St. Therese: Mary is more Mother than Queen

Hello Everyone:

​This is the month of July and we will post as many talks on the Brown Scapular as possible. In the year 2000, the catechesis of the Brown Scapular was "revised" by the modern Carmelite friars. I read about the priests who made the updates - updates that changed the 750 year thinking of the Church. One of the priests in explaining his changes quoted St. Therese with "Mary is more Mother than Queen" and twisted it to prove his point that we make Mary out to be more than She is - She has been given more emphasis than is deserved and that St. Therese would be happy with the changes since Vatican II in de-emphasizing Mary's role. Very very sad! And for a Carmelite priest to say it!

Let us look at St. Therese and her love for Our Mother and Queen through the eyes of Father Albert H. Dolan, O Carm. He, of course, has passed away. All the knights in shining armor who defended the Brown Scapular and Our Lady have gone on. We are left with modernists who will no longer promote the Brown Scapular because people in the past have put too much emphasis on it and treated it like a "good luck charm". Therefore, we must do away with it! Keep it for Carmelites only since it is "just" their habit and only meant for them. (if they would only wear it themselves) I could say more (I have more and this is why I write for this website - to do a little for Our Lady who is so greatly neglected by those who should defend Her, love Her and promote Her Scapular) but this article is on the holiness of St. Therese - so lets get started!

Father Dolan writes a talk for the book "Take This Scapular" written in 1949 to celebrate the 700 years of the Scapular Vision of St. Simon Stock (1951) which I will be quoting from throughout the month of July! Starting on page 113 of the book, he states the following:

"Let us consider for a moment St. Therese as the Apostle of Mary's Scapular. Just as no Carmelite ever attracted so many vocations to our Carmelite monasteries and convents as did St. Therese, therefore, no Carmelite in all Carmel's history every "advertised" the Scapular so widely and so successfully as the Little Flower did, and continues to do..... She was canonized only twenty-eight years after her death, and today there is scarcely a Catholic church or chapel anywhere in the world that has not a shrine or a statue of her; her image looks down from the walls of millions of homes, and her picture on prayer cards is in the hands of other countless millions in every country of the globe. And what do these millions see - They see her Scapular.

St. Therese said to Mary: "I wish to be not so much your servant as your child." And she is known to have said that "Mary is more Mother than Queen." In these two quotations, we have the Marian message of St. Therese.

God chose Mary to be the Mother of His Son, and from that first privilege of Her Divine Maternity, all Mary's other privileges flow. Immaculate in Her origin, Queen in Her Triumph, Mary is above all -  Mother. Having assumed, with the heavenly Father, the function of begetting the Incarnate Son, She assumed with this Son, the fruit of Her womb, the office of begetting all His adopted children. Such is the theological truth on which the Little Flower's Marian message is based:
Mary is more Mother than Queen.

Therese wrote as a child: "The most beautiful masterpiece of the heart of God is the heart of a mother". In one of her school blank books, she wrote when she was seven this resolution: "I wish to be Mary's good little daughter. Mary is my dear Mother, and usually daughters resemble their mother." St. Therese was chosen to pronounce the Act of Consecration to Mary in the name of all the first communicants and it was then that she gave herself once again to Mary. She writes: "I put my whole heart into the reading of the prayer, and besought our Blessed Mother always to watch over me. It seemed to me that She looked down lovingly, and once more smiled upon Her Little Flower." She also wrote later: "I felt that Our Blessed Mother watched over me, that I was so much her child, that I should give Her the name of "Mama", for She seemed to me more tender than any earthly mother."

When she finally entered the convent, Therese understood well it was in Carmel that it would be possible for her to put on the very mantle of Mary. She wrote to her sister Pauline: "In July 1889, when I was still a novice, I was praying in the monastery garden when I found myself suddenly entirely hidden under the veil of our Blessed Mother".... Gradually, Mary transformed this child of sixteen into that strong religious whom Pope St. Pius X called "the greatest saint of modern times."

Father Dolan explains the difference of Queen and Mother with these words:
"If between a Queen and her Lady of Honor etiquette imposes distance. between a mother and a daughter affection suppresses all distance. Maternity asks only one response:  LOVE, the entire surrender of the daughter to the affection of her mother. To her cousin, Marie Guerin, Therese wrote: "Do not fear to love Mary too much, for you will never be able to love her enough, and Jesus will be very pleased because She is His Mother too."

We will end here, although he wrote so much more! I wish the modern Carmelite priest that used the quote of "more mother than queen" would have quoted the above quote - "Do not fear to love Mary too much, for you will never be able to love her enough, and Jesus will be very pleased because She is His Mother too".

St. Therese's message was one of love - The constant love of the Mother and the constant love of the daughter! Our Lady asks us to wear the Scapular so that She could have the authority to watch over us and to lead us to Her Son as She did for St. Therese. May we wear our Scapulars with this confidence of placing ourselves under Her care and loving Her as our Queen and Mother!

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Our Queen and Mother, pray for us! St. Therese pray for us.

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