Message from Father Jack

May is Mary's month, and I  

Muse at that and wonder why:  

Her feasts follow reason,  

Dated due to season- 

Candlemas, Lady Day;  

But the Lady Month, May,  

Why fasten that upon her,  

With a feasting in her honour? 

Is it only its being brighter  

Than the most are must delight her?  

Is it opportunest  

And flowers finds soonest? 

Ask of her, the mighty mother:  

Her reply puts this other  

Question: What is Spring?-  

Growth in every thing- 

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,  

Grass and greenworld all together;  

Star-eyed strawberry-breasted  

Throstle above her nested 

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin  

Forms and warms the life within;  

And bird and blossom swell  

In sod or sheath or shell. 

All things rising, all things sizing  

Mary sees, sympathising  

With that world of good,  

Nature's motherhood. 

Their magnifying of each its kind  

With delight calls to mind  

How she did in her stored  

Magnify the Lord. 

Well but there was more than this:  

Spring's universal bliss  

Much, had much to say  

To offering Mary May. 

When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple  

Bloom lights the orchard-apple  

And thicket and thorp are merry  

With silver-surfed cherry 

And azuring-over greybell makes  

Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes  

And magic cuckoocall  

Caps, clears, and clinches all- 

This ecstasy all through mothering earth  

Tells Mary her mirth till Christ's birth  

To remember and exultation  

In God who was her salvation. 

May Magnificat by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Dear Friends,

I believe I have come to the conclusion that May is my favorite month, and Hopkins explains why. With all her splendor, the earth is magnifying the Lord, proclaiming the glory of God her creator. As the sun finally breaks out of the winter clouds, creation comes to life. All the vegetation that has been dormant revives. May is Mary’s month for this very reason. Just as the Blessed Virgin Mary magnified the Lord with her life, so May in a special way proclaims the glory of God and all creation rejoices in His salvation. 

God came down to earth to take on our humanity, a little babe in the womb of Mary, to take that same humanity to the heights of heaven. All creation proclaims His glory and rejoices in His salvation. Another Hopkins poem begins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Charged with His divine life, humanity, made in His image and likeness is charged, full of grace die to the wonderful gift given her through the Blessed Virgin Mary. May we bask in this light, delight in His love, and ponder the wonderful things that are happening around us as our Lord ascends to the heights of Heaven and we prepare ourselves to receive the gift of the Spirit, the giver of life, which He will send down upon us in just one week. 

Come Holy Spirit, spouse of the Virgin Mary!

Fr. Jack D. Shrum