Mary: Queen of the May
O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May, O Mary we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.
Monica O’Connell
Traditionally for Catholics May is the Month of Mary. If you went to Catholic schools in the 1960s, like me, you were excited May had come as we dressed the Mary statues with flowers and even had a day at the seashore sharing cakes our parents (mothers) had made.
May Day festivities present themselves with all the optimism of spring: new life, new love, youth and future. Even though we live ‘down under’ we support this tradition. Mary, symbolically and effectively, embodies this new life, this new springtime. If you look for descriptions of Mary you get: Queen of all creation, a masterpiece of God’s work, with Her crown of perfection, and the Temple of the Son of God.
Participating in Marian prayers and devotions, particularly the Holy Rosary, is a way of living in Her mysterious presence. My mother, a lover of the Rosary and of Mary, said, ‘If you pray to Our Lady she will ask God, and all sons obey their mothers’. My mother ‒ the great believer in the Church, Mary and her son!
Mary is the one person in the Gospels who was there at the beginning and at the end of Christ’s life on earth. There were other women drawn to be with Him – they were present at His death and it was women He first appeared to after His resurrection. St Paul acknowledges the contribution of the many women who were active in the ministry of the early Church. In his Letters to the Romans he thanks and praises several women ‘who work hard in the Lord’.
I want to help; I want to be of use. I can’t be perfect, but I do want to live in a world where God is honoured and loved. I was led by God to train as a Lay Pastoral Leader – yet another calling in my life.
I consider us to be very lucky; one of the aims at the Archdiocese Synod 2006 has been: ‘Affirm and empower all leaders – lay, ordained, men and women’. What a great country we live in.
Monica O’Connell is a Launch Out candidate and a member of St Mary of the Angels parish, Wellington.