“Celebrate the Mother of God”
This year the Society of Mary is looking forward to continuing the May Festival celebrating the Mother of God. On four Saturdays in May, a Solemn Mass with procession is celebrated at a different parish, followed by a light lunch (suggested donation: $10).
The 2024 schedule is as follows:
- Saturday, May 4, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. – Solemn Mass & Procession
at St. Bart’s, Regent Park - Saturday, May 11, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. – Solemn Mass & Procession
at St. Thomas’s, Huron Street (383 Huron Street) - Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. – Solemn Mass & Procession
at St. Matthias, Bellwoods (45 Bellwoods Avenue) - Saturday, May 25, 2024 at 10:00 a.m. – Solemn Mass & Outdoor Procession
at St. Mary Magdalene’s (477 Manning Avenue)
The May Festival at S. Bart’s
Saturday, May 4, 2024 at 10:00 a.m.
Prelude: On the Antiphon ‘I am black but comely…’
– Marcel Dupré (1886-1971)
Mass: Messe Basse – Gabriel Fauré (1882)
Motets: Maria, mater gratiae – Gabriel Fauré (1895);
Ave Maria – Gabriel Fauré (1888)
Postlude: Improvisation – Fr David Smith
Live-stream | Leaflet download
Celebrating Mary in May
May is the month of Our Lady! The Church’s devotions, both public and popular, have developed side by side over centuries. Very often popular devotions are an amplification of one aspect of the Church’s official liturgical life by and for the sake of those who find that this or that devotion helps them in their spiritual life overall. The tradition of dedicating the month of May to Mary is almost certainly the result of such popular devotional instinct. Most of May falls within Eastertide, the time of rebirth, both natural (springtime) and supernatural (Resurrection). Mary is the Mother of Jesus, but because of this is also the Mother of the Church, which is His Body (see John 19:26), and therefore of each one of us, who are members of His Body, and the “remnant of her seed” (Revelation 12:17).
On these four mornings in May we undertake our major public devotion to Our Lady as we celebrate the Toronto May Festival. There are also many ways we can celebrate her place in the history of our salvation in our own homes. One such is to create a ‘May Altar’ on a table or a mantelpiece, by surrounding an image of Mary with flowers, and lighting candles before it when we are near it, or when we say our prayers. Such a practice reminds us both that her courage and humility allowed God to become Man, and that, when we worship her Son, she worships Him with us and that we are helped by this truth.