The Regina Coeli showed me a spark of the beauty that comes from God

By Aurelio Pofiri*

Andrea Mantegna, The Madonna of the Cherubim, Italy, Lombardy, Milan, baroque palace Brera, Brera Pinacoteca

Latin:

Regina Caeli

Regina caeli, laetare, alleluia.
Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia.
Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia.
Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.

Gaude et laetare, Virgo Maria, alleluia.
Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia.

English:

Queen of Heaven

Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia.
For He whom you did merit to bear, alleluia.
Has risen, as he said, alleluia.
Pray for us to God, alleluia.

Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia.
For the Lord has truly risen, alleluia.

In the Easter season there is a song that is particularly familiar to all Catholic faithful, the Regina Coeli. This is one of the four Marian antiphons, according to the liturgical seasons, that were sung at the end of the Mass, together with Alma Redemptoris Mater, Ave Regina Coelorum and Salve Regina. Today, only the last and Regina Coeli are still sung in many places.

Unfortunately, the abandonment of these antiphons is another of the fruits of the difficult times we live in as regards the Catholic liturgy. Of these antiphons, we have each one in a solemn tone and in a simpler version, and it is certainly the latter that is more popular as it can be performed by the musically untrained congregation. Naturally, the solemn tone is very elaborate, melismatic (using multi-syllabic notes), and more suitable to be performed by a group of professional singers or monks accustomed to Gregorian chant.

They are very beautiful melodies, full of melismas that make singing almost a feast. The simple version, however, allows everyone to join in the singing of this beautiful antiphon: “This joyful prayer is addressed to Mary, mother of the Risen One and, since 1742, it has traditionally been sung or recited in the Easter season, that is, from Easter Sunday until the day of Pentecost replacing the Angelus. Its composition dates back to the 10th century, but the author is unknown. Tradition has it that Pope Gregory the Great, one Easter morning in Rome, heard angels singing the first three lines of the Regina Coeli, to which he added the fourth. Another theory states that the author was Pope Gregory V. The melody in use dates back to the 12th century, but was simplified in the 17th century.” (gregorianum.org)

The success of the antiphon Regina Coeli is also due to the fact that it is quite schematic in its structure: there are four sentences, all ending with an alleluia. In addition to its objective brevity, this makes the song easily memorized. As well, the opening is very moving: the Queen of heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary, is asked to rejoice. We, in fact, are the ones who invite the Blessed Virgin to rejoice, because the One she carried in her womb has now risen. In the last sentence we have recourse to her intercession, asking her to plead for us before God. The succession of hallelujahs creates a joyful atmosphere that well justifies the fame of the song.

In his homily on Holy Saturday 2006, Pope Benedict XVI shows us the connection between the event of Easter and our baptism: “It is clear that this event is not some miracle of the past whose occurrence could be ultimately indifferent to us. It is a qualitative leap in the history of ‘evolution,’ and of life in general, towards a new future life, towards a new world which, starting from Christ, already continually penetrates this world of ours, transforms it and attracts us to it. But how does this happen? How can this event actually reach me and draw my life towards itself and upwards? The answer, perhaps surprising at first but completely real, is: this event comes to me through faith and Baptism. This is why Baptism is part of the Easter Vigil, as also underlined in this celebration by the conferring of the Sacraments of Christian Initiation on some adults coming from different countries. Baptism means precisely this, that a past event is not in question, but that a qualitative leap in universal history comes to me and attracts me. Baptism is something very different from an act of ecclesial socialization, from a slightly old-fashioned and complicated rite for welcoming people into the Church. It is also more than a simple washing, a kind of purification and beautification of the soul. It is truly death and resurrection, rebirth, transformation into a new life.”

Through the singing of the Regina Coeli, we always try to remind ourselves of this new life that awaits us. For me, the Regina Coeli is linked to a particular memory that goes back at least 30 years. Like many, I grew up in the ecclesiastical musical atmosphere of the post-Vatican II era, an atmosphere that unfortunately still affects us today. Not that there aren’t also well-written songs, but what is mostly offered is a cheap musical production. At that time, still young, I had become passionate about the pipe organ that I had learned to know and appreciate, even if my knowledge of sacred music was very incomplete. I attended a parish in a central area of Rome. I remember that, with friends in this parish, we decided, on the afternoon of Easter day, to visit St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. I remember that upon entering the immense Basilica, we headed to the altar of the chair, where the singing of vespers was ending. We had to wait for the procession of canons and singers to return to the sacristy. I was struck by two things: the choral clothes of the singers and canons, and the singing of the Regina Coeli which was performed by everyone, canons, singers and faithful.

I don’t know why I was so struck by all this, but I remember going to the sacristy to ask the master of the choir, once called Cappella Giulia, if I could join them. The master agreed to my request and from that moment my adventure with St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican began, which ended in 2008, about 18 years later, when I moved to Macau, in China, to teach. That Regina Coeli was like a door that showed me that there was something more to the liturgy than what I had, unfortunately, been accustomed to.

I later realized that the terrible “infection” that had torn apart the liturgy and sacred music had also torn apart the Church environments in which one would expect a dignity in the worship of God that would be appropriate to those environments’ history and tradition. But no — in the following decades I realized that the disease was progressing in the veins of the Church inexorably and today, the same Rome that should be the glory of the Catholic world is a very pale reflection of what it once was. Yet I cannot forget how the Blessed Virgin Mary in a certain sense spoke to me and made me feel a spark of that beauty which has its origin in God, a beauty which — unfortunately — I was later given the opportunity to contemplate almost exclusively in its terrible decadence.

*Aurelio Porfiri is an extensively published composer, conductor, writer and educator. He has lived and worked for 7 years in Macau, China and is the founder of the publishing company Chorabooks. Find him on his YouTube channel Ritorno a Itaca and on Facebook.

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