Queen of Heaven, Pray for Us!


Catherine Fournier

Domestic-Church.Com - Editorial - Queen of Heaven 1998

I know it's a cliche to open by referring to a Gospel, but I'm going to do it anyway, because this week's Gospel - about Mary and Martha - is just such a perfect opening for this issue. As the Gospel story goes, Jesus has come for a visit. One sister is busy preparing a meal for the guests, finding cushions to sit on and water for their feet, bustling about, taking care of all the important details. The other sister is sitting at Christ's feet, listening to Him speak, engrossed and entranced by what she hears, completely ignoring her 'duty' to help her sister serve their guests. Jesus says that she has made the better choice and no-one should take it from her.

Mary and Martha made choices. They each decided to follow a particular course of service to God. The Virgin Mary made a choice with her momentous 'Fiat.' The women of Bethany decided to defy the soldiers and stay at the foot of the cross.

Choosing a vocation - a way to serve God in your life - is probably the biggest and most important decision that we make, but once that choice is made, it is quickly followed by thousands more. Our lives are filled with questions and choices all determined and in some sense guided by that first decision.

My husband and I faced a difficult decision last week, when our youngest child was injured on a canoeing trip. We had to determine the severity of the injury ( a thumb smashed between two rocks) and balance the necessity for medical attention against everyone's disappointment over cutting our trip short. Then we had to decide whether to travel through the heat of the day and into the night, or to wait until the next morning to leave our campsite.

As it turned out, Robert was finally treated for a compound fracture of his thumb more than 48 hours after the injury had taken place. We faced many questions, some skepticism of our story and criticisms of our decision from the personnel at the local Children's Hospital.

But we were confident that we had made the right decisions, that only we knew all the circumstances, that we were adequately prepared with first aid knowledge and a good first aid kit (see or Health column about First Aid), that we had given our son and the rest of the family the best care possible under the circumstances. Eventually the questions stopped.

As a result of her decision, her 'Fiat', Mary was assumed into Heaven and crowned as its Queen. We are honouring those events in this issue of Domestic-Church.Com, and at the same time we will be recognizing the choices, decisions, sacrifices and suffering that lead to her coronation.

We all face similar decisions and sacrifices in our lives, we're all called to say 'Thy Will be done, Lord." In the grace of state of our vocation, that first choice, with an educated mind and an informed conscience, we must make decisions everyday. At the same time we know, as Mary knew, that all things are in God's hands.

In this issue we'll be looking at some of those decisions; the vocation of marriage and annulments, raising and teaching our children about our Faith, discerning what to do about vaccines, religious art in the home, choosing toys, devotions and sacramentals. May the Queen of Heaven watch over us, guide us and pray for us as we live our daily lives and decide every minute to say 'Fiat, Lord, let it be done to me according to Your will."

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