It's Regina Coeli season!

During the 50 days of Easter, the Regina Coeli ("Queen of Heaven") takes the place of the Angelus, morning, noon and evening. Here are the words of this prayer in the traditional English translation:

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.

V. Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia.

R. For the Lord has truly risen, alleluia.

Let us pray.
O God, who gave joy to the world
through the resurrection of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
grant we beseech Thee, that through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, His Mother,
we may obtain the joys of everlasting life.
Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Like the "Ave Maria," the Regina Coeli has countless musical renditions. Here are a few sample, starting with chant:







Nobody does it like Mozart:

Angelus cards

To make it easy to pray (and promote!) the Angelus, you can order color postcards featuring a lovely della Robbia Annunciation photographed in its original location by Sr. Sergia Ballini. Your purchase will also support the mission of the Daughters of St. Paul.

Keep a few for yourself in handy spots to help you remember to pray the Angelus morning, noon and evening--or on your commute to work, at lunch and on the commute home.

Alternatively, just save the image to your phone (it's missing the concluding prayer, but the Angelus dialogue itself is quite enough!).

Eventually, I hope to restore the print-it-yourself Word documents that you can print on business card paper so you will always have cards to give away... (I don't know what happened to the files I had created for this purpose, and my commitments now don't really indicate that I'll be able to get to this any time soon.)

The Angelus

This video was prepared to help you learn and pray the Angelus. Once you have made this practice part of your daily prayer life, you can use the video to invite others to renew their faith in central truth of the Christian faith, in which the mysteries of the Trinity and of our Redemption in Christ come together: the Incarnation of the Son of God. If we are Christians, we need to "know him whom we have believed"! The Angelus can help.


Promote the Angelus prayer! Include this link in your e-mail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-8sBS1cP_w, and consider embedding the video in your blog sidebar with the VodPod or Google video.