsewhere, if the healing grace of faith is not present within.

So the first thing our Rule does is send us straight back to the gospel and to the heart of the gospel. Our life is all about growing in the love of God and neighbour. We are here because we believe that this is where we are called to follow Christ. To follow Christ means to love God and our neighbour. And it is here that we must practise this, do it, and become better at it. It is not at some future time, in another situation, with different people, that we might grow in charity. It is here and now, in this community and with these people, that it must be done or it will not be done at all.

The Rule of St Augustine concludes: 

The Lord grant you the grace to observe all these things as lovers of spiritual beauty, the good life you share together rich with the good fragrance of Christ, the life no longer of slaves under a law, but of free people established under grace.

Saint Monica - 27 August

The Mother of Saint Augustine

Among the many personalities who appear in the course of Augustine’s life no one gets more space or more affection in his Confessions than does Monica, his mother. An intellectual reading of that work often omits Book Nine, more than half of which is an account of Monica’s life, her influence on him, and her death and funeral at Ostia. ‘I am passing over many things because time is short’, Augustine himself says, ‘but I will not pass over anything that my soul brings forth concerning that servant of yours who brought me forth from her flesh to birth in this temporal light, and from her heart to birth in light eternal’.

Augustine is as honest in recounting his memories of his mother’s life as he is in recounting those of his own. God’s providence used an angry servant to give Monica a shock which saved her from becoming even more addicted to alcohol than she was as a young woman. Her strategy for dealing with her unfaithful and potentially violent husband was to see him always in the light of God, to give him the example of her own way of living, and to wait patiently and mercifully for his conversion to the faith and so to chastity. (One wonders how like his father Augustine might have thought – and perhaps feared – he himself was.) Monica used the same virtues of devotion, patience and gentleness to win over her mother-in-law whose relationship with her was being poisoned by others in the household. Instructed by God in the school of her heart, Monica acted as a peacemaker and reconciler when tensions and hatreds exploded between people. The way in which Augustine speaks about this makes one think of Monica as a saint for our time, one who was able to chart a steady course through a sea of malicious gossip, lying slander and angry people. In the immediate aftermath of Augustine’s conversion Monica took care of him and his friends ‘as though all had been her children and she served us as though she had been the daughter of all’.

Most famously Augustine and Monica get locked down in Ostia, trying to find a boat to get back to North Africa, but hindered by a war which effectively shut down the port. Together they talk about eternal life and what it would be like. There follows the kind of intellectual / spiritual ascent which is familiar from other places in Augustine’s writings, ‘lifting off’ from the beauty of the cosmos, travelling ‘by inward thought and wondering discourse beyond the summit of our own minds, to touch the land of never-failing plenty where God pastures Israel for ever with the food of truth. That Life is the Wisdom through whom all things were made and, says Augustine, as we talked and panted for her (Wisdom) ‘we just touched the edge of it by the utmost leap of our hearts’. Sighing and unsatisfied ‘we left the first-fruits of our spirit captive there and returned to the noise of articulate speech’. And how beautiful that articulate speech is as Augustine takes off again into one of the most poetic passages in the Confessions, retracing the ascent to Wisdom and speaking of how desirable it is.

Monica, perhaps getting a bit concerned at the other-worldliness of her son’s discourse (and Augustine himself says ‘well I didn’t actually use those exact words in that moment’) is characteristically concrete and concerned for others: she has now received the last gift for which she had prayed, she says, to see Augustine a Catholic Christian before she died. ‘What now keeps me here?’, she asks. Five days later she became ill, Augustine and his brother were distraught, hoping that she might survive to return to Africa and be buried there alongside her husband. But she said it did not matter and in words that have become classic in Catholic piety concerning the dead added ‘one thing only do I ask of you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be’. ‘Nothing is far from God’, she said, ‘There is no danger that at the end of the world he will not know where to find me and raise me up’.

