Eventide & Altar

Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring out of the earth and justice shall look down from heaven.

The psalm is painting what the world looks like when the glory of the Lord has returned and made its dwelling. These qualities cannot coexist in a world organized around the Pharisees' model - where everything is performed for visibility, where burdens are laid but not lifted, where the seat of honor is what is sought. They arrive when the glory comes home to the house that received it without claiming credit.

Mary received the Word and called herself the handmaid. The Magnificat she sang before her son was born is still her testimony: he has scattered the proud in their conceit, cast down the mighty from their thrones, lifted up the lowly. She sang this as a statement of fact about what God does when the glory returns.

The servant-greatest Jesus describes in the Gospel is the inversion that makes kindness and truth meet. The widow who gives two coins. The woman who sweeps until the coin is found. The younger son's father who runs. These are the movements of the servant who does not wait for credit.

A long life of service that has not sought the credit accumulates something the Pharisees' model cannot produce. The person who has served without performing it has something in the interior that the performer does not. Mary wore the crown because she never reached for it. Tonight's feast says: that is available to you too.

The Joyful Mysteries - the servant's path. The annunciation, the visitation, the birth in the stable, the presentation, the finding in the temple. Pray them on the Queenship feast, in gratitude for the servant-queen who walked this path and for the crown that came at the end of it.

• For those who have served without being seen, who have borne what others laid on them without lifting a finger - that the servant-queen would see them and intercede, we pray to the Lord.
• For those in whom kindness and truth are meeting, justice and peace kissing - in gratitude for the places in our lives where this is real, we pray to the Lord.
• On her Queenship feast, for Mary's intercession from the place she has been exalted, for all who call on her from the evening of their lives, we pray to the Lord.

Place a flower or small crown near Mary's image tonight. Say: Mary, servant-queen, you are our Queen. From where you have been exalted, pray for us who are still on our way.

Then pray one decade of the Joyful Mysteries on her feast, slowly. Let her path into the crown be the prayer.