With this Thursday’s feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a question: Is your home under the queenship of Mary? And how might that look?  

In the third week of the month, we turn our focus with you to Household Economy, Level 3 of your Trinity House. With back-to-school weeks ahead, you are probably looking at some lengthy to-do lists, maybe a little anxiety about the seasonal transition, and dare we say it, fellow parents, even some relief to be returning to the school calendar.

So it’s an apt moment to survey what’s going on within the four walls of our homes, and turn our eyes to the Queenship of our Blessed Mother. Under our Queen’s guidance, we have the opportunity to turn anew to the inner life of our homes. She was, after all, the tabernacle of God’s Word made flesh. And together with Joseph, she raised him in the “silent” years of our Savior’s upbringing in Nazareth.

Take this mundane moment. With our home full again to capacity this summer (wow, seven quite big people in this small place!), and with a good crowd present at breakfast, lunch, and dinner (how many depending on a dizzying flow of camps, houseguests, vacations, and internships!), our kitchen has often looked like a tornado just came through.

On the one hand, it’s been exhausting. But on the other hand, we’ve smiled and recognized that we just never found the bandwidth to lock down chore expectations for such a brief season. Instead, this summer has been about emphasizing family time, and surrendering some of our need for order.

Now that two college kids are heading out again and three teens are revving up for their first day of school, we are back to thinking about how things are working in the home. Having a home under the Queenship of Our Lady can suggest certain attributes and practices. Here are a few to ponder:

• With Mary, we can internalize the words of her Magnificat, with cascading blessings for our marriage and family.
• With Mary, we can be ever more aware that our home is a “tabernacle of the Word.”
• With Mary’s peace, we can establish our homes more and more in the peace of Christ.
• With Mary, we value silence and humility, “treasuring and pondering” things in our heart.
• We can honor our Queen with little acts of charity around the home,recalling how she continually points us to Jesus.
• Under her Queenship, we can rest and receive the inestimable gift of our marriage and family.  
• Like a prayer partner or a friend with a gift for intercessory prayer, we can turn to her in various moments of the day, asking her to pray for our marriage and family.
• Like her, the first evangelist, we can “run with haste” to tell others the Good News of our Savior.

Our culture is dead-set on a kind of entrepreneurship of self, of inventing “what works for me” to build the successful life I want. This achieve-or-die mindset can lead to exhaustion, overwhelm, FOMO, and endless comparison. With this type of pressure in the air, it’s easy to allow our homes to become furnaces of performance.

None of us are immune from those drives, but how very different is a home in which—together with the patronage of St. Joseph—Mary’s Queenship is palpable, like a perfume or the scent of lilacs in the air. In such a home, fresh-cut flowers may grace a vase before her statue on the home altar. Her Rosary is prayed. Exquisite phrases from her Magnificat—like “my soul magnifies the Lord” or “the Almighty has done great things for me” or “holy is His name”—come to mind at unexpected moments. Her authority is confidently sensed by all members of the family.

As our culture dangles awards and comfort and power before our families, we, together with our Queen, can quietly decline to grant them occupancy rights within our hearts. With her help, we can turn it all down, confident that in taking our family on a journey to greater union with Jesus, under our Queen’s watchful and loving gaze, we have chosen the better part.