My dear friends in Christ,
The month of May, with its profusion of blooms, was adopted by the Church in the eighteenth century as a celebration of the flowering of Mary's spirituality. The Catholic practice of assigning a special devotion to each month goes back to the early 16th century. Since the best known of those devotions is probably the dedication of May as the month of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it might come as a surprise that it wasn't until the late 18th century that this devotion arose among Jesuits in Rome. In the early years of the 19th century, it quickly spread throughout the Western Church, and, by the time of Pope Pius IX's declaration of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, it had become universal. We use this month of May as an opportunity to renew our devotion to Our Blessed Lady, the Mother of God. Wouldn’t it be a good time to dust off our rosaries and add a few more Marian prayers to our daily routine?
This Sunday at our 9:30am Mass, the children who received their first Holy Communion last week will crown our Blessed Mother. We congratulate them on their reception of the Eucharist – “the source and summit of our Christian faith”, and we pray with them as they lead us to venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary.
We are continuing to meet as Cohort #1. We will begin discussion on ways to Evangelize and bring the faithful back to Church. Please pray for our efforts.
May God bless you all!
Fr. John