“Celebrate the Mother of God”
This year the Society of Mary is looking forward to resuming the full May Festival celebrating the Mother of God. On three Saturdays in May, a Solemn Mass with procession is celebrated at a different parish, followed by a light lunch (suggested donation: $10).
The 2023 schedule is as follows:
- Saturday, May 13, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. – Solemn Mass & Procession
at St. Thomas’s, Huron Street (383 Huron Street) - Saturday, May 20, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. – Solemn Mass & Procession
at St. Bart’s, Regent Park - Saturday, May 27, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. – Solemn Mass & Outdoor Procession
at St. Mary Magdalene’s (477 Manning Avenue)
(Please note that we have avoided scheduling a Mass on May 6 as that is the day of the Coronation.)
The May Festival at S. Bart’s
Saturday, May 20, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.
Prelude: Andante in F — J. G. Albrechtsberger (1736-1809)
Mass: Messe Basse — Gabriel Fauré (1882)
Offertory Motet: Maria, mater gratie — Gabriel Fauré (1895)
Communion Motet: Ave Maria — Gabriel Fauré (1888)
Postlude: Fugue upon B-a-c-h — J. G. Albrechtsberger (1736-1809)
Sung by Katherine Hill, Margaret Cormier, Rebecca Claborn & Clara Krausse
Celebrant & Preacher: The Rev’d Dr Walter Hannam
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 three 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.