How to Pray the Regina Caeli in Latin

I'm so grateful to the new Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, for emphasizing the importance of Latin. So today we're going to go through the Regina Caeli. And if you'd like to have a downloadable worksheet so that you can maybe keep this on your nightstand or even better, go over it with your family, you can go to my website, taylormarshall.com forward slash Regina, R-E-G-I-N-A, and you can download the prayer in Latin, the prayer in English, and then I give you the 18 Latin words below it so that you can just memorize those words. And for the rest of your life, you'll know the Latin of the Regina Caeli. You'll know how to pray it. And then maybe if we have time today, I'll teach you how to chant it, just like Pope Leo XIV. So Regina means queen and Caeli, C-A-E-L-I, means of heaven. It's the genitive. Regina Caeli. And instead of doing a completely soft C, like we do in English, like Regina Caeli, right, the C is more like Italian, like Regina Caeli. If you're doing classical, it'd be Regina Caeli or more accurately, Regina Caeli. You say it like that, but again, we're just doing the church Latin here, and I'm going to only teach you the church Latin. It's just, if you took Latin, maybe at high school in a secular context, you're going to maybe think some of this sounds differently. We're learning the church Latin. So Regina, queen, Caeli, of heaven, laetare. As you know, the fourth Sunday of Lent is called laetare Sunday, rejoice Sunday. So laetare means rejoice. It's a commandment. It's in the singular. Regina Caeli laetare, queen of heaven, rejoice, comma, hallelujah. That's our first line. See how easy this is. This is very easy. It's beautiful. Second line is maybe the hardest line that you're going to have to learn today. Quia, the very first word is quia, and you can see that in the worksheet I have for you right here, quia, okay. Quia means because, or for, F-O-R. Rejoice, queen of heaven, quia, because the next word is quem. Quem means whom, it's an accusative, because he whom meruisti, all right. I'm not going to get too much into the tenses and how all that works, but this is a past tense. You did merit. Meruisti, meruisti, quia quem meruisti, quia quem meruisti portare. All right, so quia, because, quem, he whom, whom, meruisti, you did merit, and then portare. All right, this is infinitive. Portare means to bear or to carry. If I transport something, I carry it across somewhere. Right? So portare here means to bear or carry. So Mary was pregnant with Jesus. She bore him. She carried him in her immaculate womb. So quia, because, quem, he whom, meruisti, you did merit, portare, to carry, to bear. Alleluia. All right, so that's the hardest line. Everything here, everything out here is going to be easy. All right. So stick with me. All right. Resurrexit. That means he, he resurrected. He rose again. Pretty obvious, right? You see resurrexit. That it ending. All right. That means he did it. All right. Resurrexit. Secutdixit, it rhymes. Okay. It's got some flow. Resurrexit, secutdixit, alleluia. Resurrexit, he rose, he resurrected. Secut can mean just as, as, like, dixit, he said. Like dictionary words, right? Dictation. Get it? So resurrexit, secutdixit, it rhymes. It's got flow. It's great. He rose again, just as he said. Resurrexit, secutdixit, alleluia. Alleluia. And then the last line, the fourth line, according to legend, this would be the line that Gregory the Great added. Ora pro nobis. Y'all probably know this one. If you've ever done the litany of the saints in Latin, they'll say, uh, Santa Maria, ora pro nobis, santa joseph, ora pro nobis. Ora means pray, pro means for. So if you're pro-life, that means you're for life. So ora, pray, pro, for, nobis, us, plural. And then the last word here is deum. It's in the accusative. It's the direct object. If you know something about Latin, you might expect odd deum here, but it's poetic. So we see just deum, ora pro nobis deum, pray for us to God. Alleluia. That's the easy line, isn't it? You probably already know ora pro nobis. That means pray for us. You know, deum. That means God. So pray for us to God. All right. Now we have the verse and the response. Gaudete et laetare. You already learned laetare. The third Sunday in Advent is called Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is the plural commandment imperative. Gaudete is the singular. It means rejoice. And laetare, like the fourth Sunday of Lent, means rejoice. So Gaudete et laetare literally means rejoice and rejoice. Technically in Latin, Gaudete is more of a rejoicing in English. And laetare is like laetus in Latin means like being happy. All right. So the best way to, but both mean rejoice. So it's rejoice and be happy and rejoice and be glad. Virgo. Guess what that means? Virgin. Maria. Guess what that means? It means Mary. And then we have the response quia. We already learned what quia. It means because, or for, F-O-R. Serexit is just like reserexit above, but it just doesn't have the prefix re. So reserexit is rise again. Serexit just means rise. Basically the same concept here because he rose, who rose. It tells us right here, the nominative, dominus, dominus is Lord. And then the last word vere means truly, verily. We used to say kind of older English. Verily I say unto you, vere here means truly indeed. So to put this whole thing together, this one's a little bit more complicated. I think this is a hard line for new Latin people. And this is a little bit of a harder line, but quia because the Lord, and by the way, in Latin, the word order is, is, is not like it is in English. Okay. Because the Lord Serexit rose vere indeed truly because the Lord rose indeed, hallelujah. Regina means queen. Caeli means of heaven. Laetare means rejoice, senior command. Quia because, quem, whom, meruisti, you did merit, portare, to carry. Reserexit, he resurrected. Secut means just as, like, or as. In the Gloria Patria, we say secuterat in principio, et nunc et semper, et in secula, seculorum, amen. Secut means just as, as it was in the beginning, as there's the word as, as it was in the beginning. Dixit, he said, ora, pray, pro, for, uh, oh, I didn't put nobis in here. You already know what it means. Deum, God. Gaude, rejoice. Et means and. Virgo means virgin. Maria means Mary. Serexit, he rose, past tense. Dominus, the Lord, vere, truly, indeed. So we can put this whole thing together. And now y'all know all the words to the Regina Caeli, and I'm now going to chant it for you. And the easiest way to learn the Latin is to sing it. All right. If you want to learn the Our Father, listen to the traditional chant of the Our Father. All right. If you want it, the Ave Maria, the Gloria Patria, the, the table blessing, bless us, O Lord, in these thy gifts. Benedicto, amen. No, said heck to Adona. Bless us, O Lord, in these thy gifts. All right. So the Regina Caeli, we're going to, we're going to sing it. We're going to chant it now. Regina Caeli. Alleluia. Now the verse and the response are kind of more of a, a simple chant. Gaudete, letere, viga Maria, alleluia, quia serex et dominus vera, alleluia. There it is. Easy peasy. Now, if you'd like to learn more, you can, you can download this worksheet. taylormarshall.com forward slash Regina. Okay. Just free. It's a PDF. I put it up there. I would encourage you to print this out and use it with your family for the rest of the Easter season until Pentecost. Memorize it. Chant it. Regina Caeli, letere, learn it. And then it'll just become part of your devotion. And if you're in Rome on a pilgrimage and I probably will be leading another pilgrimage to Rome. So stay tuned. You can go and be in the presence of the Holy father when he, if you go, well, you have to go during Easter to Pentecost. You can chant it with him. You can pray the Regina Caeli in Latin.