YOUTH: Crowning Mary our Mother with honor in May
May 9, 2017
During the month of May I am reminded of an old tradition that honors our Blessed Mother with a crown of flowers.
With traditional ritual known as the Crowning of Mary on May 1, we honor Mary’s yes to God to become the Mother of Jesus. Her life as the Mother of Jesus is a phenomenal example of how the love of a mother gives life.
Her story is one that can show young women how to be good mothers and show young men how to honor their mothers.
Some biblical scholars say Mary was very young when she said yes to become the Mother of God. As a young girl, her parent’s love of God had fashioned a love for God within Mary.
In making her decision to follow God, Mary held fast to very important values for her life: faith, obedience, courage, love and life.
In order to be obedient to God and make the journey God was asking her to take, Mary had to love God so intensely that she could say yes to a life that would require her to overcome fear.
The incredible change in her life as she knew it would include a possibility of enduring ridicule and shunning from family and friends since she was not yet married.
She had to overcome the fear of telling the man she was betrothed to that she was with child. Yet her faith and her love for God endured and preserved. Her faith gave way to everlasting life for all God’s people.
We honor the Blessed Mother for her courage to live God’s plan. It is through her love of God that she is able to endure any difficulties in order to please God as the handmaid of the Lord.
In today’s hurried culture, do we stop to take time to honor our mothers, the women who gave us life? In many ways all mothers find themselves bearing a cross in order to give life. It takes courage to change one’s life.
Today, most mothers take care of the family and work outside of the home as well. To welcome a new life means a mother now makes the child the center of her world. She must nurture, care and love a child beyond her own needs.
The most difficult cross in her life will be the times when she will share in the suffering of her child. Our Blessed Mother is an image of that suffering when she stands at the foot of the cross on which her Son was crucified.
Most any mother knows that with love comes the cross. A mother suffers with her child when her child experiences physical or emotion pain and suffering. However, a mother will be the first one to celebrate the resurrection after the suffering with joy beyond articulation.
During this month, let us take the opportunity to participate in a May Crowning of Mary. Let us honor Mary for the enduring and unending love she has for God and the whole world.
Perhaps, we can honor her not only with a May Crowning and with prayer, but also with acts of kindness and love toward all mothers. Let us pray for the Blessed Mother’s intercession for increased faith, hope and love for all mothers.
Norma Torok is an associate director of the Archdiocesan Office of Adolescent Catechesis and Evangelization.