{"id":538,"date":"2023-10-25T18:22:25","date_gmt":"2023-10-25T18:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/?p=538"},"modified":"2026-02-20T22:36:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T22:36:56","slug":"the-church-as-queen-of-the-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/index.php\/2023\/10\/25\/the-church-as-queen-of-the-south\/","title":{"rendered":"The Church as Queen of the South"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Homily, 10-16-23; Monday of the 28th Week of Ordinary Time:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A while back, I received a question in the question box that referred to today\u2019s gospel passage. The questioner asked: \u201cWho is the queen of the south?\u201d I thought that it would be an easy question to answer. The obvious answer is that she is the Queen of Sheba who came to visit Solomon to gain knowledge from his great wisdom. But in researching for my article in the bulletin, I came to learn that, in a figurative sense, the queen of the south also represents the Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St Ambrose wrote: \u201c[Jesus] strongly expresses the mystery of the Church, which in the queen of the South, through the desire of obtaining wisdom is gathered together from the uttermost parts of the whole earth, to hear the words of the Peacemaking Solomon; a queen plainly whose kingdom is undivided rising up from different and distant nations into one body.<\/a>\u201d<\/em> <\/strong>And St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote: \u201cNow as she was queen of the Ethiopians\u2019 and in a far distant country, so in the beginning the Church of the Gentiles was in darkness, and far off from the knowledge of God. But when Christ the Prince of peace shone forth, the Jews being still in darkness, thither came the Gentiles, and offered to Christ the frankincense of piety, the gold of divine knowledge, and precious stones, that is, obedience to His commands.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Ambrose goes on to give us instruction from today\u2019s gospel passage. He tells us to seek out wisdom so that we know how we should live, and to repent and seek out forgiveness when we fail. He wrote: \u201cNow in a mystery, the Church consists of two things, either ignorance of sin, which has reference mainly to the queen of the South, or ceasing to sin, which relates indeed to the repentant Ninevites. For repentance blots out the offense, wisdom guards against it.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should never stop searching for wisdom and knowledge, thinking that we know it all, or know enough. As Socrates ironically said: \u201cThe only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.\u201d<\/em><\/strong> Or put another way, the truly wise person is the person who knows that he is not wise. If we think that we are wise, then we are not, because we will stop searching for wisdom. And that would be wrong, for wisdom helps us know God\u2019s will and helps guard against sin. We must continue to pursue it as the queen of the south did. And we must also continue to repent and ask forgiveness as the Ninevites did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Homily, 10-16-23; Monday of the 28th Week of Ordinary Time: A while back, I received a question in the question box that referred to today\u2019s gospel passage. The questioner asked: \u201cWho is the queen of the south?\u201d I thought that it would be an easy question to answer. The obvious answer is that she is… Continue reading The Church as Queen of the South<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekday-homilies","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":539,"href":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538\/revisions\/539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthoscopy.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}