May is the month of Mary

It is May again, the month of flowers, blue skies and sparkling seas. It is May again, the season of pilgrimage, love and devotion. For the heart wakens as roses waken, as kalachuchis explode their immaculate wonders to remind the living of the joy of living. And so we look beyond the exigencies of day to day affairs and think of something beyond the “fading gleam.” What’s behind this hassle we call existence? What’s the essence of it all?

Months ago a ritual proclaimed our dustness. Dust you are and to dust you shall return! What a tragic destiny for a being who savors life’s multi-faceted offerings – frustration and exhilaration, loving and forgetting, joy and pain! Is there nothing else? What shall we do? To whom shall we go?

To whom shall we go but to you, says Peter to Jesus. You are the son of the living God. You have the word of eternal life. What a good news! What a great promise! Eternal joy in eternal life! Becoming dust is not bad, after all. Losing light to gain another light, what a source of comfort!

May is therefore a month of awakening. And the Mother of God is the instrument of this. She is our mother, even more so than our mom in flesh and blood. She therefore suffers when her children suffer. That’s why for countless occasions and in countless places she appeared and appealed for penance and prayers, warning her children of possible chastisement if they don’t change. In Lourdes France in 1858, she told Bernadette: “Penance! Pray to God for the conversion of sinners.” In Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, she advised the three visionaries: “Say the Rosary every day to obtain peace for the world and the end of war . . . If they do what I tell you, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end. But if they do not stop offending God, another and worse one will begin in the reign of Pius XI . . .” And in Bayside, New York (1990), she warned: “A great war will erupt suddenly such as has not been seen from the beginning of creation. Countries shall disappear in moments from the face of the earth . . . Unless you repent of your abortions, the murders of the unborn, and return to lives of prayer and contemplation of the mysteries of the Eternal Father. . . I cannot save you from the conflagration that lies ahead.”

May is therefore the month of Mary. She joys with innocent kids who sing praises to God in Flores de Mayo rituals, and smiles as they intone the Hail Mary’s. She is pleased with offerings of young souls in the very altar where the sacrifice of her Son is daily enacted. Young hearts free from taints of iniquity – is there a more precious offering? Blessed are the places therefore where these are done.

Blessed are the children in their halleluiahs, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. But where are the grown-ups? Ah, they are in the world great in their greed but trite in their faith. The child being the father of the man? Not my cup of tea. Let them be in their spirit world, but leave me alone. Leave me alone in my craze for comfort and thrill, repentance can come later.

And so the Immaculate heart continues to bleed. Even as she rejoices with the kids’ votive offerings, she grieves for their elders who are somewhere else. True, there are a few who glory with the young in those precious vesper moments. But a mother is never at peace when some of her children go astray.

May is therefore the month of Mary, the time to make fresh in our mind the role of the Mother of God in our lives and in the affairs of our country and of the world.

May is the time of gladness and sadness.