Before Mary Is Queen, Christ Is King

By Matthew Fumi

August 26, 2026 • View profile •

Photo by Alireza Gorji on Unsplash

Part 7 of She Magnifies the Lord: Why Catholic Devotion to Mary Leads Us to Christ

A Catholic response to common objections about Mary, Scripture, the Church, and the Communion of Saints

New to the series? Start here: Before We Talk About Mary, We Need to Talk About Truth

Missed the previous article?
Read Part 6 here: The Mother Who Waited

In the previous article, we saw Mary praying with the apostles in the Upper Room as the Church awaited Pentecost. That completed our consideration of why Catholics call Mary Mother of the Church. We now turn to the second Marian title at the center of this series: Queen.

Why does the Catholic Church call Mary Queen? Is this title merely a later devotional invention, or does it arise from what Scripture reveals about Jesus? What must Scripture first establish about the Kingship of her Son before Mary’s queenship can be understood?

I. Before Mary Is Queen, Christ Is King

Before we can understand why the Church calls Mary Queen, we have to begin where the Church begins: not with Mary, but with Christ.

Mary’s Queenship only makes sense because Jesus is King. If Christ is not King, then Mary is not Queen. If Christ’s Kingship is reduced to a vague spiritual metaphor, then Mary’s Queenship becomes unintelligible. But Scripture does not present Christ’s Kingship as vague or symbolic in that weak sense. Scripture presents Jesus as the promised Son of David, the heir to David’s throne, and the King whose reign will have no end.

II. The Promised Son of David

That promise is already anticipated in the Old Testament. Isaiah prophesies of the child to be born, the son to be given, and says: “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom” (Isaiah 9:6–7). Psalm 2 also speaks in royal and filial language: “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill,” and then, “You are my son; today I have begotten you” (Psalm 2:6–7). So before we ever get to Mary, Scripture has already prepared us to expect a royal Son, a Davidic throne, and an everlasting Kingdom. Psalm 2 is not an isolated royal text either; the New Testament repeatedly returns to it when revealing Jesus as the royal Son, the Messiah, and the one to whom the nations belong.

This is announced directly to Mary before Jesus is even conceived. At the Annunciation, Gabriel tells her: “He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32–33).

That is not generic royal language. Gabriel is announcing the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant. Jesus is the Son of David who receives the throne promised to David’s house. His Kingdom is not temporary, not merely political, and not limited to earthly Israel. It is the everlasting Kingdom promised by God.

III. The King Proclaimed by the Apostles

Peter proclaims the same truth at Pentecost. In Acts 2, he says that David was a prophet and knew that God had sworn an oath to place one of his descendants upon his throne. Peter then declares that this promise is fulfilled in the risen Christ, whom God has made “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:29–36). So the apostolic preaching itself reads Jesus through the Davidic promise. The Church is not inventing that connection later. Peter preaches it from the beginning.

Revelation gives the same truth in royal and cosmic terms. Christ is “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19:16). He is not one king among others. He is the King before whom all other authority is subordinate.

IV. Exalted by the Lord, Not Beside Him

Christ’s Kingship provides the foundation for the Catechism’s teaching that after her earthly life Mary was “taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things” (CCC 966). Because she is exalted by the Lord, her Queenship is not self-claimed. It is not independent. It is not a rival sovereignty beside Christ’s Kingship. It is a participation, by grace, in the glory of her Son.

So when Catholics call Mary Queen, they are not saying she reigns instead of Christ, or beside Christ as His equal. They are saying that the Mother of the King shares, by grace and by her unique relation to Him, in the royal glory of the Kingdom He has established. Her Queenship begins with His Kingship, depends on His Kingship, and leads us back to His Kingship.

V. A Title That Names a Biblical Reality

That is why the question cannot be, “Where does the Bible use the exact phrase ‘Mary is Queen’?” The better question is, “Does Scripture reveal Jesus as the restored Davidic King, and does the biblical pattern of the Davidic kingdom give meaning to the Mother of the King?” The answer to the first question is yes. The next article will address the second.

This is not a strange way for Christians to reason. We use this same basic logic when we confess truths like “God the Son” or “the Second Person of the Trinity.” Those exact later doctrinal phrases are not handed to us as isolated sentences in Scripture, but the realities they name are unmistakably present when the whole witness of Scripture is read within the Church. In the same way, the title “Queen” is not meant to replace Scripture. It is meant to name a reality made intelligible by Scripture: Christ is the Davidic King, and Mary is the Mother of the King.

In summary

Mary’s Queenship begins entirely with the Kingship of Christ. As we'vev seen, scripture reveals Jesus as the promised Son of David, the heir to David’s throne, and the King whose Kingdom will have no end. Gabriel announced that Kingship at the Annunciation. Peter proclaimed its fulfillment after the Resurrection. Revelation declares Jesus to be King of kings and Lord of lords.

The Church therefore does not place Mary beside Christ as a competing sovereign. She is Queen because the Lord has exalted her and allowed the Mother of the King to participate, by grace, in the glory of her Son. Her Queenship begins with His Kingship, depends upon His Kingship, and leads us back to His Kingship.

In the next article, we will examine the biblical structure of the Davidic kingdom more closely. Who held the queenly position when a Davidic king possessed several wives? Why was the king’s mother given a recognized place of honor and influence? What does Solomon’s reception of Bathsheba reveal about the role of the Gebirah, the Queen Mother? And how does that Old Testament institution help us understand Mary’s place in the everlasting Kingdom of Christ?

Until we meet again, go forth in the peace of Christ. Seek truth over victory, speak with charity, and magnify the Lord. Read on:

Part 8 of She Magnifies the Lord: Why the King's Mother Had a Throne

About the Author

Catholic365 Contributor

Matthew Fumi

I am a Catholic, husband, father, systems engineer, and writer. My writing grows out of my own return to the Catholic faith after years of living largely apart from it, and from an ongoing interest in how the truths of the faith are actually lived in ordinary human life: in families, friendships, work, suffering, failure, repentance, vocation, and the slow work of conversion. My nonfiction writing focuses primarily on Catholic theology, catechesis, apologetics, and the spiritual life. I have written a theological work, God is Love. Love is not God., which is under ecclisial review, exploring charity as the organizing principle of the Christian life and examining ordered love, sin, grace, repentance, Confession, the sacramental life, Christian witness, and the human heart’s capacity both to receive and resist God’s love. I also regularly write and engage with questions of Scripture, Church authority, Catholic moral theology, conversion, ecumenism, and the relationship between doctrine and lived discipleship. Alongside that work, I am developing The Long Way Home, a Catholic middle-grade fiction series centered on ordinary family, school, and friendship life. Rather than using fiction primarily as a vehicle for explicit instruction, I want the characters’ choices and consequences to dramatize realities such as sin, grace, conscience, temptation, repentance, mercy, friendship, family, and ultimately vocation. The faith is therefore woven into the characters’ lives rather than placed alongside the story as a lesson. The larger project follows its characters as they grow, allowing questions of marriage, parenthood, priesthood, religious life, suffering, and death to emerge naturally over the course of their lives. Professionally, I work as a senior systems engineer in aerospace, where much of my work involves systems thinking, architecture, requirements, safety, and tracing complex relationships across a larger whole. That same habit of thought inevitably influences my writing. I tend to approach theology and fiction alike by asking how individual truths, choices, relationships, and consequences fit within the larger structure of a human life.

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