Traditional prayer
Regina Caeli (Queen of Heaven, Rejoice)
Queen of heaven, rejoice. Alleluia.
For He whom thou wast made worthy to bear. Alleluia.
Hath risen, as He said. Alleluia.
Pray for us to God: Alleluia.
V. Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary. Alleluia.
R. For the Lord hath risen indeed. Alleluia.
Let us pray.
O God, who through the resurrection of thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ hast vouchsafed to give joy to the whole world; grant us, we beseech Thee, that, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary his Mother, we may obtain the joys of eternal life. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
Latin
Regina caeli, laetare, alleluia.
Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia.
Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia.
Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.
V. Gaude et laetare, Virgo Maria, alleluia.
R. Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia.
Oremus.
Deus, qui per resurrectionem Filii tui Domini nostri Iesu Christi mundum laetificare dignatus es, praesta, quaesumus, ut per eius Genetricem Virginem Mariam perpetuae capiamus gaudia vitae. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
About this prayer
For fifty days the Church tells Our Lady to rejoice. The Regina Caeli is the Easter anthem to Mary: four short lines, each sealed with Alleluia, a versicle, and a collect. “The ‘Regina Coeli’ takes the place of the ‘Angelus’ during the Paschal Time,” as the Catholic Encyclopedia (1911) puts it, and the old Breviary sang it “from Compline of Holy Saturday until None of the Saturday after Pentecost inclusively.”
The prayer speaks to the woman who “stood by the cross of Jesus” (John 19:25, Douay-Rheims) and brings her the Easter news: He whom thou wast made worthy to bear hath risen, as He said. The Catechism sees in her Assumption a singular share in her Son’s Resurrection and a foretaste of ours (CCC 966). Every mother who has stood at a grave, and every woman who has waited through a long Holy Saturday of her own, may pray it as a promise kept.
Its author is unknown. The Catholic Encyclopedia traces it to the twelfth century and records that it was in Franciscan use, after Compline, in the first half of the thirteenth. A pious legend says St. Gregory the Great heard angels sing its first three lines one Easter morning in Rome. It is a legend, and the prayer needs no help from it.
The English is the 1910 Raccolta’s, which prints it under the same number as the Angelus. The Latin is the Church’s own, from the appendix of common prayers in the Compendium of the Catechism (2005).
When to pray it
- Morning, noon and evening from Easter Sunday through Pentecost, in place of the Angelus.
- On Easter morning, before anything else.
- At a baptism, after a birth, or at the first Mass after a long sorrow.
- Whenever joy arrives and you want to give it back to God.
Any indulgences named on this page are those recorded in the older prayer books it cites. Pope Paul VI reformed the Church's indulgences in 1967 (Indulgentiarum Doctrina); the current rules are in the Church's Enchiridion of Indulgences.