What a contrast the practical mother is in these last moments compared with her ever so intellectual son who is immediately thrown into a fierce inner conflict as he tries to contain the grief that fills him. He was profoundly displeased to find how powerfully he could be affected by these human experiences! What a consolation to us that he was so powerfully affected – the practical wisdom of our time would simply say to him ‘let it out, let the tears flow’. He thinks a bath might help but it doesn’t. Sleep does though and some words of Saint Ambrose which he recalls as he falls asleep: ‘I went to sleep and on awakening felt a good deal better’. It brings to mind an earlier moment in his journey when God soothed his head (the Latin term is the one used to describe a mother turning her infant towards her breast) and closed his eyes, he slept in God and woke to a new vision of things (Confessions VII 14.20). There it seems to have a deeper significance, a moment of insight or realisation about the reality of God. Here it seems more like a more ordinary human breakthrough as Augustine finally gives himself up to tears, though privately, in the presence of God alone. ‘If only humans would acknowledge that they are human’, he says, which is a bit rich considering the effort he was making not to cry and the efforts his friends were presumably making to help him acknowledge the very same thing, that he too was a member of the human race!

And he finishes with a wonderful prayer for his mother, that the Lord will be merciful to her, and to his father, as he asks all those who read his Confessions to join him in praying for them.

As we remember Saint Monica we remember those we have loved and who have died, and in a particular way our mothers, who from their flesh brought us to birth in this temporal light and who from their hearts would bring us to birth in the eternal light.

I have used the very beautiful translation of Augustine's Confessions done by Sister Maria Boulding OSB and published by New City Press, New York in 1997.

Week 21 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-10,16-18; Psalm 128; Matthew 23:27-32

One of the best known of the Monty Python sketches is the one about the Ministry for Funny Walks. A translation in the first reading today might seem to be objecting to such a Ministry, as Paul encourages the Thessalonians to shun any brother 'who walks in a disorderly way'. Other translations say 'walking in idleness' or 'living a disorderly life'. 'Walking' is a term used elsewhere in the New Testament to speak about a way of living - 'walk in love,' for example, we read in Ephesians 5:2. the other term used here, and translated either as 'disorderly' or 'in idleness', seems to be closer in meaning to disordered or undisciplined. It is presumably what follows that leads translators to identify idleness as the particular form of disorder involved here.

The reason for the idleness is the issue considered earlier in 2 Thessalonians. Some were saying that the day of the Lord had already come and so, with a certain reasonableness, some had already hung up their boots and packed away their tools. What was the need to work if the world was coming to an end?

It is an approach we might be tempted to take for other reasons, a kind of giving up on the world. One sometimes hears of people who decide not to have children because the world is in such a terrible state that it would be wrong to oblige children to live in it. One might be tempted not to engage in the political process, for example, on seeing the alternatives on offer and finding them all unsatisfactory. One might be tempted to become cynical about all teachers and religions, perhaps drawing on Jesus' words in Matthew 23 as he condemns the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. And there may be other reasons also ... the threat of war, the future of the planet, the persistence of the covid virus, increasing violence in speech and action ...

As with yesterday's advice from Jesus - get down to cleaning the inside of the cup first - Paul's advice to the Thessalonians may seem too small for the big problems just mentioned. In fact it is omitted from the first reading as it is given to us in the lectionary! Edited out ... What Paul says to those tempted to 'walk in a disorderly way', to give up on their engagement in this world and its problems, is that they should go on quietly working and earning their own living (2 Thessalonians 3:12). They are not to grow weary of doing what is good (v.13).

It brings to mind the 'little way' of Saint Therese of Lisieux, that surprising Doctor of the Church. What is important, she teaches us, is not what you have to do today so much as the love with which you can do it. There are many huge challenges and questions for the world today. There are many huge challenges and questions for the Church today. It can all seem too much at times - unsettling, overwhelming, paralysing. Let us continue, with God's grace, to walk in an orderly way, with our eyes fixed on the goal which is Christ, doing every ordinary thing with love. Walking in that way we can be sure that we are following Him and in doing so we are preparing the ground for the kingdom that is coming. For it is also true that the Kingdom of God is very near to us.

Week 21 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3a,14-17; Psalm 96; Matthew 23:23-26

We might think that apocalyptic language belongs to another place and time, that it is a way of speaking that is so foreign to us and requires so much interpretation that it is nearly impossible for us to find in it a message for ourselves that is not either far-fetched at best, crazy at worst. But the current political discourse in the United States of America is becoming ever more apocalyptic.

We are accustomed for some time now to the 'right wing' tribe using this language. There is a great battle under way, we are told, between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Obviously those who identify with this tribe regard themselves as belonging to the forces of good. Ranged against them are those who identify - or whom they identify - with the other tribe, 'the left', Democrats, liberals, lefties, and something called 'the deep state'.

