Liturgical Lifestyle | May

May flew by, and now we are in the thick of summer.  In central Florida, the humidity is palpable; it has a certain smell.  A wet, dewey, heavy green scent.

We kickstarted Mary's month with a visit to the grotto, where we offered prayers and placed tulips.  A lovely tradition is to do a May crowning, and although I saw all the Mary statues in all the parishes I've visited appropriately wreathed in blossoms, I didn't know of any official ceremony or prayer gathering.

In other parts of the world, there are dances around the May Pole and excursions into woods for flowers.  In Wales, it was called Calan Haf and people gathered hawthorne.  Sad that those traditions are all but lost now.

Mother's Day falls on May 9th in this country, which I suppose is appropriate as it is Mary's month, though its founding has nothing to do with that.  In the UK, Mother's Day is always in Lent.  It originated as {Mothering Sunday}, a time in pre-Reformation days when the Catholics made a pilgrimage home to their mother church or parish.

Wish we could somehow rework this philosophy back into our modern Mother's Day, but I don't see how.  Maybe in future, my family will give up American Mother's Day for the traditional Mothering Sunday, as I aim to value Church holidays over secular ones.  (Always planning, never doing, that's me!)

Then we celebrated Holy Mother Church's birthday on Pentecost, and we all wore red (of some kind) to Mass that morning!

I briefly entertained the idea of doing a Marian consecration, as I started but never finished 33 Days to Morning Glory last year.  But it was not the time.  I'm not discouraged.  Mary will always be ready and waiting, and I don't need a special month or time of year to accept her invitation to better learn how to love her Son.

How was your May?