May crowning ceremonies display devotion to Mary

By KENNY KEANE, Globe staff reporter
Posted May 8, 2003

All mothers will soon be honored this year on May 11 - Mother's Day. May is also the month of Jesus' mother, Mary, who is especially celebrated on May 31 with the feast of the Visitation.

Another special devotion to the mother of Christ is illustrated quite regularly around the month of Mary with May crowning ceremonies, which have already taken place or have been planned in different locations throughout the Sioux City Diocese.

Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Holstein has a long-standing May crowning tradition, according to Joyce Galvin, director of religious education (DRE) for the parish.

"Students who received their first holy Communion the last Sunday of April are involved in the May crowning Mass the following week," she said. "Sixth-grade students are also involved in the Mass, filling the roles of lectors, song leader and servers.

"Each year one of the first Communion students is chosen to be the crown bearer and a sixth-grade student is selected to place the crown on the image of Mary. Following the Mass, these students are honored at a breakfast served in the parish hall."

Janet Sibenaller, second-grade teacher for the religious education program at St. Joseph Church in Salix, said parishioners could not remember how many years it had been since they had seen a May crowning at their parish - that is until last year when she and fellow teacher, Mary Parker, decided to do something special at the end of the year for religious ed.

"I said, 'Wouldn't it be neat if we had a May crowning and did a living rosary?' So we just got it started again," Sibenaller said. "Last year we had about 80 students involved in the rosary, and we had some parishioners come. The children led the rosary, and then the parishioners would answer the other half.

"What we did in church was line them up in the center aisle and around the sanctuary so that they looked like a rosary. We led off first with the May crowning, and it was very nice. I believe they just laid the wreath on Mary's altar, and then one of the mother's was going to place it on the statue of Mary at a later time."

This year, the St. Joseph religious education class held the living rosary and May crowning ceremony on April 30, followed by an ice cream social where children, teachers and guests shared ice cream and said goodbye for the spring.

"The pope has said, 'Let's have devotion to Mary,' and I wanted to instill that," Sibenaller said. "I talked to my little second-graders about that, too - that Mary is our mother, and we can turn to her. This was just one more way to draw the children's attention to the importance of Mary.

"I just wanted to foster the fact that there will always be an honoring of Mary. You just want that to continue, and we have to teach it to the little ones. They maybe don't hear it at home. So then it's our responsibility as catechists to teach them those things."

The sisters at the Carmelite Monastery in Sioux City held a May crowning on May 5 as part of the Day of Recollection retreat sponsored by the Carmel Guild Board.

"The sisters put out the songs for us for the May crowning and we used, On This Day O Beautiful Mother and Bring Flowers of the Rarest," said Shirley Kennedy, a member of the guild board and Day of Recollection committee chair. "When we sang, Bring Flowers of the Rarest, that is when we had a representative crown Mary with a pretty wreath of flowers, which the Carmel sisters had made for us.

"This is a tradition with the Carmel board on the Day of Recollection. I think it's that we recognize more completely the mother of Jesus. We can help fashion our lives after her, especially as women."

On May 16, the students at St. Mary Elementary in Storm Lake will also participate in a living rosary and May crowning celebration.

"We have a beautiful statue of Mary that we decorate with flowers," said Sister Donna Determan, K-4 religion teacher at St. Mary's. "The children bring flowers and candles to form a beautiful shrine in the sanctuary of our church.

"I just feel devotion to our Blessed Lady is very important. In our world today, I think the children need to know more about Mary - how she was the mother of Jesus and how she followed, obeyed and did what Jesus and what God the Father asked. We, too, must follow in her footsteps."