Now it seems that this other tribe has joined them, at least in agreeing with this Manichean view of the world. 'The left' has begun to speak also about a great battle under way between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Except - presumably - that now it is they who belong to the forces of good and the right-wing tribe - or those whom they identify as belonging to it - represents the forces of evil.

Saint Paul, in the first reading of today's Mass, tells the Thessalonians not to be alarmed or shaken out of their minds by such apocalyptic language. 'The day of the Lord has come', 'the end is nigh', 'the great battle of Armageddon is underway' - this is always the burden of such language. Its plausibility in our present moment is strengthened by the plague that has paralysed the world. But, says Paul, you must rely instead on the traditions you have received through the preaching of the apostles. Look to Jesus to encourage your hearts and to strengthen them in every good deed and word.

In the gospel reading we find Jesus himself speaking about the same thing. Don't be deceived by the purveyors of myths promoted to support people's quest for power and don't be deceived by the razzmatazz and the gaudy presentation they make of themselves.  Jesus is speaking in the first place to the Pharisees, the religious party to which he was closest. Forget about presentation which is always more or less hypocritical and focus instead on the weightier things - judgement, mercy and fidelity. Good deeds and words originate inside human beings and do not come from outside. Strive to see clearly and to find teachers and leaders who see clearly regarding these matters of judgement, mercy and fidelity. Far too often our teachers and leaders are more or less blinded by their own interests, their own prejudices, their own desires - they are more or less blind guides.

John Hume, a political leader respected by all who know about him, died recently. He was someone who tried to be a teacher and guide who could see not just the prejudices nursed, the injustices  suffered, and the aspirations sought by his own tribe, but to see those things in the other tribe as well. He sought to see beyond such definitions, to a common humanity which everybody, in more or less distorted ways, was trying to serve. The most difficult change to bring about, John Hume said, is the change in human hearts.

As the pressure mounts for us to 'choose sides' in the great battle - which side of the tennis court are you on, left or right? - it is salutary to remember that both the left and the right have carried their fears and oppression of others to the point of establishing concentration camps. Whether you end up in one or the other does not seem to make much difference in the end, the way you will be treated by your fellow human beings will be much the same.

Obviously something else is needed, another vantage point from which to survey the battlefield. However seeking another vantage point seems to lead, sooner or later, to the hill of Calvary. It was from that our crucified Lord surveyed the human scene, taking on himself all its fears and cruelties, to break down the wall of hostility that divides humanity into tribes, to make both one by the shedding of his innocent blood (the only truly innocent blood?).

But he gives us today a first direction with which we can begin even today: 'cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean.' Is it too gentle for a world which is physically violent in many places, and already so violent in language in so many more?

Saint Bartholomew - 24 August

Readings: Revelation 21:9b-14; Psalm 145; John 1:45-51

We celebrate today the feast of the Apostle Bartholomew, identified with Nathanael in John's gospel. The two readings we've heard are both wonderful works of theological imagination or at least are readings that appeal to the imagination. The vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb coming down out of heaven, angels, gates, the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, foundation stones, the names of the twelve Apostles.

The gospel reading then refers to a strange story. We don't know what it was that Jesus and Nathanael were talking about when they referred to what happened under the fig tree. But then Jesus ends with this more wonderful thing, that they will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. It evokes the story of Jacob's dream in the book of Genesis where he had a vision in his dream of the angels of God ascending and descending. He awoke to say this truly is the gate of heaven, the house of God.

It evokes also that wonderful prayer in Isaiah chapter 63 and 64, 'oh that you would rend the heavens and come down', a prayer which is answered at the baptism of Jesus when we're told in Matthew's gospel that the heavens opened.

People often long for an imagined enchantment which they think the world has lost. Perhaps we just grow up and lose the ability which we had as children to be amazed and filled with wonder at all that we are encountering. But it is often said now that the world is no longer an enchanted place; that it has been emptied of supernatural and preternatural beings; that it has been reduced to a machine at the disposal of human beings and so therefore of our manipulation and exploitation. It leads people to saying that perhaps there is life elsewhere in the universe, perhaps there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. People talk about angels frequently in the context of New Age spirituality and so on. Fantasy literature is very popular, so too science fiction, and perhaps other more sinister ways of trying to escape from a world that seems too ordinary too banal too one-dimensional through drugs and so on - all of this we can see as a nostalgia for a sense of the infinite beauty of God.

