LINCOLN (SNR) – St. Peter School in Lincoln held their annual May crowning May 1 – albeit in a very different way.
Typically each year, the school hosts a procession of the children with flowers before the daily Mass. Each child – the school serves more than 350 students in grades pre-K through 8 – has at least one flower and they all process into the church and bring the flowers to the front, where the School Sisters of Christ the King, who teach at the school, receive them for Mary.
“We end up with a sea of flowers!” principal Sister Mary Michael said.
Despite the school building closing to in-person instruction in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, the school family still honored Mary with a sea of flowers.
Instead of the typical procession and Mass, school families were invited to two different “drive-up” options: one from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and one from 6 to 7 p.m. May 1. Children and family members were permitted to either place flowers in a basket from their car window, or to walk up to a statue of Mary, set up with a backdrop in front of the parish bell tower. Staff members wearing gloves and masks also brought a tray of treats to each car for the children, and others waved and visited with their students and their families from a safe distance.
So many families participated – arriving in cars, on bikes, and on foot – all the vases were filled, and then some, making the celebration feel just as important as the ‘usual’ event.
Editor's Note: Visit the gallery to view slideshows of the event
“Mary has always had a place of honor in the hearts of Christians,” Sister Mary Michael explained. “Not the place of Jesus, but the place of His Mother, which is so important to us. Mary’s role in not only bringing Jesus to birth, but also in bringing grace to us from her Son continues on today. We have been particularly praying that she will, as she did at Cana, intercede for us, so that when this time of trial passes, we will be restored to the joy, gladness and charity proper to Christians.”
She shared that her favorite short line for Marian devotion is at the base of a grotto in the foothills just outside Mount St. Mary Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., where many men from the Diocese of Lincoln attend. The seminary is near the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, where the May crowning involves hoisting a 12-ft. long silk flower crown more than 100 feet in the air to crown the 25-ft. tall gold-leafed bronze statue of the Blessed Mother which overlooks the seminary.
The sign those seminarians read each time they enter, she said, reads, “Sons of the Mother.”
“Beautiful!” she said. “May they be so; may we know ourselves as sons and daughters of Mary Our Mother, and God Our Father.”
