Spirit Matters: May is a beautiful month for many reasons

Here are my top five favorite months in order:

(tie) May and October
September
November
December

Clearly, I have a penchant for the autumn months. Nothing draws the soul out like falling leaves, cooler temperatures, harvest time, shorter days, longer nights and, well, pretty much everything about the great and glorious season commonly known as “fall.”

And yet, May has a way about her. As Billy Joel has famously crooned, “I don’t know what it is, but I know that I can’t live without her.”

May has been meaningful for me in many ways, and yet none of those individual ways can adequately explain my love for the month, other than it just has a beautiful feminine vibe.

Much of my love for May has to do with me growing up going to Catholic school, where the pinnacle of the month was May crowning. May (and October) have traditionally been dedicated to the blessed virgin Mary.

On May 13, the church honors Our Lady of Fatima in commemoration of the 1917 apparitions in Portugal. But the whole month, in the Catholic world, is colored with love for the mother of Jesus.

St. Stephen school in Streator went all out for May crowning. The entire student body was involved, as we began the evening in the church and sang hymns while processing to the gymnasium, where Mary was crowned with a floral wreath. Five eight-grade girls were selected for the “court” that carried the wreath. One girl carried the wreath, while the other four walked with her in a square formation. Although I didn’t carry the wreath, I was one of four girls from my class to walk beside her.

Some readers might remember the time in the late 1990s when St. Stephen’s May crowning was the site of an alleged “miracle.”

During the crowning in the gymnasium, one woman took consecutive Polaroid photos of the moment Mary was crowned. When she got home, she noticed three of the photos appeared to show an image of what looked like Christ emerging from the statue of Mary. The image of Jesus appeared to grow clearer with each picture.

The incident soon became public, and the gymnasium turned into a “shrine,” so to speak, for months on end. Media outlets from around the state covered the incident. Visitors from all over came to see and pray in the gym. Volunteers from the parish sat outside the gymnasium to speak with visitors and answer any questions they might have.

I was living in Normal at the time, but I often came home on weekends. I took my 2-year-old niece with me on a few occasions to show her the beauty of the flowers surrounding Mary, and to sit in the prayerful space it had become. There is no denying the sense of peace that infused the room.

The parish began a daily rosary in the gymnasium, with many parishioners taking part. Eventually, the daily rosary that began in the gymnasium was moved to the Mother’s Chapel in the church. Although the number of participants dwindled over the years due to deaths, the practice continued until St. Stephen was closed in October 2023.

Although the church has never spoken on the validity of the events of that day, the response of the faithful to it illustrates the hunger people have for a sign of hope, a reassurance from the divine that we don’t walk this earth unaccompanied by benevolent beings.

Mary is a sign of hope through every generation. As the woman selected by God to carry his son in her womb, to nurture him and guide him through his youth, and to witness his crucifixion and death, she knows Jesus better than anyone. And it is because of this that Jesus gave her to the world as our mother, too, when he gave her to his beloved disciple John at the foot of the cross.

Millions of pilgrims travel to the sites of Mary’s church-approved apparitions in Lourdes, Fatima and Mexico City every year. Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, while not officially an approved apparition site, continues to draw millions of pilgrims, as well. Other reports of potential apparitions around the world have skyrocketed in the last 100 years.

As we begin this May, in 2025, it seems believers and skeptics alike are more desperate than ever for a sign of hope similar to the one found all those years ago in Streator.

The world has changed dramatically since that May in the late 1990s, and with every day bringing more fear-inducing news, it feels impossible to find solid ground on which to stand.

Whether she appears to us or not, the faithful recognize that Mary, our mother, never leaves our side. Through years of devotion during good times and bad, they have come to know unwavering solace from the intercession of the woman Jesus called “mom.”

She is solid ground we can stand on now and always.

(If you wish to experience that sense of solid ground, I invite you to pray the rosary each day of this month. In my own experience, I have found a deep sense of stability when I pray it consistently.)

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.