We believe that God is the creator of all things visible and invisible, in other words things that come within the range of our vision as well as things that he has created which are beyond the range of our vision. It means sthe angelic world and perhaps other worlds beyond our imagination are needed to reflect adequately the infinite beauty of God. The angels remind us of this, that God is not simply our size and our shape, not simply 'our' God limited to our perception and understanding and experience but infinitely powerful infinitely wise infinitely holy and creative and imaginative. It means there might yet be things to be revealed as there are many things to be learned about God.

This is the question which people I think are considering when they talk about intelligent life elsewhere or express nostalgia for the angels or give themselves over to fantasy or science fiction. All that we need to know about God's creation has been revealed to us, all that we need to know for our salvation for our coming into union with God through Christ and what we've learned about the angels helps us to know where we fit within this plan of God. Within this creation the angels set boundaries to our nature and to our situation.

They direct us. Raphael, for example, is an archangel who directs people along the right road. The archangel Gabriel gives guidance and teaching. The archangel Michael gives protection. It was a great tradition in mediaeval Christendom to place Michael at the boundaries of Christendom to set him as the protector of the limits and the boundaries. All those wonderful places like Skellig Michael in Ireland or Mont Saint-Michel. Michael was always the one who protected the boundaries of the Christian Commonwealth.

So the angels help us to know where we are they give us direction and guidance and protection they also help us to appreciate that we are not angels. This is a great danger especially in modern times that we think of ourselves as spiritual beings trapped or for the moment residing in bodies and this of course is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the human animal is, the living human animal. Thomas Aquinas talks about the living human animal as the image of God. The angels may be more perfect images of God in what is primarily involved in that -  rationality and intelligence and freedom - but he says that human beings are fuller images of God and they are fuller images of God because they are animals. Human beings have bodies and the presence of the soul throughout the body for example, and the way in which the soul and body cannot be separated, help us to understand something about the presence of God throughout creation. The fact that human beings reproduce their kind teaches us something and images something about God's generativity God's fertility and creativeness which the angels are not able to image or represent within creation.

So the angels are helpful to us in that they keep us in our place they set the boundaries they help us to understand something about our own nature and not to fall into that very common but deeply mistaken belief that we are somehow ourselves angels trapped in bodies. Christ of course is always at the centre of our experience of God and our understanding of redemption and salvation. Christ Jesus of Nazareth our brother who is our teacher the Son of God the King of Israel one like the Son of Man the Lamb. The angels ascend and descend on him.

Everything in these texts is towards Christ, places Christ at the centre. He is the Lamb and this city is his bride. He is the one on whom the angels of God are ascending and descending. So the angels are preachers as Saint Augustine puts it, they are witnesses pointing us towards God teaching us something about God leading us towards God protecting us on our way to Go. Now it is Christ who is at the centre of this experience, this root, this road, this way to God for us who are the firstborn of creation, the firstborn from the dead.

You can listen here to a homily for the feast of St Bartholomew

Week 21 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 22:19-23; Psalm 137 (138); Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20

In the Latin church the predominant interpretation of this gospel reading has been juridical and legal. In St Peter's Basilica you will find it high up around the cupola, the key text (pardon the pun) for the power of the keys given to Peter and in support of the Church's understanding of the role of Peter's successor in the government of the Church. There is good reason for this traditional interpretation as we see also from the first reading. A certain Eliakim is appointed majordomo of the royal palace and the tool of his office is the key he is given. It is a familiar reality: the one who has the key to open doors has authority and power, or at least has access and influence with those in authority and in power. The unlikely rock on which Christ builds his Church, Simon Peter, is given the keys of the kingdom of heaven. He has no authority or power apart from Christ but he is given access and influence, as well as delegated powers to bind and loose not just on earth but in heaven as well. However we interpret the text it is an extraordinary declaration.

The conversation between Jesus and Peter has other aspects to it. They are becoming friends and the key to the heart of one's friend is love. It is a personal encounter between them, not just a doctrinal interrogation or a juridical delegation. As they spend more and more time together Jesus and Peter are coming to know each other more and more. Jesus already knows all that is in Peter, the strengths and limitations of his personality and character, and Peter is coming to know more and more about Jesus. The question is not 'what do you say I am' but 'who do you say I am'. It is a matter of personal knowledge, and therefore involves the kind of faith and love that are always part of the personal knowledge between friends.

