Hail Mary, Full of Grace…

May is Mary’s Month!  It is a time when the entire Catholic Church is celebrating Mary’s life, her example, her motherhood.  The custom of dedicating the month of May to Mary arose by the end of the 13th century, and since then has spread and grown.  (CatholicCulture.org)

Since we had Youth Group on the first day of May, how fitting that we should talk about who Mary is, and why she is so special!

We opened with a prayer called the Regina Caeli.  It is often sung in Latin chant, so we listened to that before speaking the English translation as our prayer.  You can listen to the chant here.

We brainstormed everything we knew about Mary – everything we remember being taught, everything we’d heard someone mention, everything we could remember from Scripture.  We came up with:  Mother of Jesus, a Virgin, the angel Gabriel came to her and told her she was pregnant, she married Joseph, she had a son named Jesus who was born in a stable, she had a cousin named Elizabeth, and a few other things.  Then, we talked about what the Catholic Church teaches about who Mary is, using this handout:

^All of the citations are from scripture, the writings of the Popes, or the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).

We read and discussed each title before discussing the discussion questions on the back of the handout.

I gave them the space to ask any questions they had about Mary, and I did my best to answer them, and made note of questions I didn’t have an answer for, so I could look into the question and get back to them.

We closed with the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  It is a beautiful prayer, full of titles for Mary that were been given to her by the early Christian Fathers in the first few centuries of Christianity.  It was approved in 1587 by Pope Sixtus V, and is one of only six litanies approved for public recitation by the Holy See (the leaders of the Church).  It has also been set to music as the Litany of Loreto by many celebrated composers, such as Palestrina and Mozart.  (OurCatholicPrayers.com)

Each of them also received prayer cards for Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Here’s how the tables were set up for Youth Group:

^The blue drinks are because Mary’s trademark color is blue, and the Cosmic Brownies are because she is the Queen of the Universe!