Catholics honor Our Lady in May

Friday, May. 01, 2020

A special devotion to the Virgin Mary in the month of May has been a tradition in the Catholic Church for more than 700 years. This veneration may have its roots in the northern hemisphere’s celebration of springtime and in Mary’s association with newness of life. In observing May as the month of Mary, we honor her unique role in the plan of salvation, said Father Ray John Marek of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. 

“It should spur us to be missionaries and disciples today, dealing with what some of the early Church had to deal with: with: confrontation, confusion, despair, sickness. And yet they went out and they did it,” said Fr. Marek, the associate director of Lenox House, a house of spirituality and hospitality in Oakland, Calif.  

Fr. Marek, who has given retreats in the Diocese of Salt Lake City, previously taught pastoral theology and homiletics at Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas.

Catholics do not worship Our Lady; they honor and venerate her. The difference is important, Fr. Marek said.

“Worship is usually understood in terms of a deity; for Christians, that’s the God we know as the triune God — Father, Son and Spirit,” he said. “Veneration is more who we admire and to whom we look for assistance and guidance. Those people who have gone before us, they are the witnesses. They are the people we look to that we want to emulate, to model our life after, and Mary becomes the first of those witnesses. Many in the Church understand her and see her as that first disciple, that best example of one who heard the word of God and took it into her heart and let it move her.”

Mary is also a symbol of the Church coming to “new life” after the resurrection of Jesus. A devotion to Mary can bring a Christian closer to God, Fr. Marek said.  We can see in Our Lady three attributes, he said: she models a Christian way of living and she can be a mentor to us in Christian life. She also mirrors aspects of God “through which we can see, to see the deeper reality of God.” Mary and other saints “hold up to us the future that awaits us in the reign of God when its fullness is complete.” 

While Maytime traditions such as public crowning of statues of Mary are not possible this year due to health restrictions, Fr. Marek said individuals can continue those practices in their own homes. A statue of Mary may be placed in a prominent place in the house and surrounded by flowers, and families can talk about why this practice is important. Images of the Virgin Mother from around the world and different cultures may be found online and printed off and displayed, he said. Individuals may pray the rosary and meditate on the Biblical passages behind the mysteries of the rosary, Fr. Marek said. Families can adapt the lectio divina practice for those passages, reflecting on how those mysteries draw them closer to God.

While rituals are important, Fr. Marek said sometimes Catholics can get caught up in the mechanics of honoring Our Lady during May “rather than focusing on what the Lord is inviting us to through the intercession of Mary,” which is a growth in spirituality and relationship to God. 

With simplified or modified rituals in the middle of the pandemic, people can ask themselves, “‘How do I read the signs of the times like Mary did in her own day and time?’” he said. “She was a woman of faith; she believed in the promises of God and that ability gave her a chance to respond with that openness, that  ‘yes’ to the Lord. Honoring her helps us to say ‘how is that message of the Lord speaking to us today and what are we being called to do in this pandemic?’”

In her life, Mary experienced tremendous uncertainty; she let her hope and belief move her through those uncertain times, Fr. Marek said. 

“It’s the same with us, we live in some very uncertain times; this pandemic has shown us how fragile life is,” he said “For us as Christians that hope is always encompassed by the resurrection of Jesus and the new life and our hope. We’re being called to something just like she was being called. Every Catholic, every Christian, every community has to wrestle with ‘what does it mean for us, how do we respond with compassion, giving people dignity, with a willingness to hear each other?”