'You are like this', 'you are like that': it is familiar language between friends and lovers, parents and children. It is part of the gift of friendship that we can allow our hearts to be opened by the key of love, by the trust our friend shows in us, and we come to know ourselves better in the light of his or her love. Likewise for him or her. We are encouraged in our gifts and received kindly in our weaknesses. 'You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God', Peter says. His knowledge and understanding of Jesus have grown and deepened to this point. What Jesus was to be in the future - well that remains hidden from Peter for the moment as we will see when we read on in Matthew 16, for within a few verses Jesus is calling him 'Satan' as Peter once again gets the wrong end of the stick. But Jesus does know what Peter can be in the future. 'You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church'. Sometimes this is what happens in ordinary human friendships also: we see our friend's heart, her gifts and limitations, but also possibilities that perhaps she does not see. Imagine a parent encouraging a son or daughter, seeing what they might yet be, when the son or daughter is impeded by fear or lack of confidence or some rejection by others.

The key of love unlocks the heart of persons and allows the one who loves them to see who they are and what they might yet be. When it is Jesus we are talking about - the Christ, the Son of the Living God - then obviously he sees more deeply than anyone else what is in human hearts. Because of who he is he can also create and transform, placing in us gifts and strengths that we did not suspect before. We can imagine him speaking also to us, then, and saying 'You are John and in the future ....', 'You are Mary and in the future ...' - what might he have in mind for us for the future? We must remain open for that, ask him to make it known to us as he made it known to Peter. We may not fully grasp it at first as Peter does not fully grasp it but it keeps us in relationship with Jesus and it sets us on our way.

Jesus refers to us already in today's gospel for he speaks of Peter and his faith, his friendship with Jesus, as the rock 'on which I will build my church'. We can at least take strength from that since, poor as we are, we are already His church, built on the foundation of Peter's relationship with him and called (as the first letter of Peter puts it) to be 'living stones making a spiritual house' (1 Peter 2:5).

In thanking God for His many gifts, in particular for the gift of His Son, we pray that we will have the courage to allow Him to open our hearts with the key of His love (as He has already opened His heart to us with the key of His love), to speak to us there, to tell us who it is he knows us to be and especially to hear from Him what it is He knows we might yet be. All for God's glory, for the service of the Church, and for our salvation.

Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary - 22 August

Readings: Isaiah 9.1-6; Ps 112(113); Luke 1.26-38

With the readings chosen for today's memory we seem to back (or already arrived?!) at Christmas. the opening line of the first reading - 'the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light' - is practically the official opening of the celebration of Christmas for it also opens the same first reading at the Midnight Mass of Christmas. The gospel reading is Luke's account of the annunciation, a reading we hear a few times each year but one which is also very much a reading of the Christmas season.

Today the focus is on the royal status of the central figures in these readings. Jesus, the Lord Incarnate, is a king of the House of David but one whose kingdom will never end. The child celebrated in the first reading is the good king Hezekiah, the child born of the young woman and promised to King Ahaz in Isaiah 7. His birth meant a time of blessing for God's people and a reassurance that the covenant made with David was continuing.

The mother of the king is an important figure in the Biblical histories of the royal family in Israel. She is a queen but also the most important woman in the Davidic court. Mary now takes up this position as the woman closest to the king. And just as Jesus is a king of a very different kind - ruler of a kingdom of justice, love and peace - Mary is a queen of a very different kind, a queen after her son's heart.

The queen mother remained always with the king, the first to be named after him whenever the members of his court are listed. Last weekend we celebrated Mary's assumption into heaven, a new fulfilment of that relationship. Now she is the first person mentioned after the king when the members of the heavenly court are listed.

Today we celebrate this fact, that she is queen of heaven and earth, the queen in the court of the Eternal King. Just as she stayed with him throughout his public ministry, through his passion and in the moment of his death, so she stays with him now, participating fully already in the glory of the resurrection.

A new kind of king, then, a new kind of queen, and so a new kind of people in that kingdom where everyone is 'a first born son and a citizen of heaven' (Hebrews 12.23). The royal status of Jesus and Mary is shared with all who are brought within the embrace of his grace. We belong to a royal priesthood, privileged to offer the perfect sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

The dignity human beings have by nature is strengthened and transformed by the dignity they have as sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father. Mary is the first such child and so is for us an exemplar, showing what we are called to be, and an ever present help for us in striving to live up to our new dignity. We rightly call her Queen and Mother, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, Queen of Heaven and earth, Queen of All Saints and Queen of Peace.